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The Origin And Nature Of Our Institutional Models

From: Changing Patterns in Residential Services for the Mentally Retarded
Creator: Wolf Wolfensberger (author)
Date: January 10, 1969
Publisher: President's Committee on Mental Retardation, Washington, D.C.
Source: Available at selected libraries

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An argument that became very popular was that since most community breadwinners must support three or more persons, a retarded resident who was one-third as productive as a community worker would be self-supporting. "When the feeble-minded are recognized in childhood and trained properly, many of them are capable of being supported at low cost under institution supervision" (Fernald, 1915, p. 295). At least for a while, apparently everyone believed that self-sufficiency and complete segregation of retardates was to be found in the work potential of the residents. "The only hope that I can see of the state taking complete care and responsibility of all idiots and imbeciles is that all those who have been trained, those of the higher grade who are susceptible to training, who have been trained to the highest degree possible for them, shall be so usefully employed that they may be practically self-supporting. We need a great deal of low grade labor, and a great deal of labor can be performed by laborers of a low degree of intelligence. In the care of the lowest custodial grade of imbeciles, in the care of epileptics of low grade, there is a great deal of labor available among our trained imbeciles; and they can do no better work than to exercise such care in an institution" (Johnson, 1902, p. 492).

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Beginning in about 1880, so-called farm colonies had come into vogue. In essence, they were institutions that specialized in making higher functioning retardates as self-supporting as possible by having them farm large tracts of land. Knight (1891), Fernald (1902), Mastin (1916), and Bernstein (1918, 1920) presented key models of such facilities. The belief developed that with enough land, an institution could actually become self-supporting. The rule of thumb that appeared to materialize out of nowhere (e.g., Osborne, 1891) was: one acre per resident. "Having decided upon the number of inmates, at least one acre of land for each inmate should be purchased" (Fish, 1892, p. 163). "It has been conceded for years that each institution should be provided with at least one acre per inmate; and, as we grow in years, it is thought by some that even more than this is needed" (Powell, 1897, p. 295). "The colony estate should be large, fully an acre to each individual. It is far better to have a little too much land than too little. We have at Sonyea 1895 acres, on which it is proposed ultimately to place 1800 people" (Sprattling, 1903, p. 261). "The site for an institution should comprise 1 acre of land for every pupil when the institution has reached its maximum" (Wallace, 1924, p, 258).

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With such a rule of thumb, institutions soon became monstrous in extent: "The colony farm for the adult feeble-minded of Massachusetts is one of the largest of its kind in the world, covering several square miles of land" (Johnson, 1903, p. 250). "The Craig Colony estate (In New York), three miles long and a mile and half wide, ..." (Sprattling, 1903, p. 261). Powell (1897) provided detailed information on U.S. institutions, including number of residents and land holdings. If one computes the average acreage per resident, one arrives at a figure of 1.01. By 1915, Bureau of the Census (1919) data indicate that average per resident acreage had risen to 2.47 or 2.99, depending on how the average is computed. By 1922, the heyday (hay-day?) of farm colonies seemed to be past, as average acreage down to 1.31, and by 1933, it had fallen further to .62 (Bureau of the Census, 1926, 1935) .

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Doren had been superintendent in Ohio for many years, and in 1884, he reported that 24-30 percent of his residents "become capable of self-support" (Kerlin, 1884, p. 251). In the mid-1880'S, Doren made a fateful boast: "The superintendent of the Ohio institution has made a proposition to the legislature of that state like this: Give me the land and allow me to gather the idiotic and imbecile population under public care together, and I agree that the institution shall be made self-sustaining, and I will pay back to the state the price of the land" (Byers, 1890, p. 441). As widely quoted and repeated, (e.g., Kerlin, 1886; Knight, 1891, 1892; Fernald, 1893, Follett, 1895; Bicknell, 1896; Byers 1916), Doren was said to have stated that 1,000 acres would suffice to carry out his claim.

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"I am quite sure that with sufficient farm land, and in connection with our present institution, the adult able-bodied imbeciles of both sexes could be kept in our state at a weekly cost of not more than $1 per capita in addition to what the farm would produce" (Johnson, 1896, p. 218). By 1902, Johnson (p. 492) stated that the average annual maintenance cost in an Indiana farm colony was actually down to $32, which must have referred to a very select subgroup, as overall maintenance costs in Indiana were about $136 in 1902.

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Residents were worked to the limit of their capacity, and, it appears, sometimes even beyond: "They should be under such conditions that many of them shall not cost the tax-payer anything...the state must...say to them "We will take care of you: you shall be happy and well cared for and clean and useful; but you shall labor and earn your bread in the sweat of your face according to the divine command.' That is what ought to be done with the whole class of degenerates, just so far as it is possible to do it" (Johnson, 1901, p. 411). Mastin (1916, pp. 34-35) declared that what was "...heart-breaking and unprofitable work for normal persons..." would be "...'particularly fitted'..." and "...agreeable, if not joyful occupation..." for retardates. "...You cannot work those boys too hard. If they work them as hard as they can they will not practice the vices...." "Let them go out and work just as hard as they will work. That is what they have to do for me when they work on the farm. They work so that when they come in at night they go to bed and sleep. Then they get up the next morning and go to work again, and I am very sure that the farmers who are working them the hardest are keeping them the best in line of good behavior. Miss Boehne suggests that the boy was overworked. Of course, we know that there are some tubercular conditions among the feeble-minded, that should be considered. About half of our population are subject to these same conditions" (Bernstein, in Fernald, 1915, p. 105). (6)


(6) For a long time, tuberculosis and related diseases appear to have been the leading cause of death in institutions for the retarded (e.g., Barr, 1904; Butler, 1944; Kaplan, 1939; Martz, 1934; Richards, 1954; Theodos, 1948). The implications of this fact do not seem to have been adequately elaborated in the literature of the field.

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