DEVELOPMENT OF EUGENICS 21 



mentally well-endowed offspring. Advance in knowledge of human 

 genetics will aid in this advance. 



THE FUTURE OF A DIFFERENTIAL BIRTH-RATE 



The interests of the eugenicist are in improving the quality of those 

 born and increasing the proportion of the socially adequate. So far, the 

 only method of improving the quality of those born, apart from prevention 

 of infection in the mother, is to improve the matings. We have heard 

 discussed today the possible methods of securing a higher birth rate in the 

 most effective groups of the population. Let us hope such methods will be 

 successful. Were birth control differential it would have possibilities. 

 The most intellectually successful strains are slow and tardy breeders. 

 The proletariat will for a long time, as in the classic age, be the fecund class. 

 All honor to the fecund. It will be a long time before we can improve prac- 

 tically on nature's method of race improvement — a high birth rate and a 

 high death rate. 



Eugenics is not interested in death rates any more than it is in birth 

 rates. It is interested only in quality. One may even view with satis- 

 faction the high death rate in an institution for low grade feeble-minded, 

 while one regards as a national disaster the loss of a bold and successful 

 aviator, or even the infant child of exceptional parents. 



CONTROL OF THE QUALITY OF THE BREEDING STOCK THROUGH CONTROL OF 



MIGRATION 



Any nation will, in the long run, be what the quality of its breeding stock 

 permits it to be; fair conditions of life assumed. Every nation wants to 

 secure for itself its ideals of high quality of manhood. Even if we could 

 carry out a program of improved breeding with the people within our gates 

 our problem might be complicated by the immigration of other peoples 

 which, perhaps, had no such program. 



The immigration problem has indeed two aspects on the biological side. 

 One is the problem of a possible biological disharmony arising in the hy- 

 brid offspring of peoples widely unlike genetically; i.e., having marked, 

 structural, including neuronic, differences. Today, in the absence of 

 precise information on the matter each person feels entitled to his own 

 opinion. I know of no subject today of vaster eugenic, as well as political, 

 moment than that of the genetical consequences of the union of dissimilar 

 races of mankind. The results of breeding dogs obtained by Stockard 

 suggest that marked morphological differences of the parental stocks may 

 result in morphological disharmonies in the hybrid offspring; also, the 



