88 



HEREDITY AND SOCIAL FITNESS 



perseverance which enables them to maintain themselves as farmers 

 and mechanics, even though many of them do not reach the average 

 standard of living in their respective communities. They are socially 

 fit as judged by their ability to perform the duties of the station in life 

 to which they are born. 



Many of the socially unfit in Line F had been inmates of county 

 homes or of State institutions for long periods of time. It has been 

 difficult to arrive at the exact total of such public charges in this fra- 

 ternity, since certain earlier records are incomplete, but the comparison 

 of these records with the accounts of reliable informants gives the fol- 

 lowing estimate of the cost to the State of this line alone: In the second 

 generation there were at least 6 who were at the county home for 

 periods aggregating from 10 to 18 years; they cost the county and 



Fig. 2. 



State approximately S17,600 (estimating the cost of maintenance at 

 $200 per year). Four of these six married, and left in the two succeed- 

 ing generations 27 descendants, 18 of whom have been maintained at 

 county or State expense; some of them for periods as long as 20 or 30 

 years. The total expense of their maintenance for an aggregate of 

 165 years is estimated at $33,000. So we may say that our charitable 

 organizations not only cared for these defectives, but, through the 

 type of care which they gave, generously allowed them to propagate 

 their kind and thus provide for double the expenditure on their 

 account in the two ensuing generations. 



3. Comparative Fecundity. 



It is often maintained that the increase of the socially inadequate 

 is largely due to the relatively larger families of the defective and 

 degenerate as compared with those of the socially adequate classes. 

 Our data have been analyzed with reference to the fecundity of the 

 several lines and the results shown in table 5. The capital letters 

 stand for the several lines, and the Roman numerals at the left for the 

 generations. The figures represent the average number of children 

 per mating. The table shows that there is a noticeable drop in 

 fecundity in later generations of all lines. This decrease, however, is 

 no more striking for the socially efficient lines A, B, C, G, than for 

 the defective and degenerate Lines D, E, F. 



