From cases of this sort, which represent the least striking kind of bad breeding, the student may pass through many types up to the great tribes of Jukes, Nams, Kallikaks, Zeros, Dacks, Ishmaels, Sixties, Hickories, Hill Folk, Piney Folk, and the rest, with which the readers of the literature of restrictive eugenics are familiar. It is abundantly demonstrated that much, if not most, of their trouble is the outcome of bad heredity. Indeed, when a branch of one of these clans is transported, or emigrates, to a wholly new environment, it soon creates for itself, in many cases, an environment similar to that from which it came. Whether it goes to the city, or to the agricultural districts of the west, it may soon manage to reëstablish the debasing atmosphere to which it has always been accustomed.[76] Those who see in improvement of the environment the cure for all such plague spots as these tribes inhabit, overlook the fact that man largely creates his own environment. The story of the tenement-dwellers who were supplied with bath tubs but refused to use them for any other purpose than to store coal, exemplifies a wide range of facts.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.--To this shanty an elderly man of the "Hickory" family, a great clan of defectives in rural Ohio, brought his girl-bride, together with his two grown sons by a former marriage. The shanty was conveniently located at a distance of 100 feet from the city dump where the family, all of which is feeble-minded, secured its food. Such a family is incapable of protecting either itself or its neighbors, and should be cared for by the state. Photograph from Mina A. Sessions.]
[Illustration: A CHIEFTAIN OF THE HICKORY CLAN
FIG. 27.--This is "Young Hank," otherwise known as "Sore-Eyed Hank." He is the eldest son and heir of that Hank Hickory who, with his wife and seven children, applied for admission to their County Infirmary when it was first opened. For generation after generation, his family has been the chief patron of all the charities of its county. "Young Hank" married his cousin and duplicated his father's record by begetting seven children, three of whom (all feeble-minded) are now living. The number of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren is increasing every year, but the total can not be learned from him, for he is mentally incapable of counting even the number of his own children. He is about 70 years of age, and has never done any work except to make baskets. He has lived a wandering life, largely dependent on charity. For the last 25 years he has been partly blind, due to trachoma. He gets a blind pension of $5 a month, which is adequate to keep him supplied with chewing tobacco, his regular mastication being 10 cents a day. Such specimens can be found in many rural communities; if they were segregated in youth both they and the community would be much better off. Photograph from Mina A. Sessions.]