20 INTRODUCTION. 



agitations of the present day, — strikes, anarchism, the stress of 

 competition, athletics, — all tend to increase the physical or mental 

 activity of individuals and hence to develop the race generation by 

 generation. 



RESULTS OF EARLY MARRIAGES. 



Even in communities in which there are many things operating 

 to delay the age of marriage, there are individuals who marry 

 early and who early in their lives produce children. These children 

 of youthful parents are lacking in physical stamina and mental 

 power. They are reckless, careless, sometimes vicious and fre- 

 quently drift into drunkenness and crime. From this class comes 

 the principal part of our criminals, paupers and prostitutes. The 

 effects of debauchery result in defective children, and if continued 

 for two or three generations result in a high degree of infant 

 mortality or total extinction. The vices of civilized society, espe- 

 cially strong drink and prostitution, operate to eliminate a portion 

 of each generation, and this elimination affects the children of 

 young parents much more than the children of old or middle aged 

 parents. 



THE MISTAKES OF GOOD INTENTIONS. 



There are certain persons with good intentions, but sadly mis- 

 taken, who would protect society against itself by prohibition, by 

 the abolition of war, strikes, and competition, and by legal enact- 

 ments calculated to preserve the life of each individual born. Let 

 us go back a thousand years in time and assume that this Utopian 

 condition had been brought into existence. There being no mili- 

 tary necessities to take the youth to war and no stress of competition 

 making it difficult to secure a living, the number of early marriages , 

 would have been greatly increased and the children of young parents 

 would have outnumbered the children of middle aged parents. Now 



