Library Collections: Document: Full Text

Into an isolated region, now within two hours' railroad journey of the nation's metropolis, there drifted nearly a century and a half ago a number of persons whose constitution did not fit them for participation in a highly organized society. This region was the frontier of that day and those who went there had many of the characteristics of our western frontiersmen of a century later. Some of them were hunters, some of them extreme nomads (tramps), and like practically all extreme nomads were addicted to drink; some were miners and found at this place opportunity to make a living at an occupation that requires no capital and which may be readily abandoned or resumed; some were neurasthenic, found muscular activity and persistence in work irksome, and craved stimulants to lighten the labor of even minimum activities; some were feeble-minded and had found that Nature makes fewer demands on intelligence than does organized society; and still more were feebly inhibited and had either already so violently offended the mores as to flee the "revenge" of society, or had found that there was less tendency to repression of their intermittent, instinctive outbreaks where the arm of organized society was not yet long enough to reach. For all of such socially inadequate this retired, well-wooded, and well-watered valley afforded a haven of refuge at a day when the system of State "institutions" had been little developed.

That there should be such strains in a colony that had been founded only three or four generations before is not strange when we recall that the emigration of criminals and ne'er-do-wells, among others, to this new country was assisted, in order to relieve the congested centers of Europe, of some of those whose presence was incompatible with the development of high civic ideals. It is the descendants of such people, among others, that came to the region which the Jukes family made notorious.

Here are some of the migrants or their immediate progeny: Max, the hunter and fisher, the jolly, alcoholic, ne'er-do-well; Lem, the stealer of sheep; Lawrence, the licentious, free with his "gun." Here, too, were found Margaret and Delia, the wantons, and Bell, who had three children by various negroes. So some negro and, doubtless, some Indian blood became in time disseminated through the whole population of the valley.

The progeny of such stock showed the expected reactions to their primitive environment. Some proved themselves feeble-minded, grew up ineducable, slovenly, and inefficient, ending their lives in the poorhouse. Some became vagrants, wandering hither and thither and sometimes disappearing from view altogether. Great numbers craved drink and regarded it as the greatest good and were unable to control in any degree their use of it as long as they had money or could be trusted for it. Great numbers saw no need of regulating and, indeed, many were unable to regulate their reactions to their sex impulses; so that they lived lives of grossest promiscuity in sex relations. Some showed an ugly and quarrelsome disposition. Others, like Ann Eliza, became delusional and homicidal. Indeed, assault and battery, murder, and rape are rather common, especially among the illegitimate children of Ada.

Not only was much of the original stock bad, but improvement which might otherwise have occurred was prevented by constant inbreeding. The nervous weaknesses, the mental insufficiencies were thus brought together from both sides and mentally and morally defective offspring were rendered more certain. Some out-breeding there was and, where it was with better stock, the progeny had better intelligence and emotional control and lines were founded that were able to hold a good position in organized society.

Such were the Jukes a generation or two ago, when Dugdale studied them. The special opportunity that the present investigation afforded was to note the later history of these strains in the presence of great changes of environment -- changes that have forced the Jukes out of their ancient habitat and scattered them, that have broken up that propinquity that favored consanguinity, that have extended and rendered more effective the agencies of social betterment. What about the Jukes -- forty years later?

First, on the whole, the later descendants of the Jukes, in Connecticut, in New Jersey, even in Minnesota, still show the same feeblemindedness, indolence, licentiousness, and dishonesty, even when not handicapped by the associations of their bad family name and despite the fact of being surrounded by better social conditions. This is because, wherever they go, they tend to marry persons like themselves. On the other hand, the dispersion has led some of these descendants to marry into better stocks and this is improving the quality of the germ-plasm. To be sure, this better germ-plasm into which the Jukes marry will sometimes become contaminated with the determiners for mental weakness and lack of control; but children who show such defects are more apt to be placed under restraint in their matings when they belong to families of fair social standing than when they arise in cacogenic communities. It is probable that, in the long run, the cheapest way to improve a bad germ-plasm is to scatter it. I do not, however, recommend this course as superior to segregation; but only as a cheap and somewhat hazardous substitute. In the case of the Jukes there are so many dominant traits of feeble inhibition that scattering them is like scattering firebrands -- each tends to start a fire in a new place. One may doubt the wisdom of the operation of "Children's Aid Societies" which send much bad germ-plasm to good farming communities throughout our Middle West. It will probably have, on the whole, the same sad effects that the transportation of convicts from London to Virginia and later to Australia have had on parts of those countries.