BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



To-day I am told that the moronic young male naturally 

 gravitates toward truck-driving, while the mentally 

 defective female tends to qualify as elevator girl. Not a 

 very wholesome situation! 



But there is another and more important function which 

 could be performed in such clinics; namely, the fitting of 

 our various types of human pegs into the right-shaped 

 holes. The minister, I believe, always receives a "call" 

 to his life work. He is a favored class. All of the rest of 

 us over thirty know what a perfectly awful time we had 

 trying to decide upon a profession. And, having decided, 

 we spend the rest of our lives wondering if an excellent 

 senator or saxophone player wasn't spoiled by the decision. 

 Perhaps we should suspect that we were fitted for higher 

 things, no matter what the tests showed; but at least we 

 should be in the possession of expert advice on the 

 subject. 



Other political matters where one might urge that 

 genetic knowledge be weighed are those connected with 

 marriage, divorce, and reproduction. 



Our state marriage laws are in quite a chaotic condition. 

 For example, three states forbid the marriage of cousins 

 once removed, while one state permits a man the somewhat 

 embarrassing privilege of marrying his grandmother. 

 In few states have sufficient safeguards been placed against 

 marriage between feeble-minded persons or persons having 

 certain forms of insanity. Unions between genetically 

 feeble-minded persons, it will be recalled, produce only 

 feeble-minded children. It is clearly the province of 

 the state, therefore, to make such unions illegal. It is 

 also the part of wisdom to provide impediments to mar- 

 riage in other cases where defective children are the prob- 

 able result. How this is to be done is still a question; 

 but the registration of certain essential data before the 

 marriage license is granted appears to be the solution. 



[192] 



