Magazine Notes

Abstract

T HREE articles in the February issue of the Atlantic contain especial1y chal1enging material for case workers. Two of them furnish us with considerable aid and comfort in the testimony they bear to the spread into other fields of the demand for individualized treatment. These are "Facing the Prison Problem" by Frank Tannenbaum, and "The Iron Man and the Mind," by Arthur Pound, the latter a continuation of his very interesting series in which the effect of machines on the lives of human beings who feed and tend them is exhaustively analyzed. Both articles are a direct appeal for the conservation of the worth and dignity of human personality, the one in our treatment of criminals, the other in our industrial adjustments. The first article in the number opens a new line by Mrs. Cannon, the paper entitled "American Misgivings" being apparently the first in a series which she calls "Democracy in Question." Mrs. Cannon makes extensive use of the statistics of the army intelligence tests and draws certain deductions therefrom. Her conclusion seems to be that American democracy is seriously threatened if not jeopardized by the preponderance in it of persons of low intelligence. The mind of the reader reverts to her earlier paper on "Philanthropic Doubts" in which she reached the conclusion that the social work of the country had been a failure under private auspices and should be turned over as speedily as possible to the control of this same democracy in whose capacity for wise direction, and in the stability of whose institutions, the author now seems to feel so little confidence. Our readers who agree with Mrs. Cannon in both conclusions must indeed see little future hope for the fruitful continuance of social endeavor under any auspices at all. As set forth by Mrs. Cannon, some results of the army intelligence tests cause "philanthropic doubts" to arise in the mind of the case worker. Is it true in our experience that between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of our largest foreign groups are inferior in mentality? Do their American-born children in the public schools show that their racial stock is thus so seriously affected? A wel1-known authority in the psychiatric field told me the other day that in his judgment a good deal of the seeming mental defectiveness among the foreign-born mothers might be ascribed to their sequestered existence, their concentration on a round of dul1 duties, their subjugation to the will of their husbands, and the lack of any stimulus toward mental development in their environment. In other words, he felt that a low intelligence quotient among such people might often be a matter of actual degeneration from the possible mental status which the individual might have reached under more favorable conditions. Is there not raised in our minds some question concerning a series'of tests, part of the results of which is described by Mrs. Cannon as follows: "One happy finding of the army tests was the very large proportion of the A and B men who had had the advantages of higher education. This ... does show how difficult it is to keep real ability from coming into its own." This statement certainly gives one furiously to think. Then one turns over a few pages and finds in Mr. Pound's article, "The Iron Man and the Mind," the following quotation: How long maya person's innovating tendencies be repressed without dulling his mind? Suppose our first-rate carpenter undertook a two-year stint laying identical floors in identical one-story houses. Would he be as good an all-round craftsman, as good a stairbuilder and roof-builder, at the end of his grind? Obviously not. He might grow more deft in what he had to do; but surely he would grow more clumsy in what he has no chance to do. He would emerge from that job less efficient for the all-round work of the community, less sure of himself, less secure in his home and his living, less interesting as a personality and less valuable as a neighbor and citizen. To what extent this decline in the individual might affect his descendants, and through them the race, is an interesting question reserved for future discussion. It seems to the reviewer that case work experience more nearly accords with Mr. Pound's conception of the influences, destructive as well as constructive, of environment and opportunity upon the plastic material of individual make-up, than it does with Mrs. Cannon's. It further seems that a series of intelligence tests, which shows mental capacity and the enjoyment of advantages running so closely hand in hand, is under some suspicion of having made insufficient allowance for the possibility of development by favorable conditions, or retardation by unfavorable ones, of basic mentalities which were perhaps originally not so far apart.