The second objection to the increasing complexity of the tariff laws is to be found in the petty annoyances imposed upon importers and others in enforcing the not always consistent provisions of the law. These vexations are made all the more telling by the fact that the administration of the law is apt to be in the hands of those who are openly hostile to foreign importations, and therefore regard the importer in an unfriendly spirit. The power given to the customs agents is enormous, and it is not remarkable that it is abused. The demand for samples, the appraisement of articles, the classification of new or compound commodities, all offer room for controversy, which is not always decided by an appeal to the courts of justice. In special instances, where a section of the law has been framed in behalf of a special interest, the attempt to enforce it becomes petty tyranny of the most intolerable kind.
In operation the law soon exhibited its failure as a revenue measure. Although duties were generally increased, the more important articles taxed yielded a smaller revenue than under lower rates. The aggregate collections under the bill did not meet the expectations of its sponsors, and for two reasons: first, because the higher duties discouraged imports; and secondly, the demand for imported articles was steadily decreasing under the expanding ability of home manufactures to meet the needs of the market. No measure short of a direct encouragement to importations can change this situation, or prevent the further shrinkage in the use of foreign manufactures. It follows that the tariff, unless radically altered, can no longer be depended on for a return sufficient to defray one half of the rapidly increasing expenditures of the national Government. By refusing to impose moderate duties on articles of general consumption, revenue is sacrificed; by insisting upon imposing protective duties where little revenue can be had, the tariff is converted into a political weapon. Its dangerous qualities are strengthened by turning these duties against the products of certain countries, a policy specially fit to invite reprisals.
Even the framers of this latest tariff entertained the belief that some provision should be made for breaking its full effect. The familiar scheme for reciprocity treaties, under which moderate concessions in some of the duties could be made, was retained; but France was the only power that could have an object in seriously entertaining the proposition to enter into a negotiation. No real reduction in duties could be given to Germany or any other country, and it has become a recognized fact that Germany does not hesitate to seize an opportunity to exclude the products of the United States, and on the same grounds as support the high duties in the American tariff. The system of drawbacks has ceased to be of much moment in our customs policy, and in the export interest in canned goods finds its chief exercise. Nor does a privilege to manufacture in bond affect more than one article of importance ores of lead containing silver. No matter how it is regarded, the tariff of 1897 was not framed for revenue, and in experience has not proved sufficiently productive to meet its share of the expenditures of Government. The animus of its sponsors in attaining the immediate political object sacrificed the more important and permanent object of revenue.
Were the true object of customs duties revenue to be kept in view in tariff legislation, it would be a simple matter to devise a measure that would be satisfactory and highly productive of revenue. In the fifteen hundred or more articles enumerated in the tariff schedules, more than fourteen hundred are nonproductive, or yield so small a return as to have in the aggregate no appreciable effect on the total receipts. The number left after so large an exclusion can be still further reduced without reducing the revenue one tenth; and it is from a small number of articles, hardly twenty-five, that the great part of the customs revenue is obtained. By reducing the rates of duties on these to a point of highest revenue efficiency, at which the import is not interfered with and yet not encouraged, a higher return could be had than from the existing complicated, overloaded, and political compilation of duties, usually imposed for any reason other than what they will bring into the treasury.
When, therefore, the best methods of Federal taxation are broached, the reform of the tariff stands first in importance. It is necessary to bring it more into line with the industrial conditions of to-day, which call for foreign markets rather than a domestic or closed market; and for a liberal commercial policy in place of one that regards the products of other countries, whether imported in the crude or manufactured forms, as constituting a menace to American labor and American interests. It calls for a systematic and intelligent revision, which shall throw out such duties as are no longer of service even for protection, and to reduce those that are hostile to the products of other countries and bear in themselves the seeds of reprisals in the future. Now that the United States is going into the great markets with its manufactures, and obtaining a foothold against all competitors, the invitation to retaliation holds a danger far greater to its own interests than any that can be inflicted on other peoples. The greater the advances made the more readily will recourse be had to reprisals and hostile legislation; and in support of every act appeal may be had to examples set by the United States.8
MENTAL DEFECTIVES AND THE SOCIAL WELFARE
By MARTIN W. BARR, M. D.,CHIEF PHYSICIAN, PENNSYLVANIA TRAINING SCHOOL FOR FEEBLE-MINDED CHILDREN, ELWYN, PAPeriods of extraordinary efflorescence or fruitage are followed by exhaustion and sterility not infrequently demanding the free use of the pruning knife; and, just as we remark how frequent is idiocy the offspring of genius, so do we find the same seeming paradox, of mental defect in rank and increasing growth the product of this most wonderful nineteenth century.
