defectives, dependents, and delinquents

I was looking at the 1930 census [pdf] the other day. No, don’t ask why, it’s not important. But as I was looking at the table of contents, Section 2, titled “Defectives, Dependents, Delinquents,” caught my eye, as well it might.

The sheer, brutal, honesty of the title kind of takes your breath away. Hard to imagine how different a culture it must have been to permit such plain speaking—and in a government document, no less. And right front and center. Enumerating the flawed, halt, and lame was more important in the 1930 census than Climate, Money and Banking, Wages, Telephony…really everything takes a back seat to the number of paupers, the education of deaf mutes, and the number of female forgers in prisons. I don’t get that, exactly, but that’s the way it was.

The data themselves are nothing short of fascinating. The Census Bureau spent 26 charts outlining our great nation’s weak, lame, and insane. In 1928 there were 8,374 patients admitted to state hospitals for mental disease as manic depressives. In 1922 there were 63,807 paupers admitted to almshouses. And as of 1902 there were 320 blind people working as hucksters and peddlers. I’m sure your life is somehow better for this information..