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Feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, some forms of insanity, and some venereal diseases are inheritable defects; those who suffer from them must refrain from having children. Studies of the "Jukes" family and the "Kallikak" family, and others, show convincingly the spread of these defects where defectives marry. See R. L. Dugdale, The Jukes.
It happened that the ancestor of the Kallikak family, after he had sown his wild oats, married well and had about five hundred descendants. All of them were normal, only two were alcoholic, and one sexually loose. The family has been prominent socially and in every way creditable in its history. In contrast to the Jukes family, the history of the Edwards family has been written.
The Jukes family in New York, the Kallikak family in New Jersey, have shown the awful possibilities of descent from a single feeble-minded ancestor. Prisons, almshouses, and houses of shame owe their population in no small degree to this bitter curse. It will not be long before society will learn to protect itself against such poisoning of the human stock.
Such a eugenic record as that of this Kallikak family should be reviewed in every high school and college in connection with the topic "heredity" in a course of biology, for it will teach two important lessons: The biological principle that defects, both physical and mental, are highly heritable, even for many generations; and the ethical responsibility for the sex actions of the individual who may start a long train of human disaster that may visit the children unto even later than the third and fourth generations.
The studies of the Edwards family on one hand and the so-called Kallikak family on the other, point to the same conclusion. Twins are found to be twice as much alike in the traits tested as other brothers and sisters. Though the difficulty of discounting the effect of training in all these studies has been great, yet in every case the investigators have taken pains to do so.
Another family called the Kallikak family, which has been made the subject of investigation, is a still better example of heredity. The family was descended from a Revolutionary soldier, who had an illegitimate feeble-minded son by an imbecile young woman. The line continued by feeble-minded descent and marriage until four hundred and eighty descendants have been traced.
With the modern care of this sort of defectives, the chance of breeding is growing rapidly less. The Kallikak family is cited as another illustration showing the possible inheritance of criminality and poverty through a defective strain. This family, so far as shown, makes it still clearer that what some authors have charged to heredity is simply due to environment.
BOSANQUET: The Family, pages 299-314. GODDARD: The Kallikak Family. EAMES: Principles of Eugenics. SALEEBY: Parenthood and Race Culture, pages 213-236. MCKEEVER: Farm Boys and Girls, pages 171-196. GALTON: Inquiries into Human Faculty. 55. =Child Labor and Its Effects.= Excessive child labor away from home is one of the evils that has called for reform more than the lack of employment.
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