True, science has contributed to numbers by revealing as mental defectives the many "misunderstood," "the backward," "the feebly gifted," as well as by showing what was once esteemed moral perversion to be moral imbecility; but a truth to which science also attests is, that unstable nerve centers uniting and reacting through successive generations, producing various forms of neuroses, evidenced in insanity, moral and mental imbecility, idiocy and epilepsy, do show the influence of a highly nervous age.
Our last census reports, although necessarily uncertain and unreliable, yet show ninety thousand mental defectives, not including the insane. Unrecognized and unacknowledged cases swell the number easily to one hundred thousand within our present borders how many we are going to annex remains to be seen; but this is an enemy that attacks not our frontiers but our hearthstones. We have reached that point when we must conquer it, lest it should conquer us, and the means to this end may be summed up in three words separation, asexualization, and permanent sequestration. "Diseases desperate grown by desperate appliances are relieved, or not at all," and we must recognize that heroic measures now are as essential to the welfare of the unfortunate as to society, which will then naturally adjust itself to new conditions. Viewing the separation and massing of these irresponsibles innocent victims of ignorance, debauchery, or selfish lust men will come to realize that a greater crime than taking is the giving of such life; and so a greater reverence for the sacredness of marriage, a deeper sense of the great responsibilities of parenthood, will do more to avert this evil than the most stringent marriage laws. That the present demands some restraint upon the ignorant and the indifferent there can be no doubt, and laws preventing the marriage of defectives and of their immediate descendants would go far to stem the tide of harmful heredity.
But what to do with those now in our midst is the vital question! They must be provided for in a way that shall insure safety to society, economy to the State, and protection and happiness to the individual. The answer found in the experience of half a century is, briefly, asylums for the helpless training schools and colonies for those capable of becoming helpful. These in very name and nature being widely separate, just as separate as titles and names indicate, should be their working systems. Work among the feeble-minded, a philanthropic movement directed first toward the idiot, soon found a limit in dealing with a subject not trainable and but slightly if at all improvable. Thence, diverging and broadening as idiocy became better understood and imbecility in various phases became recognized, it found its true province in strengthening and encouraging feeble intellects, arousing and stimulating indolent and weak wills, and in training and directing into healthful channels the abnormal energy of those destitute of the moral sense. How wide the divergence can readily be seen, as also how entirely incompatible with union must be work further apart in reality than is the training of an imbecile and a normal child.
For the idiot, who not only can not be trained, but who in many cases is unimprovable even in the simplest matters of self-help, nothing is needed but that care and attention found in every well-regulated nursery of delicate children, the sine qua non being regular hours, simple nourishing food, frequent baths, and tender mothering. As many are paralyzed, blind, lame, or epileptic, it is desirable that the dormitories, well ventilated, be on the same floor with the living rooms and of easy access to bathrooms and playgrounds. Covered and carefully guarded porches should afford the much-needed fresh air and outdoor life in all weathers. These, with cheerful, sunny playrooms, provided with simple toys and furnished with bright decorations varying with the season, will contribute the maximum of pleasure for this life of perpetual infancy. Low vitality, general poverty of the whole physical make-up, the prevalence of phthisis and epilepsy and kindred diseases require the daily inspection of a physician, while the comfort and well-being of the whole, both workers and children, are insured by a capable and sympathetic house mother.
The character of attendants is of the first importance, as these are they who live with the children; it should combine that firmness, tenderness, and balance that constitute an even temperament, capable of recognizing and meeting an occasion without loss of self-control. The duties involve not only the care of the idiots, but the training and direction of idio-imbeciles as aids, and this dealing with natures often wholly animal, requires a certain refinement and dignity of character at least an entire absence of coarseness while a knowledge of the simpler manual arts, and if possible of drawing and music, will do much to soften and brighten these darkened natures. As these qualities are valuable as well as rare, the remuneration should be in proportion; certainly sufficient to induce permanency and to compensate for such isolation. A life of constant wear and tear demands also regular periods of rest, and the corps therefore should be sufficiently large to give relief hours daily as well as vacations.
