344 E. BLANCHE STERLING 



distant future. If the eugenicist can provide us with a better population, 

 our work will be more productive of good than it is now, and far less costly. 



There can be little doubt that eugenics can and will make this contribu- 

 tion, chiefly through education of the public and research. Of all forms of 

 health education, eugenic education needs to be on the soundest foundation. 

 We cannot put out propaganda so profoundly affecting human life without 

 being more than reasonably sure of our ground. The researches of the mem- 

 bers of this and similar organizations are accumulating basic facts for the 

 foundation of this public education. 



We know there are certain types which are a drag on higher civilization. 

 Unfortunately, we are not always sure just how and when some of these 

 types will develop. In some instances the laws of Mendelian inheritance 

 are closely followed and we can predict with considerable assurance the types 

 of offspring likely to result from certain matings. In other instances our 

 knowledge is far from being complete. This seems to be especially true in 

 the case of some of the insanities. 



We are still too uncertain and have too little scientific data to justify our 

 incorporating any hard and fast dicta on the inheritance of mental disease 

 in our eugenics education program. And because we feel eugenics education 

 to be vitally important to the life of the nation, research work must be con- 

 tinued in order that we may be able to give a reason for the faith that is in 

 us. We look to eugenic research to give us a better child in the future. 



When we come to consider any possible contributions which child hygiene 

 may make to eugenics, I feel that we have something to offer. We are 

 agreed that eugenics, in its broader aspect, is not concerned with heredity 

 alone but with the interaction of heredity and environment, and our efforts 

 in child hygiene tend to provide an environment worthy of the best inherited 

 traits. By promoting the general health and nutrition of the child, protect- 

 ing him from disease, and providing the best mental and physical surround- 

 ings, we furnish opportunity for the development of the potentialities in- 

 herent in good stock. A continuously bad environment is a handicap to 

 the best stock. 



There is also no doubt that we are doing something to prevent a decrease 

 in the good stock in the population. In laying so much stress on the fact 

 that we are saving the unfit, the fact that we are also saving the fit seems to 

 have been forgotten. If by various measures of child hygiene we save a 

 definite percentage of children each year, it is reasonable to believe that 

 some of those saved will be "builders of America," and that they will pro- 

 pagate their kind. Without our efforts some of this good stock may have 

 succumbed. Very superior stock, both mentally and physically, may have 



