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Scientists Are Studying How to Cut Down the Awful Cost to Mankind of Bad Heredity, Which Often Swells from a Tiny Pool to a Black Ocean of Mental Defectiveness.

In a certain school in a South New Jersey town is a young woman, not unattractive in appearance, the story of whose ancestry when it is published in book form -- and it is to be -- is likely to create a great deal of interest where it is read. The contour and pigmentation of her features and the dark color of her hair, which she ties with a pink ribbon, are sufficiently Italian to warrant one in assuming that she was of that nationality if one met her in Mulberry Bend Park. Her progenitors, however, lived in New Jersey long before the American Revolution, and their descendants comprise a family well known in that state.

The girl herself, or perhaps one should call her a woman, for she is twenty-three years old, has the appearance of a well-behaved person, and, indeed she is. Of medium height, she does not look age her and if one were guessing it she would be put down as in her early teens. Physically she is a woman, however. Unfortunately, mentally she is not. Physically she is equipped with all the normal instincts of womanhood: mentally, nature has left their control in the hands of a child of ten years. In other words she is not fitted to take care of herself in the average environment which the world offers. Many persons would find it difficult to believe that at first glance, and not a few would be inclined to put her down as a woman of bad instincts if she chanced to go wrong while dependent upon her own resources.

HER PATHETIC RECORD.

Her training in this school, which, it must be said, is the New Jersey Training School at Vineland, began twelve or thirteen years ago. She was born in an almshouse, the fourth illegitimate child of a feeble-minded mother, who was one of a family of nine and a servant. Her father was normal physically and mentally. Although she has been in school many years, she can read only elementary books, being unable to do more than pick out words in a third reader. She can write a child's letter, but does not find pleasure either in reading or writing. She is, however, practically self-supporting in the school, as she is one of the best workers among the pupils. While she cannot plan her work, she can cut a dress, run an electric sewing machine, take care of children and set a table. Curiously, however, in order to know how many plates to put upon the table it is necessary for her to know the persons who are to use them. She does not count the plates, but names them. The placing of a given number, if they be for strangers, is beyond her.

This unfortunate girl does not realize what she owes to her Revolutionary ancestors, what their legacy was to her was. Patient investigation of over a year duration, including the examination of records and talks with persons who possessed clews to the trail of the protoplasm which segmented into this girl and more than 750 other persons forming this remarkable illustration of a Jekyll and Hyde inheritance, have led back to a New Jersey soldier of a good family. He met a young woman of the woods near the camp. He had, perhaps, never seen her before, and it is believed he never did again. The woman, who has been proven to have been feeble-minded, went her way and he, the normal son of normal ancestry went his. In due course a son was born.

A MOST LAMENTABLE CROP.

The lad, when he grew up, was also subnormal in mental capacity. He married a normal woman and had nineteen children, the oldest of whom had seventeen offspring. The taint was in the blood. From one of these the zealous but defective girl at Vineland is descended. To make a long story short, the soldier's wild oats have borne fruit through descending generations to the extent of 381 persons, of whom 143 were feeble-minded, 36 born illegitimately, 24 alcoholics, 3 epileptics, 3 criminals and 8 keepers of houses of ill fame. Of the number, 82 providentially died in infancy and 26 were socially unfit owing to disease and other causes. There were only 46 normal persons in the whole progeny.

This is only half the story, however. The soldier afterward married a good, normal Quaker woman of her own "set" and had five daughters and two sons. Five of these heirs in turn had children and their descendants have married into the very best families of New Jersey. Of the 384 heirs of his blood in this branch 365 are known to have been normal and fifteen died in infancy. Although there is a love of alcoholic beverages inherent in the Dr. Jekyll branch, it has been fought successfully by all except two of the 884 persons comprising it. One, through the introduction of a strain of insanity by marriage, was insane and one was socially unfit.

The story which lies behind the girl at Vineland, who needs to be protected through a considerable portion of her life for her own good as well as that of society, points several "morals." A certain well known publicist of this country has had a great deal to say about "race suicide" and the need for large families. In this family one feeble-minded boy had as many descendants as seven normal sons and daughters on the other side. The country would have been much better off without his progeny. Investigation tends to prove that the feeble-minded have larger families than normal-minded persons. If the sterilization law, which was recently adopted in New Jersey, had been in the statute books in the days of the Revolution and applied in the case of the woman of the woods or her feeble-minded son the saving to the state and to society would have been very great. Neither the woman nor her son would have suffered as a consequence.

And last, but not least, the story is an important document in the case for the science of eugenics.

