HEREDITY AND HUMAN IMPROVEMENT 381 



our penal institutions are mentally defective.' 7 Criminals 

 show a high percentage of epileptics who are especially 

 predisposed to crimes of violence. Reformatories and 

 homes for delinquent girls show that a remarkably large 

 number of these offenders are of defective intelligence, 

 the proportion in an institution at Geneva, Illinois being 

 89 per cent. The Massachusetts Commission for the 

 investigation of the White Slave Traffic reports that of 300 

 prostitutes, 154 or 51 per cent, were feebleminded, and 

 most of the others "were of distinctly inferior intelligence." 

 Besides those who are feebleminded there is a large element 

 of the population who, born with inferior intellect and weak 

 will, cannot secure or retain positions of responsibility, and 

 who are unable to resist the temptations of the evil sur- 

 roundings amid which they are prone to drift, and who are 

 apt to find their way sooner or later into the ranks of the 

 tramps, paupers, chronic alcoholics or criminals. 



Our defective classes are a great drag upon society and a 

 menace to its peace. They necessitate homes for the 

 feebleminded, reformatories, homes for delinquent girls, 

 asylums for the epileptics and insane and they help to 

 fill our jails and penitentiaries. But the millions spent 

 upon those maintained in institutions is a small part of 

 their total cost to the country. The larger part of those 

 who are defective mentally are unconfined and they help 

 to swell the number of incompetents, vagrants, criminals 

 and immoral women whose evil influence .through the 

 spread of loathsome diseases is beyond calculation. 

 Could society rid itself of its hereditary defectives there 

 would result directly and indirectly untold benefits; there 

 is no social question more urgent than how the race can 

 purge itself of its undesirable stock. 



In the production of defective human beings we must 

 not forget the direct influence of the environment. Where 



