DISTRIBUTION OF INHERITABLE TRAITS 183 



crime have traced the disturbing element of a large area 

 to a single focal point; "the Jukes" were traced back to 

 Max living in a lonely mountain valley and the "Ishmael- 

 ites" of Indiana were traced back through Kentucky to 

 Virginia and probably to the cutthroats and prostitutes 

 which England spewed out upon, and against the pro- 

 tests of, the Virginia colony in the latter half of the seven- 

 teenth century (Butler, 1896). So too a family in New 

 Jersey of over 600 persons, more than three-fourths of them 

 defectives have been derived, by Goddard and his field- 

 workers, from a single pair. These are examples, merely, 

 of a universal fact, that the more strikingly inheritable 

 traits may be followed back generation after generation to a 

 few focal points. 



And the focal points of this country have been transported 

 here from abroad. A settlement worker in New York City 

 inquired into the meaning of a particularly unruly and 

 criminalistic section of his territory and found that the 

 offenders came from one village in Calabria — known as the 

 "home of brigands." Of the weary but hopeful thousands 

 of immigrants who weekly (almost daily) enter the port of 

 New York how many are destined to bring in traits for good 

 or evil, that are to proliferate and to affect the future of this 

 country for better or worse! For we must not forget the 

 good. The germ plasm of an Austrian who migrated to the 

 United States three generations ago has produced a race 

 of yacht builders who enable this country to maintain its 

 supremacy in the sport of yachting. From the germ plasm 

 (in part) of an extraordinarily talented but erotic woman 

 who migrated to America in the early part of the seven- 

 teenth century have arisen statesmen, college presidents, 

 men of science, great philanthropists from New England to 

 California in extraordinary numbers. From an Irisli pair 

 who came to the wilderness of Virginia nearly two centuries 



