hese learned it in State prison! They have cost the State over
a million and a quarter dollars, and the cost is still going on. Who
pays this bill? What right had an intelligent and humane society to
allow these poor unfortunates to be born into the kind of lives they
had to lead, not by choice but by the disadvantage of birth? Darwin
wrote long ago "... except in the case of man himself, hardly anyone
is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

[Illustration: FIG. 29.--History of _Die Familie Zero_.
(Condensed from Joerger's data, partly after Davenport.)]

Probably the most complete family history of this kind ever worked out
is that of the "Familie Zero"--a Swiss family whose pedigree has been
recently unraveled in a splendid manner by Joerger. In the seventeenth
century this family divided into three lines; two of these have ever
since remained valued and highly respected families, while the third
has descended to the depths. This third line was established by a
man who was himself the result of two generations of intermarriage,
the second tainted with insanity. He was of roving disposition, and in
the Valla Fontana found an Italian vagrant wife of vicious character.
Their son inherited fully his parental traits and himself married a
member of a German vagabond family--Marcus, known to this day as a
vagabond family. This marriage sealed the fate of their hundreds of
descendants. This pair had seven children, all characterized by
vagabondage, thievery, drunkenness, mental and physical defect, and
immorality. Their history for the three succeeding generations is
incompletely summarized in Fig. 29. In 1905, 190 members of this
family were known to be living, and probably many living are unknown
on account of illegitimate birth.

In 1861 a sympathetic and charitable priest attempted to save from
their obvious fate many of these "Zero" children and others who
resided in and near his village, by placing them in industrious and
respectable families to be reared under more favorable auspices. The
attempt failed utterly, for every one of the "Zero" children either
ran away or was enticed away by his relatives.

The blame for such an atrocity as this family or the Jukes does not
rest with these persons themselves; it must be placed squarely upon
the shoulders and consciences of the intelligent members of society
who have permitted these predetermined degenerates to be brought into
the world, and who a