It has been estimated that in the United States one in every three hundred persons is feeble-minded -- that is, lacking the mental development to match the physical equipment. The minds of these unfortunates stopped unfolding when they were seven, eight, nine or ten years old. Physically they have grown up with the instincts and capacities of normal persons, but they are without the control of an adult mind. According to the degree of mental development which they exhibit, these defectives are classified as morons, or feeble-minded person or high grade, imbeciles and idiots. The first class is a particular menace to society, because, in many cases owing to the fairly good appearance of the subject, it is difficult to convince others that he or she is feeble-minded and ought to be segregated in some way for the protection of the future of the community. Without full normal mental control of their instincts, the power to resist environment, the capacity for choosing between the right and the wrong, they form good soil for the development of criminals, drunkards, and prostitutes. It is known that more than 25 percent of criminals are feeble-minded. Without power to meet the complex conditions of social environment they have fallen before it.

It has been demonstrated conclusively that epilepsy is hereditary. Dated on data collected at the State Village for Epileptics, at Skillman, N.J., it is asserted that at the present rate of increase in the number of epileptic and feeble-minded in that state in 1940 will be double what it is now, and that the proportion will be one to every 125 of the population in 1970. If no more restraint is imposed upon epileptics than at present, the population suffering from this ailment will double in that state every thirty years.

THE INSTANCES ARE MANY.

The problem of bad heredity finds illustration in many almshouses. A girl without mental stamina to cope with her environment and instincts finds herself about to become a mother. Perhaps she is a servant in some household and is compelled to leave her place. She goes to the almshouse and an illegitimate child, probably as feeble-minded as herself, is born. She goes out in course of time, and perhaps in a year or two returns for the same reason.

Among the inmates at Vineland is a girl, the daughter of a feeble-minded woman and a normal man, not united in matrimony. The story of her ancestry was investigated and it is told by Dr. Goddard, the psychologist of the raining school, in this language:

"Here we have a feeble-minded woman (referring to the inmate's mother) who has had here husbands, including one 'who was not her husband.' This woman was a handsome girl, apparently having inherited some refinement from her mother, although her father was a feeble-minded, alcoholic brute. Somewhere about the age of seventeen or eighteen she went out to do housework in a family in one of the towns of this state. She soon became the mother of an illegitimate child. It was born in an almshouse to which she fled after she had been discharged from the home where she had been at work.

"After this charitably disposed people tried to do what they could for her, giving her a home for herself and her child in return for the work which she could do. However, she soon appeared in the same condition. An effort was then made to discover the father of this second child, and when he was found to be a drunken, feeble-minded epileptic living in the neighborhood, in order to save the legitimacy of the child her friends saw to it that a marriage ceremony took place. Later another feeble-minded child was born to them.

"Then the whole family secured a home with an unmarried farmer in the neighborhood. They lived there together until another child was forthcoming, which the husband refused to own. When finally the farmer acknowledged this child to be his the same good friends interfered, went into the courts and procured a divorce from the husband and had the woman married to the father of the expected fourth child. This proved to be feeble-minded, and they have had four other feeble-minded children, making eight in all, born out of this woman.

"This woman had four feeble-minded brothers and sisters. These are all married and have children. The younger sister married a feeble-minded man and had three children. Two of these are feeble-minded and the other died in infancy. There were six other brothers and sisters who died in infancy."

Portions of this story could be duplicated in a large proportion of the towns and cities of the United States. It has characteristics which will be recognized as familiar by the kindly disposed of these communities.

The biologist has demonstrated that certain defects are transmissible and their presence in the next generation can be foretold. The eugenist, therefore, seeking "the improvement of the stock," must devise some means of stopping the flow of the taint. Segregation and sterilization have been suggested. The biologist has also demonstrated that good qualities can be passed on. The eugenist is following him up by pointing out that the human race should not only be relieved of the incubus of the unfit, but improved by the introduction of qualities which will fit it to cope with the increasingly complex problems which are being thrown upon I by its persistent efforts to conquer to forces of nature. That there is a growing feeling that something can be accomplished in this direction has been shown by he increasing numbers who have attended conferences on the subject at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences this winter and the number of new books which are now being issued.

"But how are you going to improve the human race?" some one asks. "Who is to decide what qualities the human race should possess? You can develop horses that will run well, or draw heavy loads, and cows that will be excellent for milk or butter production, but who is to pick out the type of man to be developed?"

The eugenist replies that those possessing the most desirable natural qualities from the human point of view should be mated with families of normal character which have demonstrated capacity for maintaining their numbers. He takes a page out of the conservationist's book and argues regarding the human protoplasm. In the words of Saleeby: "There is no wealth but life; and if the inherent quality of life fails, neither battleships, nor libraries, nor symphonies, nor free trade, nor tariff reform, nor anything else will save a nation,"

In England it has been demonstrated that for some reason 12 per cent of the individuals of one generation are producing one-half of the children of the succeeding generation, the other half being the progeny of the remaining 88 per cent. This proportion apparently holds good in the different levels of society. In other words, a small group of each class possesses unusual fertility.

