never been to school because he was a mental defective; one child of
nine was practically blinded by cataracts. This child was found groping
his way down the beet-rows pulling out weeds and feeling for the
beet-plants--in the glare of the sun he had lost all sense of light and
dark. Of the three hundred and forty children who were not going or had
never gone to school, only four had reached the point of graduation, and
only one had gone to high school. These large families migrated to the
beet-fields in early spring. Seventy-two per cent. of them are retarded.
When we realize that feeble-mindedness is arrested development and
retardation, we see that these "beet children" are artificially retarded
in their growth, and that the tendency is to reduce their intelligence
to the level of the congenital imbecile.

Nor must it be concluded that these large "beet" families are always the
"ignorant foreigner" so despised by our respectable press. The following
case throws some light on this matter, reported in the same pamphlet:
"An American family, considered a prize by the agent because of the fact
that there were nine children, turned out to be a `flunk.' They could
not work in the beet-fields, they ran up a bill at the country-store,
and one day the father and the eldest son, a boy of nineteen, were seen
running through the railroad station to catch an out-going train. The
grocer thought they were `jumping' their bill. He telephoned ahead
to the sheriff of the next town. They were taken off the train by the
sheriff and given the option of going back to the farm or staying in
jail. They preferred to stay in jail, and remained there for two weeks.
Meanwhile, the mother and her eight children, ranging in ages form
seventeen years to nine months, had to manage the best way they could.
At the end of two weeks, father and son were set free.... During all of
this period the farmers of the community sent in provisions to keep
the wife and children from starving." Does this case not sum up in a