90 HEREDITY AND SOCIAL FITNESS 



place. Only 3 of all the representatives of these lines are known to 

 have migrated beyond northeastern Ohio; 16 are scattered through 

 towns which are from 50 to 80 miles distant, while the rest are at the 

 original place of settlement or in nearby villages. 



This difference in the rate of migration is a fact of great importance. 

 Because of it the mentally able, more aggressive, and persevering mem- 

 bers are more apt to meet and mate with their kind, while the less 

 efficient are left behind to mate with their kind; a process which 

 naturally leads to intensification of initial differences in the various 

 branches of a family. This point will receive further consideration 

 in the section on marriage selection. 



Differential migration is of further importance when taken in con- 

 nection with the burden of support and the many other problems 

 entailed by the defective and degenerate classes. Line D, as we have 

 seen, furnishes only one institutional case, though many of its mem- 

 bers have been and still are recipients of county aid. Its chief menace 

 consists in the spread of disease by its immoral women and its general 

 undermining of the economic and moral life of the community. In 

 Line E all of the survivors of generation 3 but one are institutional 

 cases. They aggregate a total of 86 years of care on the part of the 

 State. Estimating the cost of maintenance at $200 per year, we have 

 $17,200 as the price which the State has had to pay to date for the 

 generous provision made by the community for the care of a feeble- 

 minded girl two generations ago. » 



Thus, by far the greater number of the socially fit members of this 

 network have moved out into new sections of the country, and there, 

 under more severe conditions, are developing its resources, adding to 

 its wealth, and as progressive citizens contributing to its educational 

 growth. The socially unfit, on the other hand, have been left behind 

 to become a hindrance to the moral and economic development, a 

 burden on a charitable public, or to be wholly supported at the State's 

 expense. 



Do we not see here in actual operation the factors which are making 

 the care of these defectives an almost intolerable burden to the Eastern 

 States, and have brought about such differences in the rate of develop- 

 ment of different sections of our country? It is largely due to differen- 

 tial migration that, in such a State as Kansas, there should be, in a 

 total of 105 counties, 54 without any feeble-minded, 96 without any 

 inebriates, 38 without poor-houses, 65 without any convicts in State's 

 prison, and dozens in which no jury has been called on to try a criminal 

 case in 10 years; while in Wisconsin, another State which offered 

 rigorous conditions to the pioneer and was correspondingly unattrac- 

 tive to the lazy and nonaggressive, there should have been within half 

 a century an economic and educational development considered 

 worthy of emulation by the older States of the Union. 



