The Socially Inadequate: How Shall We Designate and Sort Them?

Abstract

The alliteration "defectives, dependents, delinquents" has become a scrapbasket title. We need first a general title which will convey a clear-cut meaning, second a subsidiary list for the subclasses. Giddings' satirical suggestion of "The Seven Devils" to be known by the fourth letter "D." List of subclass titles proposed to the Census Bureau. The phrase "socially inadequate." Opinions of sociologists upon proposed designations. Present usage of state institutions. Summary.

Designating Dependency: The “Socially Inadequate” in theUnitedStates, 1910–1940

“…The term was used by other well known eugenicists working from the ERO in the early twentieth‐century, such as Charles Davenport (see ) and Arthur Estabrook (see ; ), and found its way into the newspapers via discussion of their work (see New York Times , 19.1.13; Chicago Daily Tribune , 11.3.13). However, Laughlin actively evangelised for the use of this label, believing that it could replace the 3Ds as a term useful to policymakers (Laughlin, ). As part of this effort, he developed a formulated definition of the socially inadequate that broke down into subcategories, rather than only using it in passing to describe those too substandard to be self sustaining (Laughlin, ; ).…”

“…However, Laughlin actively evangelised for the use of this label, believing that it could replace the 3Ds as a term useful to policymakers (Laughlin, ). As part of this effort, he developed a formulated definition of the socially inadequate that broke down into subcategories, rather than only using it in passing to describe those too substandard to be self sustaining (Laughlin, ; ). The key features of the socially inadequate were that they did not reach an acceptable threshold for social participation, which meant that they were dependent and a burden on the rest of society.…”

“…In an article for the Eugenics Review (: 53), he had identified ten subcategories of the socially inadequate:

1. the feeble‐minded; 2 the insane; 3 the criminalistic; 4 the epileptic; 5 the inebriate; 6 the diseased; 7 the blind; 8 the deaf; 9 the deformed; 10 the dependent, in so far as their inadequacies and handicaps have a heritable basis

The 1921 article included the same subcategories, with the clarification that the “diseased” included “the tuberculous, the syphilitic and the leprous”, that the “deformed” included the “crippled” and that the “dependent” covered “children and old folks in ‘homes’, ne'er do wells, tramps, and paupers” (Laughlin, : 55–6). Laughlin explained that “socially inadequate” was not intended to have a “primarily eugenical” (70) meaning and his expanded subcategories drew in clearly non‐hereditarian conditions, such as suffering from tuberculosis or being in an “old folks” home.…”

“…Professor Frank Fetter, an economist at Princeton University, disliked Laughlin's categorisation of blind and deaf people as socially inadequate as many of them were socially adequate “either in the economic sense or in the sense of fitness for social relation” (quoted in Laughlin, : 58). His own preferred terminology was of “normal” and “abnormal” with “the test of abnormality being the lack of economic means of support either from one's efforts or from those of one's immediate family and natural protectors” (ibid.).…”

“…Some sociologists rejected Laughlin's harder eugenical arguments but accepted the concept of the socially inadequate as those falling below the threshold of social participation. In a sociology textbook aimed at college students, Clarence Marsh Case of University of Iowa included an extract from “The Socially Inadequate: How Shall we Designate and Sort Them?” (Laughlin, ), and argued:

‘Inadequacy’ is accurate because the outstanding fact is that there are individuals and family strains in modern society which are not endowed with the physical and mental traits necessary to enable their possessors to play an adequate part in the communities in which they live (: 750).

Case rejected eugenics though, contending that its “extravagant claims” were part of an “ill matured movement of thought and social policy” (751).…”