The eugenist asks: Is there any relation between this superfertility and the possession of desirable or undesirable characteristics? It has been asserted that in England to-day here is a dearth of youthful ability in various walks of life. The number of murders and homicides to a million persons in reported to have nearly trebled in the last fifteen years. In that country the "defective" classes doubled in number in the period between 1874 and 1896, and in 1901 more than one-third of the idiots and lunatics were legally married and free to reproduce their kind.

In the United States the ratio of insane in the total population was 225 in 100,000 in 1903, as compared with 183 in the same number as 1880. About 30,000 were supposed to be unsegregated. Two-thirds of the paupers in institutions are reported to have children and to be themselves deficient. The rough total of defective and dependent has been estimated to be 3,000,000 or about 3 per cent of the population of he United States. It has been shown in recent years, in England in particular, that the middle and upper classes, which supply the thinkers, leaders and organizers, are decreasing in numbers and hat the net fertility of the undesirables is greater than the net fertility of the normal types of the more capable classes.

Investigation suggests that ability can be transmitted. The class lists of Oxford for ninety-two years showed that 36 per cent of those who won first honors had had fathers who had won first or second honors; that 22 per cent of the second honor men were the sons of men who had taken first or second honors in their day, and that of the ordinary degree men only 14 per cent had fathers of this class. It has also been found that marriage between two families inheriting ability will result in a greater proportion of children of ability than where one side of the house is mediocre.

There are not a few famous illustrations of the transmission of particular ability, such as the Bach family, which produced musicians for eight generations. Of this family, twenty-nine, more or less generally known, assembled at one gathering. The family of Titan (Vicelli) included nine painters of merit. In the Darwin family there were: Erasmus: his grandson, Charles, the famous expounder of the theory of evolution: Francis Galton, who carried the idea of his cousin, Charles Darwin, forward to the point of conscious selection and set people to thinking of "eugenics," or the "improvement of the human stock": a mathematical astronomer of high rank, a professor of plant physiology at Cambridge University and an inventor of scientific instruments of precision.

In this country the Adams family, the Abbot family and the Beecher family are notable. Particularly remarkable in this category is the family of Jonathan Edwards. Of the 1,394 descendants identified in 1900, according to Winship's account of that family, 205 were college graduates, 13 presidents of our greatest colleges and 65 professors in colleges, besides many who were principals of other important educational institutions: 60 physicians, many of whom were eminent; more than 100 clergymen, missionaries or theological professors; 75 officers in the army and navy; 60 prominent authors and writers, by whom 135 books of merit were written and published and 18 important periodicals edited; more than 100 lawyers, of whom one was 'our most eminent professor of law,' and 30 judges; 80 held public office, of whom 1 was Vice-President of the United States; 3 were United States Senators; others were governors, members of Congress, framers of state constitutions, mayors of cities and ministers to foreign courts, and 15 railroads, many banks, insurance companies and large industrial enterprises have been indebted to their management.

"Almost if not every department of social progress and of the public weal has felt the impulse of his healthy and long-lived family. It is not known that any one of them was ever convicted of crime."

WHEN THE DRAG IS REMOVED.

The eugenist believes that the human stock can be developed into families of his character when the drag of the unfit has been removed; when the biologist has traced more fully the effect of combinations of physical and psychic characteristics, and when society has been educated o the point of raising the requirements for marriage. For the eliminations of the incubus of defective stock segregation and sterilization have been suggested. Connecticut, Indiana, and New Jersey have sterilization laws. For the mating of the fit it has been proposed that person be completed to submit to examination before hey marry, and marriages of those who are found unfit prohibited. In one of the Pacific colonies of Great Britain it is reported that this suggestion is made more practicable by simply requiring the examination, leaving it to the consciences of the parties to decide whether they shall act upon the results or not. The eugenist also believes that many of the fit who are not now permitted to marry should be allowed to do so. Such include clergymen and, in England, nurses.

Dr. Goddard, of Vineland, said to a representative of The Tribune a few days ago regarding eugenics and what has been learned regarding he transmissible characteristics of the unfit:

"The ideal of eugenics seems to me to be the building up of a higher race by the elimination of the defectives and the improvement of the stock. In respect to the latter, I think, as we come to know the laws of heredity their application will become general among the intelligent, and the improvement of the race will become self-regulating. Those who are conscious of a strain of undesirable characteristics which are transmissible will then refrain from marriage. Up to the present time we have insufficient accurate knowledge regarding the influence of heredity. Among the results is that some are denying themselves marriage needlessly. Take the matter of insanity. There are some kinds that are transmissible; some that are not. It is not clear in regard o all of them. Eugenists are working on this now.

