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Indiana University Studies 



in the city less than three years. This bears out the theory that 

 the migration of the feeble-minded is from country to town, from 

 town to city. If these individuals are living in the community, 

 the city is the worst place for them from an economic point of 

 view as well as a moral one. Here they have greater competition 

 in the task of earning a livelihood, or eking out an existence; 

 they have more opportunity for vice and immorality of all sorts, 

 and are the prey of exploiters. However, there is greater oppor- 

 tunity for the education of their children or special school train- 

 ing; there is less chance of consanguineous marriage with its con- 

 sequence of greater degeneracy and defectiveness. 



Fifty-four of this group were known to other social agencies, 

 including township trustees, charity organization societies, juve- 

 nile courts, children's aid associations, school attendance depart- 

 ments, and other institutions and hospitals. The great expense 

 of the defective to the community has been emphasized by all 

 speakers and writers on the subject. If all of the money which 

 has been spent upon relief for the feeble-minded in the state 

 could have been spent for providing institutional care for them, 

 the problem would be solved today. "It is estimated that the 

 tribe of Ishmael in Indiana, comprising five thousand persons in 

 six generations of feeble-mindedness, absorbed three-fourths of 

 all the public poor relief funds of the country."*^ 



It has been demonstrated that feeble-mindedness is hereditary, 

 but what of other factors which may be causative? What of 

 the part played by tuberculosis, syphilis, alcoholism, etc.? The 

 table of heredity of the group studied, while incomplete and per- 

 haps inexact because based on information secured largely from 

 the patients' families, shows a few interesting figures. There are 



8 persons who are known to have had feeble-minded parents ; 



9 have defective brothers or sisters; 9 have defective relatives 

 (cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents) ; 4 are known to have 

 feeble-minded children. 



Whether tuberculosis plays a part in bringing about defect 

 or not is a subject for physicians and students of heredity to 

 answer, but it is interesting to the social worker to note the num- 

 ber of instances in which it appears. Certainly syphilis of the 

 parent, if of the mother, often means a luetic condition of the 

 children and a consequent probability of defect. 



" Robert Kelso, "Feeble-mindedness as an Element in Poverty", Boston Medical 

 and Surgical Journal, October 4, 1917, Vol. CLXXVII, p. 486. 



