CHAPTER IV
FURTHER FACTS ABOUT THE KALLIKAK FAMILY
Although the foregoing facts, figures, and charts show conclusively the difference between good heredity and bad and the result of introducing mental deficiency into the family blood, yet because it is so difficult actually to appreciate the situation, because facts and figures do not have flesh and blood reality in them, we give in this chapter a few cases, graphically written up by our field worker, to show the differences in the types of people on the two sides of the family. These are only a few of the many, but are fairly typical of the condition of things that was found throughout the investigation. On the bad side we have the type of family which the social worker meets continually and which makes most of our social problems. A study of it will help to account for the conviction we have that no amount of work in the slums or removing the slums from our cities will ever be successful until we take care of those who make the slums what they are. Unless the two lines of work go on together, either one is bound to be futile in itself. If all of the slum districts of our cities were removed to-morrow and model tenements built in their places, we would still have slums in a week’s time, because we have these mentally defective people who can never be taught to live otherwise than as they have been living. Not until we take care of this class and see to it that their lives are guided by intelligent people, shall we remove these sores from our social life.
There are Kallikak families all about us. They are multiplying at twice the rate of the general population, and not until we recognize this fact, and work on this basis, will we begin to solve these social problems.
The following pictures from life have been prepared by our field worker, Miss Elizabeth S. Kite, and besides giving an idea of the family, they will also show something of her method, and enable the reader to judge of the reliability of the data.
On one of the coldest days in winter the field worker visited the street in a city slum where three sons of Joseph ([Chart IX, section D]) live. She had previously tested several of the children of these families in the public school and found them, in amiability of character and general mentality, strikingly like our own Deborah, lacking, however, her vitality. There was no fire in their eyes, but a languid dreamy look, which was partly due, no doubt, to unwholesome city environment. In one house she found the family group—six human beings, two cats, and two dogs—huddled in a small back room around a cook stove, the only fire in the house. In this room were accumulated all the paraphernalia of living. A boy of eleven, who had been tested in the school previously, was standing by the fire with a swollen face. He had been kept home on this account. In a rocking-chair, a little girl of twelve was holding a pale-faced, emaciated baby. In the corner two boys were openly exposing themselves. The mother was making her toilet by the aid of a comb and basin of water, set on the hearth of the stove; a pot and kettle were on top. The entrance of the field worker caused no commotion of any kind. The boy with the swollen face looked up and smiled, the mother smiled and went on with her toilet, the girl with the baby smiled, the boys in the corner paid no attention. A chair was finally cleared off and she sat down, while everybody smiled. She learned that the husband made a dollar a day and that the girl next older than the child of twelve was married and had a baby. Another younger girl was at school, the family having been at last able to provide her with shoes. The girl of twelve should have been at school, according to the law, but when one saw her face, one realized it made no difference. She was pretty, with olive complexion and dark, languid eyes, but there was no mind there. Stagnation was the word written in large characters over everything. Benumbed by this display of human degeneracy, the field worker went out into the icy street.
A short distance farther on, she came to the home of another brother. The hideous picture that presented itself as the door opened to her knock was one never to be forgotten. In the first home, the type was no lower than moron. One felt that when winter was over and spring had come, the family would expand into a certain expression of life—but here, no such outlook was possible, for the woman at the head of this house was an imbecile. In one arm she held a frightful looking baby, while she had another by the hand. Vermin were visible all over her. In the room were a few chairs and a bed, the latter without any washable covering and filthy beyond description. There was no fire, and both mother and babies were thinly clad. They did not shiver, however, nor seem to mind. The oldest girl, a vulgar, repulsive creature of fifteen, came into the room and stood looking at the stranger. She had somehow managed to live. All the rest of the children, except the two that the mother was carrying, had died in infancy.
The following is a story of Guss, whose position will be found on [Chart IX, section A].
When young, he married a normal girl who belonged to a decent family, but had no education. After a few months the mother of our Deborah came to visit them. She was then a young girl, ready to associate with any man who would look at her. The two behaved so badly that the wife turned her out. This was the first knowledge the wife had of the character of her husband. She lived with him ten years or more. In that time he did not average three months’ work out of twelve, so she had, practically, to support him and her ever increasing family. She knew that he was untrue to her, but there was no way to prove it. At last she seemed to grasp the situation. She began to believe that there was something wrong with him mentally,—wrong with the whole family,—so she decided to leave him. She took her six living children, rented another house and turned him adrift. He went at once to live with a feeble-minded girl belonging to a low-grade family of the neighborhood. Soon after this girl’s child was born he left her, becoming promiscuous in his relations. At one time, he and two of his cousins spent the best part of two days and nights in a tree to elude the police, who were searching for them and another man, all of whom had been accused by a girl then in confinement. When the other man was caught and made to marry the girl, they came down.
In 1904, this scion of the Kallikak family, Guss, went off with a gypsy camp and was married to one of the women. For some time he stayed with the camp, following them into another State. In the neighborhood where they located, a murder was committed which was fastened upon the gypsies and finally settled upon him. A great sensation was raised in the papers about it. He was arrested, but finally cleared of the charge, though not until he was effectually cured of his love for gypsy life.
In 1907,—and here comes the most infamous part of the story,—a minister married Guss to his own first cousin, a woman of questionable character. The witnesses were Guss’s sister and her husband. Every one concerned, except the minister, knew that around the corner, in a little street, so near that at certain hours of the day the shadow of the church spire under which they were standing fell upon it, was a house in which Guss’s lawful wife was living and working to support his children. The minister, too, might have known, had he taken the least trouble, and thus have been spared the ignominy of uniting two such beings with this travesty of the blessing of heaven. Soon after their union, this couple ceased to live together—Guss going off with another woman and his wife with another man.