CHAPTER IX 



THE ORGANIZATION OF APPLIED EUGENICS 



1. State Eugenic Surveys 



The commonwealth is greater than any individual in it. 

 Hence the rights of society over the life, the reproduction, 

 the behavior and the traits of the individuals that compose 

 it are, in all matters that concern the hfe and proper prog- 

 ress of society, limitless, and society may take life, may 

 sterilize, may segregate so as to prevent marriage, may re- 

 strict liberty in a hundred ways. 



Society has not only the right, but upon it devolves the 

 profound duty, to know the nature of the germ plasm upon 

 which, in last analysis, the life and progress of the state de- 

 pend. It has not only the right, but the duty, to make a 

 thorough study of all of the families in the state and to 

 know their good and bad traits. It may and should locate 

 traits of especial value such as clear-headedness, grasp of 

 details, insight into intricate matters, organizing ability, 

 manual dexterity, inventiveness, mechanical abiUty and ar- 

 tistic abihty. It may and should locate antisocial traits 

 such as feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, delusions, melancholia, 

 mental deterioration, craving for narcotics, lack of moral 

 sense and self-control, tendency to wander, to steal, to assault 

 and to commit wanton cruelties upon children and animals. 

 It may and should locate strains with an inherent tendency 

 to certain diseases such as tuberculosis, rickets, cancer, 

 chronic rheumatism, gout, diabetes insipidus, goitre, leu- 

 chemia, chlorosis, hemophilia, eye and ear defects and the 

 scores of other diseases that have an hereditary factor. It 



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