IS THE ABNORMAL TO BECOME NORMAL 199 



Our religious and our moral codes must include the conscientious conviction 

 that the race must be purified. Eugenics must be taught throughout our 

 national educational system. 



No civilization can endure in the presence of a continuous over supply of 

 inferior stocks, and its decline and overthrow become doubly sure and 

 certain if, at the same time, there is an undersupply of the superior stocks — 

 those stocks which carry the germ plasm of leadership, talent, and ability. 

 Some nations have risen rapidly in culture and efficiency and subsequently 

 fallen with equal rapidity. Is the United States to be one of these? 



In times of war, when our national safety is seriously threatened, we have 

 not hesitated to conscript the able-bodied and clear-headed manhood of the 

 nation — our very best stock — for an army of defense for the protection of 

 our civilization and institutions. Would it not be equally fitting, since it is 

 within our power, to conscript — literally to draft — this great horde of de- 

 fective individuals who are not only a curse to the society of today, but who 

 are also the carriers of degeneracy to future generations? Why not con- 

 script these undesirables for the common weal, and then, after they are 

 examined, studied, and classified, take such action as will not only be for 

 their best good, but which will also be in the interests of the welfare of soci- 

 ety as a whole, both today and for all time to come? 



If we should thus conscript our degenerates, sanely classify and properly 

 employ, incarcerate, or sterilize them, within a very few years, most of our 

 charities, which are dealing largely with problems resulting from feeble- 

 mindedness, would go out of business; most of our jails and brothels would 

 be empty; our courts would languish for want of cases; and fully three-fourths 

 of our philanthropic and reformatory work having to do with poverty, vice, 

 intemperance, delinquency, and crime would stop for want of the feeble- 

 minded grist which today keeps these mills of charity grinding. 



American conditions call for thoughtful consideration — for serious study. 

 The problems of the hour challenge our immediate consideration. Our 

 national life needs to be studied in the light of the rise and fall of other 

 nations. We are but a young people, and now is the time, in our adoles- 

 cence as it were, carefully to take stock, earnestly to inquire into and recog- 

 nize our fundamental defects, and then with patriotic courage and stalwart 

 bravery to consecrate our hands to the task and dedicate our minds to the 

 cause of turning away the swelling tide of moral decadence and mental 

 defectiveness before this dire threat of degeneracy shall have time to assume 

 more serious proportions, and before the racial deterioration which now 

 looms in the not far distant future shall have, to further degree, undermined 

 the stability and intellectual greatness of America and Americans. 



