Feeble-minded: the census (1910) lists only those in institutions, who totaled about 40,000. The census experts believe that 200,000 would be a conservative estimate of the total number of feeble-minded in the country, and many psychologists think that 300,000 would be more nearly accurate. The number of feeble-minded who are receiving institutional care is almost certainly not more than 10% or 15% of the total, and many of these (about 15,000) are in almshouses, not special institutions.
Paupers: There were 84,198 paupers enumerated in almshouses on January 1, 1910, and 88,313 admitted during the year, which indicates that the almshouse paupers are a rapidly shifting group. This population, probably of several hundred thousand persons, who drift into and out of almshouses, can hardly be characterized accurately, but in large part it must be considered at least inefficient and probably of mentally low grade.
Criminals: The inmates of prisons, penitentiaries, reformatories, and similar places of detention numbered 111,609 in 1910; this does not include 25,000 juvenile delinquents. The jail population is nearly all transient; one must be very cautious in inferring that conviction for an offense against the law indicates lack of eugenic value; but it is worth noting that the number of offenders who are feeble-minded is probably not less than one-fourth or one-third. If the number of inebriates could be added, it would greatly increase the total; and inebriacy or chronic alcoholism is generally recognized now as indicating in a majority of cases either feeble-mindedness or some other defect of the nervous system. The number of criminals who are in some way neurotically tainted is placed by some psychologists at 50% or more of the total prison population.
Add to these a number of epileptics, tramps, prostitutes, beggars, and others whom the census enumerator finds it difficult to catch, and the total number of possible undesirable parents becomes very large. It is in fact much larger than appears in these figures, because of the fact that many people carry defects that are latent and only appear in the offspring of a marriage representing two tainted strains. Thus the feeble-minded child usually if not always has feeble-mindedness in both his father's and mother's ancestry, and for every one of the patent feeble-minded above enumerated, there may be several dozen latent ones, who are themselves probably normal in every way and yet carry the dangerously tainted germ-plasm.
The estimate has frequently been made that the United States would be much better off eugenically if it were deprived of the future racial contributions of at least 10% of its citizens. While literally true this estimate is too high for the group which could be considered for attempts to directly control in a practical eugenics program.
Natural selection, in the early days of man's history, would have killed off many of these people early in life. They would have been unable to compete with their physically and mentally more vigorous fellows and would have died miserably by starvation or violence. Natural selection's use of the death-rate was a brutal one, but at least it prevented such traits as these people show from increasing in each generation. Eugenists hope to arrive at the same result, not by the death-rate but by the birth-rate. If germinally anti-social persons are kept humanely segregated during their lifetime, instead of being turned out after a few years of institutional life and allowed to marry, they will leave no descendants, and the number of congenital defectives in the community will be notably diminished. If the same policy is followed through succeeding generations, the number of defectives, of those incapable of taking a useful part in society, will become smaller and smaller. One who does not believe that these people hand on their traits to their descendants may profitably consider the famous history of the so-called Juke family, a strain originating among the "finger lakes" of New York, whose history was published by R. L. Dugdale as far back as 1877 and lately restudied by A. H. Estabrook.
"From one lazy vagabond nicknamed 'Juke,' born in 1720, whose two sons married five degenerate sisters, six generations numbering about 1,200 persons of every grade of idleness, viciousness, lewdness, pauperism, disease, idiocy, insanity and criminality were traced. Of the total seven generations, 300 died in infancy; 310 were professional paupers, kept in almshouses a total of 2,300 years; 440 were physically wrecked by their own 'diseased wickedness'; more than half the women fell into prostitution; 130 were convicted criminals; 60 were thieves; 7 were murderers; only 20 learned a trade, 10 of these in state prison, and all at a state cost of over $1,250,000."[74]
How heredity works both ways, is shown by the history of the Kallikak family, published by H. H. Goddard a few years ago.
"At the beginning of the Revolutionary War a young man, known in the history as Martin Kallikak, had a son by a nameless, feeble-minded girl, from whom there have descended in the direct line four hundred and eighty individuals. One hundred and forty-three of these are known to have been feeble-minded, and only forty-six are known to have been normal. The rest are unknown or doubtful. Thirty-six have been illegitimate; thirty-three, sexually immoral, mostly prostitutes; twenty-four, alcoholic; three, epileptic; eighty-two died in infancy; three were criminal, and eight kept houses of ill-fame. After the war, Martin Kallikak married a woman of good stock. From this union have come in direct line four hundred and ninety-six, among whom only two were alcoholic, and one known to be sexually immoral. The legitimate children of Martin have been doctors, lawyers, judges, educators, traders, landholders, in short, respectable citizens, men and women prominent in every phase of social life. These two families have lived on the same soil, in the same atmosphere, and in short, under the same general environment, yet the bar sinister has marked every generation of one and has been unknown in the other."
If it were possible to improve or eradicate these defective strains by giving them better surroundings, the nation might easily get rid of this burden. But we have given reasons in Chapter I for believing that the problem can not be solved in that way, and more evidence to the same effect will be present in other chapters of the book.