IS THE ABNORMAL TO BECOME NORMAL? 



LENA K. SADLER, M.D., F.A.C.S. 

 Chicago, Illinois 



The various dysgenic classes which are so rapidly increasing in the United 

 States constitute our vast "aristocracy of the unfit." They are an undesir- 

 able group of citizens which the more thrifty, intelligent, and superior 

 stocks willingly tax themselves to support and perpetuate. This increasing 

 horde will ultimately overrun and destroy the diminishing posterity of the 

 better classes unless a practical program of restrictive eugenics is adopted 

 and effectively executed. 



This paper is presented in the hope that representatives of the Illinois 

 Federation of Women's Clubs will recognize that civilization is doomed if we 

 continue to drift down the stream of a few more generations on the defense- 

 less raft of mistaken brotherly love and blinded sentimentalism. 



We desire to hold before you a racial mirror in which you (representatives 

 of the better racial strains living in these United States of America) are 

 invited to gaze while we briefly present the real situation of Uncle Sam's 

 family of one hundred and twenty-three millions. 



We are supporting in public institutions an idle population of defectives 

 amounting to more than 1 per cent of the total population, including children, 

 at an estimated annual expense of more than five hundred million dollars. 



The names of these insane, idiots, criminals, and paupers are registered in 

 state hospitals, asylums, and prisons, together with some facts respecting 

 their pedigrees. And we are told that the institutional registration is but 

 a small per cent of the total number of defectives. 



Who are these undesirables that are so tenderly provided for by the taxes 

 of the thrifty? The American Foundation for the Blind estimates that 

 there are more than one hundred thousand (114,000) blind persons in the 

 United States, an increase of 17,000 in ten years, nearly five thousand of 

 them were born blind, have blind relatives, and will no doubt produce 

 blind children. 



Twelve thousand of the hundred thousand deaf people in the United 

 States were born deaf, and 32 per cent have deaf relatives and may produce 

 deaf mutes. 



Every day in the year more insane patients occupy hospital beds than do 



193 