REACHING THE SOLUTION.

"That is just where the work of the eugenist comes in. The whole question of heredity and environment needs to be thrashed out. We have a study going on just now showing the two streams of environment and heredity. There is an enormous group of degenerates mingled with the defectives. I went to a school a week or two ago and found a number of children of low grade parents that tested almost normal. This suggested that the parents, who were in some cases of particularly good families, were degenerates-persons who had gone to pieces under the stress of environment. Outwardly you cannot always tell the difference. The defective and the degenerate look much alike frequently. There is still much to be learned regarding the boundary line between heredity and environment. The two work together. As Dr. C.B. Davenport says, however, if you plant wheat you will always get wheat, but if you plant it in poor soil you will get poor wheat and if in good soil you will get good wheat.

"There has not been a great amount of work done on different diseases. It has been confined chiefly to epilepsy, some types of insanity and feeble-mindedness. Probably there are a great many f our functional diseases, like tuberculosis, which are not transmissible, but weak constitutions may be passed on. I believe that immunity to given diseases may also be transmitted. "An acquaintance told me that there were certain ailments which never worried him and to the cure of which he gave little care, knowing from his family history that he had little to fear from them. But his familiarity with the causes of death in a number of cases in his family led him to take marked precautions whenever ailing form anything which might lead to a certain trouble. It is not impossible that the theory that the Jews, accustomed to life in bad sanitary conditions in crowded ghettoes for centuries, have become immune to tubercular diseases and withstand the perils of congestion in our cities better than those of other races. Dr. Davenport is working on the heredity of disease, but there is a great deal to be done.

SOURCE OF THE CRIMINAL.

"The criminal, I think, is the product of feeble-mindedness and environment. If you have a feeble-minded person the probabilities are tremendously strong that he will become a criminal. It would take a pretty bad environment to make a criminal out of a normal person. The word 'criminal' might jus as well have been omitted from the New Jersey sterilization law, for the end would have been gained just as well and there would be less antagonistic feeling regarding it. While we have not obtained all the data we want on this subject, yet we have made several little studies which indicate that at least 5 per cent of the criminals are feeble-minded. The superintendent of the Elmira Reformatory says he thinks that 40 per cent of his inmates are feeble-minded. Recently we tested one hundred Juvenile Court children in the detention house at Newark. Of these, thirty-four were found to be backward, with the chances hat some of them would later prove to be feeble-minded. These children were taken just as they came. No selection was made. They were cases sufficiently important for detention for further disposition of the court.

"Until recently we have never included among the mental defectives the high grade group. We have children who, to the uninitiated, would never be described as feeble-minded. That group is made up of at least 25 per cent of all the feeble-minded. A boy who has just left us you would say was a grumbler. You would never think he was feeble-minded, and his grouchiness was one of the effects. He is a marked menace to society. Relatively to this moron group he imbecile is not so great a menace, for he is more apt to be placed in some institution. These types are capable of giving birth to children. It is questioned by some whether the low grade idiot has the power to bring children into the world.

"The menace of the feeble-minded and he imbecile is illustrated in the case of an almshouse in Chester, Penn., where I made tests. There were eight women in this institution, all of whom would become mothers within six weeks. They were all imbeciles. They had gone there to be cared for until their children were born, and then they would go out, to come back the following year in the same condition. When the social workers want to stir up the animals let them go at the almshouse proposition.

AS REGARDS TO CRIMINALITY.

"I would not say absolutely that if we got rid of feeble-mindedness we would be rid of all criminality, but we would have reduced it enormously. I suppose we shall always have criminality. The higher we rise in the social scale the higher our ideals become, and what is not now considered criminal may be so considered some time. The popular mind has taken up Lombroso's theory very strongly, but I do no believe there is a criminal type. As regards sterilization, we really do not know fully what the effect upon the subject will be.

"The chief argument against the release of a person who has been thus treated is he might debauch persons who would otherwise be kept straight because of the fear of consequences. I am more and more inclined to consider his a bogey. Those who are inclined to debauchery would not be likely to be restrained by fear As to the physical and mental effect upon the subject, there is no evidence of bad effect whatever. In Indiana about eight hundred persons have been operated upon, about half of them at their own request, in the course of the last six or seven years. So far as they have gone there is not the slightest evidence that the operation has been of disadvantage to anybody."