In regard to prostitutes, we have no reliable figures. The groups of delinquent girls to which we have already referred included among the numbers several that were already known as prostitutes. A simple observation of persons who are leading this sort of life will satisfy any one who is familiar with feeble-mindedness that a large percentage of them actually are defective mentally. So we have, as is claimed, partly from statistical studies and partly from careful observation, abundant evidence of the truth of our claim that criminality is often made out of feeble-mindedness.
Mr. Winship in his comparison of the Jukes and Edwards families has strengthened our claim in this respect. In all environments and under all conditions, he shows the latter family blossoming out into distinguished citizens, not primarily through anything from without but through the imperious force within. Since we may conclude that none of the Edwards family, who are described by Dr. Winship, were feeble-minded, therefore none of them became criminals or prostitutes. But here again his argument is inconclusive because he does not tell us of all the descendants.
With equal safety it may be surmised that many of the Jukes family (perhaps the original stock, indeed) were feeble-minded and therefore easily lapsed into the kind of lives that they are said to have lived.
In the good branch of the Kallikak family there were no criminals. There were not many in the other side, but there were some, and, had their environment been different, no one who is familiar with feeble-minded persons, their characteristics and tendencies, would doubt that a large percentage of them might have become criminal. Lombroso’s famous criminal types, in so far as they were types, may have been types of feeble-mindedness on which criminality was grafted by the circumstances of their environment.
Such facts as those revealed by the Kallikak family drive us almost irresistibly to the conclusion that before we can settle our problems of criminality and pauperism and all the rest of the social problems that are taxing our time and money, the first and fundamental step should be to decide upon the mental capacity of the persons who make up these groups. We must separate, as sharply as possible, those persons who are weak-minded, and therefore irresponsible, from intelligent criminals. Both our method of treatment and our attitude towards crime will be changed when we discover what part of this delinquency is due to irresponsibility.
If the Jukes family were of normal intelligence, a change of environment would have worked wonders and would have saved society from the horrible blot. But if they were feeble-minded, then no amount of good environment could have made them anything else than feeble-minded. Schools and colleges were not for them, rather a segregation which would have prevented them from falling into evil and from procreating their kind, so avoiding the transmitting of their defects and delinquencies to succeeding generations.
Thus where the Jukes-Edwards comparison is weak and the argument inconclusive, the twofold Kallikak family is strong and the argument convincing.