r states of the country, where several
generations of social evolution have ensued under bad circumstances. In
all the central states, conditions of rural degeneracy now exist which a
few years ago were supposed to be confined to New England; for the same
causes have been repeating themselves in other surroundings.

An illustration of "discouraged remnants" is cited by Dr. Warren H.
Wilson. "I remember driving, in my early ministry, from a prosperous
farming section into a weakened community, whose lands had a lowered value
because they lay too far from the railroad. My path to a chapel service
on Sunday afternoon lay past seven successive farmhouses in each of which
lived one member of a family, clinging in solitary misery to a small
acreage which had a few years earlier supported a household. In that same
neighborhood was one group of descendants of two brothers, which had in
two generations produced sixteen suicides. 'They could not stand trouble,'
the neighbors said. The lowered value of their land, with consequent
burdens, humiliation and strain, had crushed them. The very ability and
distinction of the family in the earlier period had the effect by contrast
to sink them lower down."[5]

_The Nam's Hollow Case_

Ordinary rural degeneracy, however, is more apt to be associated with
feeble-mindedness. An alarming, but perhaps typical case is described in a
recent issue of _The Survey_. A small rural community in New York state,
which the author calls for convenience Nam's Hollow, contains 232
licentious women and 199 licentious men out of a total population of 669;
the great proportion being mentally as well as morally defective. A great
amount of consanguineous marriage has taken place,--mostly without the
formalities prescribed by law. Sex relations past and present are
hopelessly entangled. Fifty-four of the inhabitants of the Hollow have
been in custody either in county houses or asylums, many are paupers, and
forty have served terms in state's prison or jail. There are 192 persons
who are besotted by the use of liquor "in extreme quantities."

Apparently most of this degeneracy can be traced back to a single family
whose descendants have numbered 800. With all sorts of evil traits to
begin with, this family by constant inbreeding have made persistent these
evil characteristics in all the different households and have cursed the
whole life of the Hollow, not to mention the unknown evil wrought
elsewhere, whi