The idio-imbecile, but one remove from his weaker brother, to whose wants he may be trained to minister, finds here his fitting place, and the domestic service of these asylums may be largely drawn from this class and also from that of the low-grade imbecile. Working as an aid, never alone, always under direction, he finds in a monotonous round of the simplest daily avocations his life happiness, his only safety from lapsing into idiocy, and therefore his true home.
The relief to the home, the actual benefit to the State in this housing and care of the idiot and idio-imbecile can never be fully estimated. It is reckoned, however, in a general way that for every idiot sequestrated the energies of two if not four normal persons are returned to society.
Imbecility, mental or moral, congenital or accidental, is either an inherent defect or an irrecoverable loss, an incurable disease for which hospitals can do nothing, nor can reformatories form again that which never has been formed. Could language be made clear enough to enable the public mind to grasp this fact, the work of training schools, the only hope of the imbecile, would then be simplified, and people might be willing to accept what they can give, in the only way in which it can be given, to be of any permanent value. As it is, the few charlatans who profess to train and in a few years send out an imbecile ready to take a high-school or college course not only deceive those from whom they may gather a few thousands, but their representations, coupled with that of a sensational press, effectually impede the progress of a work which must eventually find its true place in the system of public education.
Influenced by these misrepresentations, parents come with profound idiots and high hopes of a course of training (here is one of the misfortunes of an idiot asylum within a training school), and simply refuse to accept a negative to their expectations. Again to waifs and strays, high-grade imbeciles, developing after years of labored training proficiency in music, drawing, or some one of the industrial arts, friends will suddenly crop up and, dazzled by what seems phenomenal genius, seek to withdraw them just as they become useful to the community. Little do they know of the weak will, indolent nature, and utter lack of "go," that forbid competition with normal labor and must forever be subject to the will of another; still less of the weak physical build that is kept intact only by watchful care, and which would succumb to any undue hardship. So much for the difficulties that beset the work. Now as to the work itself.
As this must vary according to the status of the individual, a careful study and a correct diagnosis are of primary importance in order that the work may be fitted to the child, not the child to the work. The plan pursued is as follows: A thorough examination physical, mental, and moral is first made by the chief physician in connection with papers properly filled out giving personal and family history. He is then sent to the hospital for a fortnight to insure immunity from disease. There, while perfectly free and unrestrained among his fellows, he is under constant observation of the nurses; these observations, carefully noted, are returned to the chief physician, who turns both over to the principal of schools, designating the grade in which he is to enter for probation. Here under different environment he is again tested for some weeks and finally placed.
It is hard for the uninitiated to understand that the grade, be it high, middle, or low, is not associated with promotion and advancement as in schools for normal children. On the contrary, it signifies the quality and status of the individual, his limitations, his possibilities, and consequently determines almost unfailingly the training for his life work; not by any hard-and-fast lines, but by a general mapping out of means which experience has proved will best insure his development, because best suited to his needs. Every latitude is allowed and, as the comfort of both the teacher and the entire class depends upon each going to his own place, there is easy and natural transference according to the necessity indicated by either progress or retrogression; but the varied occupations in each grade give ample scope for indulgence of individual proclivity in the means of development, and it is found that the original diagnosis, based upon experience, rarely errs.
The motto of the schools "We learn by doing; the working hand makes strong the working brain" shows manual training to be the basis of the scheme of development, varied for each grade to suit the intelligence. Thus classified, various occupations are arranged and presented with the double intent of securing all-round development, and of giving at the same time opportunity for choice according to individual bent, the child being gradually permitted to devote himself more exclusively to that in which he shows a tendency to excel, and to gain a certain automatic ease in what shall prove the initial of a life employment. A knowledge of writing and of numbers is acquired incidentally as a necessary part of these occupations in daily practice, and arithmetic, taught with objects, is chiefly counting, separating into fractional parts, and practical measurements. Books are used rather as a convenient means of attracting and holding attention while inducing habits of consecutive thinking than for a knowledge of facts to be memorized. Those who can learn to read gain naturally a means of self-entertainment, of self-instruction, hence a certain amount of culture, so long as protected in an institution from indiscriminate and pernicious literature.