The Eugenists have been actively concerned with the question of the prevention of the transmission of undesirable qualities to offspring. They have held that while crime is more frequently rather the result of evil environment than of criminal heredity, nevertheless there is a large class of children who are "born criminals"--that is, born with such a decided tendency toward criminal acts that the slightest influence of environment may, and often does, serve to kindle into a blaze the undesirable and criminal characteristics. Dr. Saleeby says of this: "In the face of the work of Lombroso and his school, exaggerated though some of their conclusions may be, we cannot dispute the existence of born criminals and the criminal type. There are undoubtedly many such persons in modern society. There is an abundance of crime which no education, practiced or imaginable, would eliminate. Present day psychology and medicine and, for the matter of that, ordinary common-sense, can readily distinguish cases at both extremes--the mattoid or semi-insane criminal at one end, and the decent citizen who yields to exceptional temptation at the other end." The Eugenists quote as an instance of the above contention the celebrated case of Max Jukes, a notorious criminal and drunkard, who as the records show us was the ancestor of a foul brood of descendants which cost the State of New York over a million dollars in seventy-five years. Among these descendants were 200 thieves and murderers; 285 subject to idiocy, blindness or deafness; 90 prostitutes; and 300 children born prematurely. It is possible that a portion of this evil result was caused not alone by bad heredity but, at least in part, by the suggestion of the environment, and the influence of example of the parents; but even so, the primal cause was that Max Jukes, the notoriously unfit ancestor, was allowed to propagate this evil brood, destined to be born and reared under the most adverse conditions and environment. The Eugenists also place great importance upon the prevention of insane persons becoming parents. To those who consider that this is but an exceptional and rare occurrence, the Eugenists reply that a large percentage of insane patients in asylums have a family history showing insanity in one or both parents; that reports show that there are thousands of feeble-minded women in every large city allowed to (yes, often actually compelled to) bear children to their husbands or male companions.