EDUCATION OF FEEBLE-MINDED AND IDIOTIC CHILDREN.
There is also an urgent necessity for the establishment of a school for the education idiotic and feeble-minded children. The success of such institutions in other States places their utility beyond doubt. I would recommend the inauguration of an experimental school at a small cost in the first instance, as was done in Illinois, feeling assured that the page: 283[View Page 283] experiment would soon demonstrate, as it did in that State, the necessity of a permanent institution for the class of children just mentioned. A bill was matured two years ago, but was not passed, and I understand that substantially the same bill was again introduced at the special session, and is now pending. I trust it will become a law before your session shall close. Before dismissing the subject, I desire to call your attention to the fact, that the Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb has a tract of land containing about thirty-six acres situated south of the Michigan road, which is not now and cannot be in the future, necessary for the purposes of that Institution, the same being seperated from the grounds on which the buildings of the Institution stand by the several railroad tracks. I am informed that this land, if sold for one-fourth cash and the residue in four equal annual payments, with interest at six per cent., would bring $75.000. I know of no better purpose to which the proceeds of the surplus lands of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb could be applied than to the founding of an institution for the education of idiotic and feeble-minded children. I therefore recommend that authority be given to the trustees of the Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb to sell the land before mentioned on the terms above indicated, and that said trustees before making any sale be required to advertise for sealed bids for the land, such bids to be opened in the presence of the Governor, and the sale to be subject to his approval. I further recommend that a portion of the proceeds be applied, first, to the opening of an experimental school, and that ultimately the residue of such proceeds, if the experiment shall be successful, be applied to the establishment of the institution on a permament foundation.
