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The methods of the Committee were unique and fruitful. Names and addresses of those on the waiting lists of the Epileptic Village and State Home were secured. A personal letter was sent to the parents or guardians of each applicant asking for the names of business or professional men who knew the child. A suitable blank with return stamped envelope was inclosed. The letter stated that the purpose of the Committee was to secure proper State care for this particular child. Most of the parents went personally to their friends and secured their signatures. In this way good cooperation was secured from over twelve hundred men and women representing every county in the State within a few weeks. To each of these the Committee sent letters explaining its purpose, suggesting how they might cooperate, and naming the child in whom they had an interest. Later, letters asking for the names of other children in the community for whom State care ought to be provided were sent to the twelve hundred. Replies from these were followed up in the same way as with the original list.

As the last act in this operation, letters were sent to all persons whose names had been secured, giving the name and address of their nearest legislative representatives and urging them to see personally or write to their legislators and express their interest in larger provision for State care of the feebleminded and epileptic. Simultaneously with the latter the Committee wrote each member of the legislature, calling attention to the number on the waiting lists from his county, together with other facts, and asking for his cooperation with the Committee. The newspapers of the State were furnished with matter prepared by the Committee.

The result of this intensive campaign was large and immediate. During the preceding 22 years the State's appropriations for buildings and furnishings for the State Institution for Feebleminded Women totaled $117,279; the total appropriated for the Epileptic Village, which had been founded in 1900, during ten years was $233,527; a total for both of $350,806. The work of the Committee secured $211,000 in twenty-two weeks. In these results The Training School, a private institution, could have no share except the gratification of the missionary who sees his work, and not his own head, crowned with success.

The activities of the Committee continued. In 1911 its influence was felt in the enactment of laws for the compulsory medical inspection of all school children and for the establishment of special classes in every school district where ten or more children were found to be three or more years behind normal. The work of the Research Laboratory of the Village, opened in 1906, within four years was being accepted as showing the way and providing the means for the measuring of intelligence. (3)

By 1912 the Committee had records of over six thousand mental defectives in New Jersey, more than four thousand of whom were not under institutional care. The State Commissioner of Institutions was added to the Committee.

In 1913 public interest had been so quickened that the legislators provided for the appointment of a Commission to study the question. (4)

The campaign for increased provision for the State's mentally deficients was pushed with increasing vigor during the following years. In 1912 the State's Commissioner of Education had joined the Committee officially. Later the Departments of Labor, Forestry, State University (Rutgers) and Public Highways were to augment its membership. These several hitherto unrelated State departments were drawn together by a mutual interest in the development of the Burlington County Colony for adult feeble-minded "boys" which was opened in 1914 in "The Pines." This colony was inspired by and came into being but a little more than a year after The Village of Happiness founded its own Menantico Colony for some of its older boys.

In the spring of 1914 Professor Johnstone; Calvin Kendall, Commissioner of Education; Mr. Gaskill, State Forester; and the Commissioner of Institutions met to outline plans for the organization of the Burlington County Colony. Sufficient land was promised by Mr. Gaskill within the State Forest domain in that county. The Village of Happiness agreed to become responsible for its administration and to transfer certain boys then at the Village from Burlington County, together with their maintenance money paid by the State, as a beginning. The Colony was to become a demonstration project for the Department of Education and the College of Agriculture at Rutgers. The Director of Highways promised suitable roads. The citizens of Burlington County were to be asked to contribute necessary funds for buildings.

Beginning in August, 1913, many public meetings were held throughout the County at which the project was explained and subscriptions requested. The response was so immediate that before the close of 1914 four large frame buildings were built and furnished, water, sewage disposal and other essentials provided, and twenty "boy-men" were being cared for. The Colony grew and prospered. Six separate State departments, the citizens of a county and The Training School had collaborated successfully in a general welfare experiment. The possibilities of effective, harmonious, and economical coordination thus demonstrated was "something new under the sun" and, perhaps, still may suggest something of value to students of government. Within two years the State took it over. It became the New Jersey Colony for Boys with a present population of eight hundred.