is time, he was paroled, and later was shot and
killed in a fight. The twelfth, a boy, was at fifteen years of age
implicated in a murder and sent to the industrial school, but escaped
from there on a bicycle which he had stolen; at eighteen, he was shot
and killed by a woman. The thirteenth child, feeble-minded, is the girl
of the study. The fourteenth, a boy was considered by police to be the
best member of the family; his mother reported him to be much slower
mentally than his sister just mentioned; he had been arrested several
times. Once, he was held in the detention-home and once sent to the
State Industrial school; at other times, he was placed on probation.
The fifteenth, a girl sixteen years old, has for a long time had a bad
reputation. Subsequent to the commitment of her sister to the Kansas
State Industrial Farm, she was arrested on a charge of vagrancy, found
to be syphilitic, and quarantined in a state other than Kansas. At the
time of her arrest, she stated that prostitution was her occupation.
The last child was a boy of thirteen years whose history was not
secured...."(1)

The notorious fecundity of feeble-minded women is emphasized in studies
and investigations of the problem, coming from all countries. "The
feeble-minded woman is twice as prolific as the normal one." Sir James
Crichton-Browne speaks of the great numbers of feeble-minded girls,
wholly unfit to become mothers, who return to the work-house year after
year to bear children, "many of whom happily die, but some of whom
survive to recruit our idiot establishments and to repeat their mothers'
performances." Tredgold points out that the number of children born to
the feeble-minded is abnormally high. Feeble-minded women "constitute
a permanent menace to the race and one which becomes serious at a time
when the decline of the birth-rate is... unmistakable." Dr. Tredgold
points out that "the average number of children born in a family is
four," whereas in these degenerate families, we find an average of 7.3 to
each. Out of this total only a little more than ONE-THIRD--456 out of
a total of 1,269 children--can be considered profitable members of the
community, and that, be it remembered, at the parents' valuation.

Another significant point is the number of mentally defective children
who survive. "Out of the total number of 526 mentally affected persons
in the 150 families, there are 245 in the present generation--an
unusually large survival."(