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 reestablish 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.
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