Feeble-Mindedness—Indiana. 85 
out after I took my second man that he were some kind of a cousin to 
my kids.” The people who live in the beautiful homes of this fine town 
know they have these folks in their back yards, but they say, “What 
can we do?” And I repeat it, “What can they do?” I know another 
very beautiful and prosperous town in Indiana with a black spot like 
that in it—not so big, but one in which the problem of prostitution 
assumes alarming proportions. 
The feeble-minded population of towns and accessible country dis- 
tricts shifts with the tides of business. In the woods about the lakes 
and in the isolation of river bottoms we find the defectives persisting, 
in spite of barrenness, starvation and inconyenience. Their wants are 
few and easily satisfied. In the lake community, in the northern part 
ef the State, are found several groups of defectives who have lived in 
the same spot for two or three generations. One such family contained 
sixteen children, three of whom are normal, have married and have 
normal families. Two others are low-grade Morons, and the remaining 
eleven are idiots, resembling some of their paternal kinfolks, among 
whom idiocy and imbecility were not uncommon. Seven of these eleven 
idiots covld not walk and none of them could talk. Only three of them 
are now living. The home that shelters them and their mother was left 
to them by their father. It is a tiny four-room cabin in the hills, in- 
accessible except by footpath. One room of this house has fallen away 
from the rest, and the other three rooms are small and dark, with wide 
cracks between the logs, through which the rain and snow drifts in on 
their beds. 
You must hear about a family living in the river-bottoms in the 
southern part of the State. Because of the great number of adult feeble- 
minded we were finding in this community we often went two together, 
because we felt more sure of our judgment in a given case, when we 
could talk it over afterwards. The man who drove our car would try 
any kind of a road; but half a mile down the field towards this house 
he gave it up and walked with us through the fields until a turn in the 
path took him out of sight of the car, which he wanted to watch. Leav- 
ing him there to await our return, we went through the woods, across 
a freshly ploughed field, through a field of tall corn, and at last we 
reached the house of our search. We could never have found it had 
not the voices of the boys in the barn guided us to it. It was in the 
lowest and wettest part of the field, set like an ark on a scarcely dry 
mount. The vapor was so heavy that it kept us coughing. Here in 
dirt and disorder lived a family of five, all Morons. Twin boys are of 
low grade, the parents only middle grade, and an eighteen-year-old girl 
a little brighter than the others. Their isolation was as complete as if 
they were on another planet. The mother said her husband was not 
