in New York State are reported in the new home of the Minnesota Nams independently by a reputable physician and also by a field worker. Yet those who migrated were of more ambitious make-up than those who stayed behind. The data in regard to those who were born and reared in an entirely different environment from that in which their parents were born, seem to show that it is the inherent mental traits present in the germ-plasm which plays a dominant part in determining the behavior and reactions of the individual.” 1

Another family of hereditary defectives has been studied recently by Dr. H. H. Goddard, of the Vineland Training School for the Feebleminded, at Vineland, New Jersey. The facts are these: Martin Kalikak, Sr., was a member of a good family who, just before he came of age, joined one of the companies of volunteers in the Revolutionary Army near New York City. While the company was stationed at a place near that city, he met at a tavern a feeble-minded girl and by her had a feeble-minded child, who is known as Martin Kalikak, Jr. After the close of the War, Martin Sr. returned to his home and there married a respectable Quaker girl and by her had a family, whose descendants have been traced as well as the descendants of his illegitimate son, Martin Jr. All the children on the legitimate side of Martin Sr.'s line married into respectable families. On this side Goddard says, "Indeed, in this family and its collateral branches, we find nothing but good representative citizenship. There are doctors, lawyers, judges, educators, traders, landholders; in short, respectable citizens, men and women prominent in every phase of social life. They have scattered over the United States and are prominent in their communities wherever they have gone. Half a dozen towns in New Jersey are named from the families into which Martin's descendants have married. There have been no feeble-minded among them; no illegitimate children; no immoral women; only one man was sexually loose. There has been no epilepsy, no criminals, no keepers of houses of prostitution. Only 15 children have died in infancy. There has been one 'insane,' a case of religious mania, perhaps inherited, but not from the Kalikak side. The appetite for strong drink has been present here and there in this family from the beginning. It was in Martin Sr. and was cultivated at a time when such practices were common everywhere. But while the other branch of the family has had 24 victims of habitual drunkenness, this side scores only two."

1 Davenport and Estabrook, The Nam Family, Cold Spring Harbor, 1912, pp. 83, 84.

On the feeble-minded side, that is, from the illegitimate son, Martin Kalikak, Jr., have come 480 descendants; 143 of them were undoubtedly feeble-minded, and only 46 have been found to be normal, the rest being unknown or doubtful. Of the 480 descendants, 36 have been illegitimate, 33 sexually immoral, mostly prostitutes, 24 confirmed alcoholics, 3 epileptic, 82 died in infancy, 3 criminals, 8 keepers of houses of ill-fame.1

Speaking of the inheritability of this defect of incapacity, and contrasting this study with that of the Jukes by Dugdale, Goddard says, "In as far as the children of 'Old Max' were of normal mentality, it is not possible to say what might not have become of them, had they had good training and environment.

"Fortunately for the cause of science, the Kalikak family, in the persons of Martin Kalikak, Jr., and his descendants, are not open to this argument. They were feeble-minded, and no amount of education or good environment can change a feeble-minded individual into a normal one, any more than it can change a red-haired stock into a black-haired stock. The striking fact of the enormous proportion of feeble-minded individuals in the descendants of Martin Kalikak, Jr., and the total absence of such in the descendants of his half brothers and sisters is conclusive on this point. Clearly it was not environment that has made that good family. They made their own environment; and their own good blood, with the good blood of the families into which they married, told." 2

Of the bearing of such inheritable defect on pauperism Goddard adds, "But even casual observation of our almshouse population shows. the majority to be of decidedly low mentality, while careful tests would undoubtedly increase this percentage very materially." Did space permit, the descriptions of the visits of the field workers who investigated this family would give a vividness to the picture that no mere statistics can give. As one after the other was visited in their homes the impression of incapacity perpetuating itself from generation to generation was deepened. Poverty and filth surrounded them in their homes. Neglected childhood abounded. Dependency always attended these people of inherited defect. Why? Because they had not inherited vitality and mind of the sort to manage their own affairs in such a way that they could compete with the independent, respectable people around them. While space does not permit us to quote these 1Goddard, The Kalikak Family, New York, 1912, pp. 29, 30. 'Ibid., pp. 29, 30.

vivid descriptions of the social and economic results of inherited incapacity, Goddard's description of the process by which such people come to pauperism cannot be omitted. He says, "Here we have a group who, when children in school, cannot learn the things that are given them to learn, because through their mental defect, they are incapable of mastering abstractions. They never learn to read sufficiently well to make reading pleasurable or of practical use to them. The same is true of number work. . . . Thus they worry along through a few grades until they are fourteen years old and then leave school, not having learned anything of value or that can help them to make even a meager living in the world. They are then turned out inevitably dependent upon others. A few have relatives who take care of them, see that they learn to do something which perhaps will help in their support, and then these relatives supplement this with enough to insure them a living.

"A great majority, however, having no such interested or capable relatives, become at once a direct burden upon society. These divide according to temperament into two groups. Those who are phlegmatic, sluggish, indolent, simply lie down and would starve to death, if someone did not help them. When they come to the attention of our charitable organizations, they are picked up and sent to the almshouse, if they cannot be made to work."

