86 



are famous. He had eight children all of whom lived and died in or 

 near the old homestead, except two, who came to the southern part of the 

 State of Indiana. About all the descendants of children numbers 2, 4, 

 and 7 are still living in the Kentucky mountains from twenty to fifty 

 miles fi'om a railroad. The descendants of child number 5 settled in 

 Orange County of this State. The descendants of child number 1 are m 

 two groups, the legitimate and the illegitimate. The former are also in 

 the mountains while the descendants of the illegitimate are in Indiana. 

 In 1856 the illegitimate son of number 1 came here to live. He and his 

 family left their home because they could no longer make a living there. 

 For two years the crops had failed to grow and no corn had been raised 

 to make their bread and mush. Other people have said that it failed to 

 grow because the family was too shiftless to tend it. The man and the 

 three older children walked, while the wife and the two younger oiies 

 rode on an old broken down mule. He carried an iron skillet in his 

 hand and when night came, he would cook what he could find or beg. 

 Haystacks, barns, and sympathetic country folks furnished lodging. In 

 this manner they finally reached the south-central part of Indiana. 



There they made their home, and from that time until this they 

 have rapidly multiplied and degenerated until their name is a synonym 

 for shiftlessness. Eight more children were born in rapid succession, 

 the last six of whom the mother never saw because of blindness. The 

 descendants of these thirteen children form the first group, of whose 

 occupations I wish to speak. 



They live in or near a town of about 12,000 in the south-central part 

 of Indiana. There is plenty of work in this town for unskilled laborers 

 in the factories, stone quarries, and on the streets. But in spite of the 

 fact that there is plenty of work, the majority of the Joneses are unem- 

 ployed most of the time. 



Those above the age of fifteen years have been uiied for the follow- 

 ing figures: Out of fifty-seven men and women, fifty-four are feeble- 

 minded. They have been found to be so in one of the three following 

 ways: (1) by a formal examination in the laboratory; (2) by a judg- 

 ment of the field worker where the condition was so apparent that no 

 examination was necessary, and (3) where the person has been judged 

 feeble-minded by his reaction to society. The normal individuals c-f 

 Jones blood are the result of marriages into fairly good families, and 



