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A second typical case is that of the Owens family, also from Kentucky. There were originally four children, of whom two have been traced, William and Brook. William had three children, who raised pauper families. Brook had a son John, who was a Presbyterian minister. He raised a family of fourteen illegitimate children. Ten of these came to Indiana, and their pauper record begins about 1850. Of the ten, three raised illegitimate families in the fourth generation; and, of these, two daughters and a son have illegitimate children in the fifth generation.

Returning to William, we have a pauper succession of three families. One son of the third generation died in the penitentiary; his two sons have been in the penitentiary; a daughter was a prostitute, with an illegitimate child. Another son in the third generation had a penitentiary record, and died of delirium tremens and went to the medical college. There have been several murders; a continuous pauper and criminal record. An illegitimate, half-breed Canadian woman enters this family. There is much prostitution, but little intemperance.

I take these two cases as typical. I could have taken any other one of the thirty; or, indeed, I could have worked out a diagram of two hundred and fifty families as minutely as these.

Returning now to the record, let me call your attention to the following: We start at some unknown date with thirty families. These came mostly from Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Of the first generation, -- of sixty individuals, -- we know certainly of only three. In the second generation, we have the history of eighty-four. In the third generation, we have the history of two hundred and seventy-five. In the fourth generation, -- 1840-1860, -- we have the history of six hundred and twenty-two. In the fifth generation, -- 1860-1880, -- we have the history of six hundred and fifty-one. In the sixth generation, -- 1880-1890, -- we have the history of fifty-seven. Here is a total of 1,692 individuals. Before the fourth generation, -- from 1840 to 1860, -- we have but scant records. Our more complete data begin with the fourth generation, and the following are valuable.

We know of one hundred and twenty-one prostitutes. The criminal record is very large, -- petty thieving, larcenies, chiefly. There have been a number of murders. The records of the city hospital show that -- taking out surgical cases, acute general diseases, and cases out- side the city -- seventy-five per cent, of the cases treated are from this class. The number of illegitimacies is very great. The Board of Health reports that an estimate of still-born children found in sinks, etc., would be not less than six per week. Deaths are frequent, and chiefly among children. The suffering of the children must be great. The people have no occupation. They gather swill or ashes; the women beg, and send the children around to beg; they make their eyes sore with vitriol. In my own experience, I have seen three generations of beggars among them. I have not time here to go into details, some loathsome, all pitiful. I was with a great-grandmother on her death-bed. She had been taken sick on the annual gypsying; deserted at a little town because sick; shipped into the city; sent to the county asylum; at last brought to the miserable home to die. One evening I was called to marry a couple. I found them in one small room, with two beds. In all, eleven people lived in it. The bride was dressing, the groom washing. Another member of the family filled a coal-oil lamp while burning. The groom offered to haul ashes for the fee. I made a present to the bride. Soon after, I asked one of the family how they were getting on. "Oh, Elisha don't live with her any more." "Why?" "Her other husband came back, and she went to him. That made Elisha mad, and he left her." Elisha died in the pest-house. A mother and two girls, present that night, were killed by the cars.

All these are grim facts; but they are facts, and can be verified. More: they are but thirty families out of a possible two hundred and fifty. The individuals already traced are over five thousand, interwoven by descent and marriage. They underrun society like devil-grass. Pick up one, and the whole five thousand would be drawn up. Over seven thousand pages of history are now on file in the Charity Organization Society.

A few deductions from these data are offered for your consideration. First, this is a study into social degeneration, or degradation, which is similar to that sketched by Dr. Lankaster. As in the lower orders, so in society we have parasitism, or social degradation. There is reason to believe that some of this comes from the old convict stock which England threw into this country in the seventeenth century. We find the wandering tendency so marked in the case of the "Cracker" and the "Pike" here. "Movin' on." There is scarcely a day that the wagons are not to be seen on our streets; cur dogs; tow-headed children. They camp outside the city, and then beg. Two families, as I write, have come by, moving from north to south, and from east to west. "Hunting work"; and yet we can give work to a thousand men on our gas-trenches.