The same testimony is borne by all the workers in this field of the inheritability of certain defects which make for incapacity. Thus, Rogers and Merrill in a recent study of the inhabitants of a certain remote valley among the hills of a certain section in Minnesota say, "It is not the idiot nor, to any great extent, the low grade imbecile, who is dangerous to society. In his own deplorable condition and its customarily accompanying stigmata, he is sufficiently anti-social to protect both himself and society from the results of that condition. But from the high-grade feeble-minded, the morons, are recruited the ne'er-do-wells, who, lacking the initiative and stick-to-it-iveness of energy and ambition, drift from failure to failure, spending a winter in the poorhouse, moving from shack to hovel and succeeding only in the reproduction of ill-nurtured, ill-kempt gutter brats to carry on the family traditions of dirt, disease and degeneracy." 2

These studies certainly indicate the strong probability that inheritance plays some part in the causation of poverty and pauperism.

1

Goddard, op. cit., pp. 54, 55.

2

Rogers and Merrill, Dwellers in the Vale of Siddem, Boston, 1919.

Whether incapacity is the result of the presence of an inhibitor carried over from parent to child in the germ plasm, or whether it is the result of the absence in the germ plasm of a determiner or determiners which produce industry and thrift, may still be the subject of debate. The fact that incapacity in the parents does carry over to the children is the important fact for us.1

Classes of Inheritable Incapacity which Affect Poverty and Pauperism. The incapacity inherited from parents is not all of the same degree. Mental defect of the degree which produces idiocy in most cases renders the individual incapable of even the simplest care of himself. Many low-grade imbeciles are unable to do much work. The high-grade imbeciles, however, are able to work under supervision, but are not able to manage their affairs independently of direction. The highest grades of mental defectives, the so-called morons, are often capable of making a fair living if they are in surroundings where they have the advice and direction of capable people. Physical incapacity, inherited from progenitors, also renders one unable to make a living. We may, therefore, for our purpose, divide the incapable into three different classes:

1. The hereditary incapable who is unable to make a living by reason of his incapacity to do certain kinds of work, or who has a distaste for certain kinds of work, or who has inherited bodily weakness which renders him incapable of working at certain kinds of tasks. For example, some people are born without any capacity to run machinery. If they attempt to run machinery, they break it and are constantly in trouble with it. They cannot hold a job long where machinery is involved. Again, certain individuals are born with a positive distaste for certain kinds of work. If their distaste is manifested toward any of the more highly skilled kinds of labor, inevitably the individual's range of occupations is narrowed, and he must enter a field with a large number of competitors.

On the other hand, bodily or mental weakness, certain defects and some diseases like chorea and epilepsy which are inherited, may destroy an individual's efficiency, not only in the skilled trades and professions, but even for ordinary labor. How much of poverty and

'For a brief but easily understood explanation of the mechanism by which a trait is inherited by a child from parents see Guyer, Being Well-Born, Indianapolis, 1916. Thomson, Heredity, London, 1912, goes into the matter much more thoroughly, and has an unusually good chapter on the sociological bearings of biological findings, Chap. XIV, entitled "Social Aspects of Biological Results."

pauperism is due to this class of inherited incapacity we are unable to say. No studies have been made on which an opinion can be based. Common observation, however, among those who are constantly losing their positions and who finally come to dependency, would suggest that a larger percentage than is usually suspected are incapable of making a good living by reason of the inheritance of physical or mental defect. 2. Another class of incapacity due to inheritance is a hereditary predisposition to certain diseases which unfit one for making a livelihood, or reduces him to dependency, such as predisposition to tuberculosis, insanity, and to neuroses of various kinds, like the Warneuroses. These diseases are not inherited, but a predisposition to them, or, to put it another way, lack of immunity from them, seems to be inherited. On this point Thomson says: "From the biologist's point of view, diseases are of two sorts: (1) They are abnormal or deranged processes which have their roots in germinal peculiarities or defects (variation, to start with), which express themselves in the body to a greater or less degree, according to the conditions of nurture; or (2) They are abnormal or deranged processes which have been directly induced in the body by acquired modifications, i.e., as the result of unnatural surroundings or habits, including the intrusion of parasites. Often, moreover, an inborn predisposition to some deranged function may be exaggerated by extrinsic stimuli, as in the case of gout, or when a phthisical tendency is aggravated by the intrusion and multiplication of the tubercle bacillus. That is to say, deranged processes which are primarily due to germinal variation often afford opportunity for equally serious disturbances which must be referred to as exogenous modifications. A rheumatic tendency may be vitally aggravated by inappropriate nutrition."

In discussing the distinction between innate disease and acquired disease, Thomson says: "What, then, is the distinction? It is the old distinction between a variation and a modification. An innate disease presupposes some germinal variation to start with, some germinal peculiarities to continue with. It is there, whether it finds expression or not. If it does not find any appropriate nutrition, it will not express itself in development, but neither will the normal processes of thinking find expression without the appropriate liberating stimuli. If an indispensable process, the structural rudiment of which is a component part of the normal inheritance, finds no nurture, the organism of course dies. If a dispensable process, such as an innate disease the structural rudiment of which is also a part of the in