4 THE NEXT GENERATION 



The following statement touches another point. "It is not 

 known that any one of them was ever convicted of crime." 



Such, then, is the well-authenticated record of a single 

 family, living in the United States of America. Clearly 

 enough, the world is better off because Jonathan Edwards 

 became an ancestor. 



Take another American family, with another kind of fame. 

 The " Jukes family " 1 it is called. The first discovered an- 

 cestor of this group was a shiftless fisherman born in New 

 York state in 1720. He had five daughters, and in the five 

 generations since then the family has numbered 1200 per- 

 sons. This includes 200 outsiders who have married into the 

 family. Follow the occupations of some of these people. 

 The facts are quoted from the printed record. 



Convicted criminals 130 



Habitual thieves 60 



Murderers 7 



Wrecked by diseased wickedness 440 



Immoral women fully one half 



Professional paupers 310 



Trades learned by twenty. Ten of these learned the 

 trade in prison. 



Think also of this other fact which the report brings out : 

 During the years of their lives not paupers alone but also 

 those who had committed robbery and murder and broken 

 every law of decency had to be supported at public expense. 

 That is to say, law-abiding and efficient citizens — those who 

 stayed out of prison and out of the workhouse, those who 

 worked hard with honest purpose to support themselves — 

 had to pay taxes for the support of these lawless and in- 

 efficient people who spent their days in prison and in the 



workhouse. 



1 Not the real family name. 



