198 LENA K. SADLER 



Let it be clearly understood that sterilization in no wise interferes with 

 the normal biologic feelings and impulses of the individual. The self-sup- 

 porting types of sterilized individuals could marry and live out their natural 

 lives, while at the same time society could breathe more freely, knowing that 

 no feebleminded offspring would result from such marriages between the 

 hereditarily defective. 



There is no question that a sterilization law, enforced throughout the 

 United States, would result, in less than one hundred years, in eliminating 

 at least 90 per cent of crime, insanity, feeblemindedness, moronism, and ab- 

 normal sexuality, not to mention many other forms of defectiveness and 

 degeneracy. Thus within a century, our asylums, prisons, and state hos- 

 pitals would be largely emptied of their present victims of human woe and 

 misery. The indigent and aged paupers, and the unfortunate degenerates 

 of various types would disappear as a troublesome factor in civilized society. 



In man's early history, primitive life was for the swift and the strong. The 

 puberty rites which sent the youth far from the clan into the wilds for twenty- 

 eight days were sorters of men. Natural selection's death rate of the jungle 

 helped to purify the primitive race by destroying the weak and permitting 

 only the strong to live and reproduce. 



Eugenicists hope to arrive at the same result by the selective birth rate. 

 If antisocial individuals are kept humanely segregated during their lifetime 

 instead of being turned out after a few years of institutional life and allowed 

 to marry, they will leave no descendants, and the number of congenital de- 

 fectives in the community will be notably diminished. If the same policy 

 is followed through succeeding generations, the number of those incapable 

 of taking a useful part in society will steadily decrease. 



If, while these reforms are being accomplished, the present definite tendency 

 among the well-to-do and the more thrifty groups of the working classes 

 toward race suicide can be successfully combated; if these superior men and 

 women can be imbued with the conviction that they owe a duty to the race, 

 to the generations of the future, to leave behind them families of substantial 

 size as guarantees that the noble legacies of mind and morals received from 

 their ancestors shall be vouchsafed to their children's children down through 

 the centuries — then there is assurance that this problem will be solved. 



If America is to escape the doom of the nations of old, we must breed good 

 Americans. The fall of every nation in history has been due to many causes, 

 but always chief among them has been the decline of the national stock. 

 Nations must change, but they need not of necessity die out. A quickened 

 eugenic consciousness is one of the prerequisites to the working out of a 

 successful racial program. Better babies must become the watchword. 



