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The teachers had evidently been selected with great wisdom. As a class they impressed me as superior teachers well equipped for their work, with enthusiasm and zeal and great personal interest in their pupils. The teachers keep in touch with the homes of the children and try to secure the co-operation of the parents.

I was told that the prejudice and disfavor toward the special classes, which is almost universally shown at first by the parents, usually disappeared when the child began to show improvement. As a rule, the classes are assembled and dismissed a few minutes before or after the classes for normal children in the nearby schools. There seemed to be an entire absence of any teasing or any other interference with the pupils on their way to and from school. although the popular name for the special class is the "silly class.''

In the schools that I examined the pupils seemed distinctly inferior, both mentally and physically, to the pupils found in the school departments of the American institutional schools for feeble-minded. I saw very few pupils of the same degree of intelligence as the brighter school classes at Elwyn, Syracuse and Columbus; and the standard of nutrition and bodily vigor seemed decidedly below that of pupils in American institutions or in the English institutions.

From the records of individual cases and the admirable school reports it was evident that a good deal of mental and physical development was obtained with the majority of pupils, but here again I could but feel that the tangible results were no more satisfactory or practical than those we expect and generally obtain by institutional school training.

I made many inquiries as to how large a proportion of the pupils trained in these special classes became self-supporting or earned regular wages after leaving school. In the annual report of 1899 the special classes for mentally and physically defective children, Mrs. Burgwin reports that "ninety-two children have left the classes, being over fourteen years of age and have found some kind of employment; fifteen girls as general servants with an average weekly wage of sixty-two cents; six girls work as laundresses; twelve work at home; one is a dressmaker's apprentice (doing well); eight boys are regularly employed as errand boys; six flower or fruit sellers; eight van boys; eight in factories; one cabinet maker; two harness makers; one wood carver; one in brick field; two in iron works; one printer; one cigarette maker; one milkman; one farm laborer. The highest wage for boys is two dollars per week and the lowest sixty-two cents."

This report was made before the physically defective were separated from the mentally defective and there are no means of determining how many belonged in each class: It should be understood that in England the scale of wages for normal workers is much lower than in America. The specific inquiries which I made of the teachers in 1901, when only the mentally defective were considered, did not make so favorable a showing. I was told of only a few cases earning more than a few pence a day, and these cases seemed to be mostly employed in washing dishes or scrubbing floors in restaurants, running errands or some other precarious form of the lowest sort of unskilled labor.

The fact that in England labor-saving devices and machinery are used much less than in America, makes it comparatively easy to obtain this kind of work. It should also be considered that the standard of living of the poorer classes in London is much below that of similar classes in America, so the few pence earned daily by those boys and girls may go a long way towards furnishing the food and shelter which would satisfy their requirements. When these classes have been in operation for a longer period and a much larger number of children have been graduated, more definite information on this point will be available.

From all the information that I could gather it seemed to me that the nearly ten years' experience with the special classes have not proved that a large proportion of feeble-minded children can be so educated and trained in the special classes as to be able to support themselves by their own efforts and wages; or that they become wholesome or desirable members of a modern community.

I believe that careful observation and study of the life history of large numbers of these specially trained pupils will show the need of life-long protection and assistance.

One result of the existence of these special classes has been to make evident to the teachers themselves the need of much more extensive institution provision for the feeble-minded people past the school age.

The history of the treatment of the mentally defective in America differs in many respects from that in England and on the continent. In America custom has gradually sanctioned the popular use of the term "feeble-minded" to include all degrees and types of mental defect from that of the simply backward boy or girl unable to profit by ordinary school instructions to the helpless idiot, a hopeless, speechless, disgusting burden. This inaccurate use of the term "feeble-minded" is largely in deference to the popular prejudice towards the harshness of the terms "idiot" and "imbecile."