98 TABOO AND GENETICS 



such as syphilis, rum-drinking and rampant 

 individuaUsm. 



To continually encourage the racially most 

 desirable women to disregard their sexual special- 

 ization and exploit their social-competitive 

 adaptation must obviously destroy the group 

 which pursues such a policy. The only way to 

 make such a course democratic is to carefully 

 instruct all women, rich and poor, wise and 

 ignorant, in the methods of avoiding reproduc- 

 tion and to inject the virus of individualism in 

 all alike. Then the group can get its population 

 supply only by a new system of control. To 

 remove any economic handicaps to child-bearing 

 is certainly not out of harmony with our ideas 

 of justice. 



In removing the economic handicaps at 

 present connected with the reproductive function 

 in women, care must also be taken that the very 

 measures which insure this do not themselves 

 become dysgenic influences. Such schemes as 

 maternity insurance, pensions for mothers, and 

 most of the propositions along this line, may 

 offer an inducement to women of the poorer 

 classes to assume the burdens connected with 

 their specialization for child-bearing. But their 

 more fortunate sisters, who find themselves so 

 well adapted to modern conditions that they 

 are even moderately successful in the compe- 

 tition for material rewards, will hardly find 



