Geography of Ma>i in Relation to Eugenics 309 



the feeble-minded class is estimated at 3 per cent of our 

 population, and were we to include drunkards, paupers, 

 grave sex-offenders, the criminalistic, the insane, and those 

 with innate physical weaknesses that render them for the 

 most part incompetent, it seems a safe estimate that 8 

 per cent of our population are far from having the capacities 

 of effective men and women, able, not merely to support 

 themselves, but really to push forward the world's work. 

 The cost of caring for those who cannot care for themselves 

 because of their bad breeding is very hea\y — ^perhaps two 

 hundred million or more a year. A study of the cause of 

 the increase of dependents indicates that it is because the 

 birth rate of the better classes is constantly falling; a Har- 

 vard class does not reproduce itself and at the present rate, 

 one thousand graduates of today will have only fifty descend- 

 ants two hundred years hence. On the other hand, recent 

 immigrants and the less effective descendants of the earlier 

 immigrants still continue to have large families; so that 

 from one thousand Roumanians today in Boston, at the 

 present rate of breeding, will come a hundred thousand two 

 hundred years hence to govern the fifty descendants of 

 Harvard's sons! Such facts as these have awakened the 

 people to a sense of the omnipotence of human breeding. 



The other impulse is the spread of knowledge of the 

 modern principles of heredity; and an appreciation of the 

 facts, first, that they afford a clear method in detail for 

 improving the blood of the nation, and, secondly, that the 

 results of this study can be set forth so simply and clearly 

 that they may become a part of our social idealism and may 

 serve to point the way to useful legislation. Heredity will 

 save the people from the perdition that is to come. 



The realization of this fact has led to activity in various 

 directions. In Germany, an International Society of Race 



