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. (1) 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: 
