CONTINUITY OF THE RACE 



617 



Suppose we could breed the ideal race 

 of men, what would we breed toward? 

 \Vliat kind of man do we want? What are 

 the desirable traits and who is to be the 

 judge? These are difficult questions for 

 which no scientist and only a highly con- 

 ceited layman would have an immediate 

 answer. Every sane person, however, would 

 have an immediate positive response to the 

 question of preventing the continual pro- 

 duction of defectives such as microcephalic 

 idiots. At this end, common ag-reement can 

 be attained, because such defectives bring 

 misery to everyone who is in any way as- 

 sociated with them. Fortunately, very few 

 of the hopelessly defective individuals re- 

 produce. 



Present dysgenic practices 



Instead of improving our people geneti- 

 cally it would appear that the operating 

 forces in our modern civilization are doing 

 just the opposite. Our way of life has vastly 

 improved in the past two hundred years, 

 but paralleled with it is this insidious de- 

 cline in our genetic heritage. The features 

 that have made our lives more safe and 

 pleasant and have been responsible for our 

 tremendous increase in numbers have si- 

 multaneously introduced factors that inter- 

 fere with the agencies of natural selection, 

 which through the ages have tended toward 

 the building of a sturdy body and mind in 

 a very demanding environment. When that 

 point is reached, it seems that decline has 

 followed. Modern man has interfered with 

 natural selection in several very important 

 ways which are only now showing their 

 effects. 



Birth rates compared to death rates read- 

 ily reveal whether a population is increas- 

 ing or decreasing. Whether the number of 

 people in a population such as we have in 

 America is increasing or decreasing is not 

 as important as the more serious problem 

 of what groups are reproducing the pop- 

 ulation. Are the qualities we agree are 

 desirable being perpetuated or are they 



\ 



1.4-% 



:i 



10.3% 



90 



80 



-33. A"/. 



70 



60 



50 



40 



30 



20 



I4-.2;? 



10 



\ 



I.Q.|30 + 



■■"Iq. 



II5-I30___ 



I.Q. 

 100-115 



I.Q. 

 85- 100 



I.Q. 

 70 -85 



t 



2,.\% 



I.Q. 70 



i£ 



.6X 



e.1% 



■90 



— 80 



•70 



•60 



50 



4-I.3K 



40 



■30 



• 20 



ZO.VA 



■ — 10 



^.\yJ 



s 



YR. 1900 



YR. 2000 



Fig. 24-21. There i$ substantial evidence that our intelli- 

 gence, as measured by I.Q. tests, is steadily dropping 

 with each generation. When these figures are projected 

 to the year 2000 the shift in intelligence may reach 

 the levels indicated in the above figures. 



gradually being sacrificed for less desirable 

 qualities? The picture is not as comforting 

 as we wish it were. 



One of the potent forces bringing a shift 

 in the quality of people is the difference 

 in the rates at which children are born to 

 groups of various abilities. If different 

 groups reproduce at different rates, as we 

 know they do, the over-all reproductive rate 

 of a country is a composite of all of these 

 groups. For example, if one group repro- 

 duces at a rate 20 per cent higher than the 

 native stock, there will be a gradual re- 

 placement of the native stock by the faster 

 multiplying groups. This is important only 

 if there is a concomitant dropping in the 

 quality of the people as a whole. 



During colonial days in America, the 

 families of the more prosperous citizens 

 were larger than those of the less able. Sta- 

 tistics taken from an early study of New 

 England showed that the upper quarter of 



