H.—7a.

I am satisfied that unification of control is of paramount importance, and that this could best be attained by the creation of a Board —the Eugenics Board —whose function coidd be broadly defined as being the social control of the feeble-minded. This control would involve the administration of all special schools, day and residential; but the special classes attached to day schools should be strictly reserved for genuine retardates —as determined by the officers of the Eugenics Board —and should be conducted, as heretofore, by the Education Department. As previously noted, there is a large class of higher-grade defectives —of the so-called moral imbecile and moron type —whose departure from the normal is manifested on the moral and emotional planes rather than in an obvious defect of intelligence. These people, along with many who may be considered more or less as border-line cases, are to be found in institutions for young folk of delinquent and anti-social tendencies, and it is desirable on all grounds that the care of these classes should be included in the duties of the Eugenics Board. The peculiar problems and difficulties of these children could thus be adjusted on broad, humane, and common-sense lines, itnhampered on the one hand by mental-hospital or prison association, and free from the somewhat rigid pedagogic requirements and traditions of a department whose function, after all, is the education of normal children. The Massachusetts Registration Scheme. I found that there were good registration schemes already in operation in New York and in Massachusetts, and I had the opportunity of discussing them with the heads of the State Departments concerned. Dr. George Kline, Director of the Department of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Massachusetts, gave me the following information as to the system employed in that State. In 1919 the Massachusetts Legislature passed the following law : — An Act to determine the Number of Children retarded in Mental Development, and to provide for their Instruction. Section I : The School Committee of each city and town shall, within one year after the passage of this Act, and annually thereafter, ascertain, under regulations prescribed by the Board of Education and the Director of the Commission on Mental Diseases, the number of children three years or more retarded in mental development who are in attendance upon the public schools of its city or town, or who are of school age, and reside therein. Section II : At the beginning of the school year of nineteen hundred and twenty the School Committee of each city and town in which there are ten or more children three years or more retarded shall establish special classes to give such children instruction adapted to their mental attainments, under regulations prescribed by the Board of Education. Under the regulations provided for by this Act a comprehensive scheme for examination of all retarded children has been undertaken. The State has been divided into twelve districts, each corresponding to the area served by a mental hospital or school for the feeble-minded. The psychiatrist of the institution is responsible for the examination of the children in his district, and his institution is the headquarters of a travelling clinic. The clinic consists of a psychiatrist, some one who has been trained to do intelligence tests, a social-service worker, and a clerk. The clinic officials do not make a general examination of all the school-children in the area. Section I of the law quoted above is used for the selection of the children, but, in addition to retardates ascertained in this way, all children entering school and obviously unfit for first- or second-grade work, as well as those obviously of feeble intellect, are presented to the clinic officers, who carry out the examinations and make their recommendations. The children are examined in a standard manner for the purpose of uniformity of records, and in Massachusetts and New York the method is that of the late Dr. Fernald. The examination comprises ten fields of inquiry, which have been graphically set down thus : —

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