DEFECTS OF PERSONALITY
Psychological and sociological studies of vagabondage in France, Italy, and Germany have led to the conclusion that the vagabond is primarily a psychopathic type.[16] The findings of European psychopathologists are, of course, the result of case-studies of beggars and wanderers in these countries and cannot without reservation be accepted for the United States. Undoubtedly there are large numbers of individuals with defects of personalities among American hobos and tramps, but there are also large numbers of normal individuals. The American tradition of pioneering, wanderlust, seasonal employment, attract into the group of wanderers and migratory workers a great many energetic and venturesome normal boys and young men.
William Healy, for several years director of the Psychopathic Institute of Chicago, sums up the relation of mental deficiency to vagabondage in these words:
We have seen vagabondage in connection with feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, dementia precox, but we have also seen the same behavior in normal boys who had conceived a grudge, with or without good reasons, against home conditions. Again, we have seen normal lads who have been seeking larger experiences in this way.[17]
Dr. Healy’s observations were made primarily with juveniles, but he adds cautiously a conclusion as to the explanation of adult vagabondage:
When vagabondage is continued beyond the unstable years of adolescence, generalizations on the character of the individuals are more likely to be correct. But even here the only chance of adequate conception of the relationship between the behavior and the type of individual who engages in it is to be found in a personal study of him.
The proportion of feeble-minded is popularly supposed to be higher among the migratory and casual laborer than in the general population. In the earlier studies, only the most obvious cases of mental defect were noted. Mrs. Solenberger by common-sense observation or medical examinations found only eighty-nine of the one thousand men she examined to be feeble-minded, epileptic, or insane.[18]
In recent years mental tests have been given to small groups of unemployed men, in which the types of the hobo, tramp, and bum were well represented. Knollin found 20 per cent of the 150 hobos he tested feeble-minded.[19] Pintner and Toops examined two groups of applicants at Ohio free employment agencies by standardized tests other than the Stanford revision of the Binet-Simon. Of the 94 men taking the tests at Columbus, 28.7 per cent were diagnosed as feeble-minded. Of the 40 unemployed men examined at Dayton 7.5 per cent were assigned to the feeble-minded class.[20] Glenn R. Johnson gave the Stanford revision of the Binet-Simon tests to 107 men out of work in Portland, and found 18 per cent feeble-minded, i.e., under twelve years mental age.[21] As he had expected, he found the proportion of inferior intelligence lower than that of the 62 business men and high-school students upon which Terman had standardized his tests for adults, but he also found among hobos a higher percentage of superior adults. He found also that the higher the intelligence of the individual the shorter the period of holding a job among the unemployed. The testing of an unselected group of 653 men in the army by the Stanford revision of the Binet-Simon tests affords an interesting opportunity for a comparison with the results of the Portland study.
This comparison would indicate that the intelligence of the unemployed is not lower, but, if anything, higher than that of the adult males tested in army camps. Apparently other factors than intelligence are decisive in determining whether an individual is employable or unemployable, or whether he makes or fails to make an adequate adjustment in the normal routine of industrial organization.
The defects in personality commonly found in the cases of homeless men studied in Chicago are those noted by the students of vagabondage and unemployment, namely, feeble-mindedness, constitutional inferiority, emotional instability, and egocentricity. In a survey of 100 cases of unemployment which had been received as patients in the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Dr. Herman M. Adler found that 43 fell into the class of paranoid personality (egocentricity). The next largest group of 35 cases was assigned to the class of inadequate personality (mentally defective or feeble-minded). The remaining cases, 22 in number, were diagnosed as emotionally unstable personality. An analysis of the months employed per case showed that the emotionally unstable group averages 50 months to each job; the inadequate group 24.7 months to each job; and the paranoid group 20.6 months to each job.[22]