The Importance to the Community of Provision for the Feeble-Minded [excerpt]

     Murders have been committed by mental defectives. In some cases these have been startling crimes that shocked the civilized world. Guiteau, who killed President Garfield, came of degenerate stock. There were mental defectives and insanity in his family. Guiteau himself was a ne’er-do-well who had previously been arrested in New York on account of annoying a young woman. He seems to have had a paranoiac trend and his may have been a case of dementia precox. This question of diagnosis however is only one of academic interest. The important point is that under a proper system of provision for the feeble-minded, he would have been removed from society and taken care of before he committed murder. He was probably considered feeble-minded rather than insane and therefore allowed to go at large.
     Czolgosz, who shot President McKinley, was never considered well balanced. He had what is known as the “shut in” disposition, unsocial and morose. There is no evidence that he was an anarchist.
     Prendergast who murdered Mayor Harrison of Chicago was probably of the same type.
     It is perfectly evident that the feeble-minded are a menace to society. That they are equally a menace to the race is due to the fact that mental defect is incurable, that it is inherited and that the defectives are twice as prolific as normal people. Fortunately their numbers are somewhat diminished by their being more vulnerable to disease than normal people. Dr. Goddard says that the menace of the problem comes from the fact that a quarter of a million defectives who inherited their condition are transmiting [sic] that condition to their offspring. Not only the manifestly feeble-minded but also some normal persons who have had feeble-minded progenitors transmit feeble-mindedness to their descendants.