SEQUEL TO " THE JUKES " 299 



tribution of the characters in the progeny, but would 

 not effect their disappearance. 



The story began with five sisters, and from them 

 has spread all this welter of weakness and misery, 

 crime and sinfulness. And it is not in America 

 only that Jukes abound ! The facts make us feel the 

 need for a fuller, deeper, and wider recognition of 

 what Mr. Benchara Branford, in his magnanimous 

 Janus and Vesta (1916), calls " that lofty principle 

 of hereditary, collective and vicarious responsibility, 

 punishment and suffering, inherent in the East, 

 binding with indissoluble and adamantine chain 

 into compassionate social solidarity generation to 

 generation." What can be done to prevent this 

 proliferation of evil? The suggestions before the 

 world are fourfold. (i) The first is literally or 

 metaphorically surgical the sterilization of those 

 whose constitutional deterioration is radical and in- 

 dubitable. From this proposal social sentiment 

 shrinks, partly because it is coercive and infringes 

 " the liberty of the subject " rather a mockery for 

 many a poor Juke; partly because of the terrible 

 mistakes that might be made in our ignorance 

 which, however, memoirs like Dr. Estabrook's are 

 rapidly reducing; and partly from the dread 

 that always attaches to proposals which interfere 

 "artificially" with "natural" consequences. (2) 

 Less drastic, in a way, but also affecting the liberty 

 of the individual, is the proposal to secure the 

 permanent custodial care of, let us say, the feeble- 

 minded, to begin with. Dr. Estabrook writes: 



