464 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 
Such cases as those cited are interesting from the standpoint of the 
student of heredity. They are tremendously significant to the average 
citizen because there is in the United States a very large feeble-minded 
population, estimated at 200,000, nine-tenths of whom are at large, 
free to reproduce their kind, and very prone to interbreed, because the 
feeble-minded are seldom sought as legitimate mates by persons of 
normal mentality. The number of feeble-minded is apparently 
increasing much more rapidly than the general population. How 
rapidly, it is impossible to determine, for we have no exact data on 
the number of feeble-minded; we are not yet awake to the enormity 
of the problem involved. From these feeble-minded come some 
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Fic. 99.—Family of Charlie M. (From Downing, after Goddard.) 
4o per cent of our prostitutes, a fourth of our criminals, and at least a 
half,of the inmates of our almshouses. 
ys generation ago the valley of Aosta, in Northern Italy, was over- 
fun with feeble-minded and idiotic individuals of the type known as 
cretins. It was estimated that fully 60 per cent of the population 
were affected with this abnormality. A law was passed and enforced 
segregating the really irresponsible cases and prohibiting the marriage 
of cretin with cretin. Now the condition has almost disappeared, and 
it is estimated that only a very small percentage of the population are 
cretins, these nearly all old, so that this particular form of idiocy will 
there very soon be a thing of the past. It seems only a rational proce- 
dure to accomplish at least a segregation of feeble-minded in this 
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