44 ADDRESS 



as will disturb the equilibrium of the functions of the organs. 

 Parents, with hysteria, or epilepsy, or other nervous diseases, 

 with diabetes, alcoholism, criminal instincts, or other forms of 

 insanity, insure dispositions to kindred, if not the same, affections. 

 Syphilis is fatal to the embryo or fetus, dangerous to the 

 baby who frequently succumbs to its ravages within a few days 

 or weeks. In spite of the God-sent Paul Ehrlich, who promises 

 to eradicate the disease, generations will still suffer from it, 

 and the baby's health and life will still depend on the com- 

 plete recovery of both father and mother, and on the appro- 

 priate and energetic treatment of the new-born. That is how 

 they may and will be saved. Tuberculosis in the mother will 

 only predispose the baby; open tuberculosis will directly in- 

 fect the nursling, it may be, the first day or week. Local 

 inflammations of the womb are frequent causes of malforma- 

 tions, aye amputations, aye monstrosities in the baby; that 

 is how its health and life depend on the treatment and care 

 of her who is to be, after years, perhaps, a mother. So indi- 

 vidual caution of the present generation will or may, and 

 must, safeguard the existence of the new-born that is to be. 

 In that connection it should be known, however, that con- 

 sanguineous marriages do not deserve the blame attached to 

 them. Two healthy parents are entitled to and will have 

 healthy children ; it is only the disease, or vice, or incompet- 

 ency of one or both that is procreated, or even exaggerated, 

 in the new creation. But individual foresight alone does not 

 suffice. It is the duty and the privilege of the commonwealth 

 to see to it that marriages among the unfit or dangerous are 

 prohibited. The watchfulness of a parent over a child is not 

 more justified than the watchfulness of human society over its 

 members. Marriages are not permitted between the imma- 

 ture even now ; they should be prohibited among the advanced 

 tuberculous, the insane, the incurable epileptic, the hopeless 

 criminal. The laws of Colorado, California, and Indiana justify 

 and even enact the practice of surgically rendering the propaga- 

 tion of the physically and morally unfit a physical impossibility. 



Look at the present generation. Women underclad, underfed, 

 overworked, cannot bear infants endowed with an organism fit to 

 stay; factory children with no light, no air, no resistance, grow 

 up, if at all, to ages in which they are permitted to procreate 

 their kind. Their poor kind it is, only poorer. They are them- 

 selves wasting, their infants die. A few statistical facts lately 

 collected are as follows : 



In Bremen, Germany, 30 per cent, of the women occupied in 

 wool spinning are consumptive; of cigar makers, 37.5 per cent. 

 Amongst those who are married, beside the time required by 



