370 E. S. GOSNEY 



and to posterity. The intelligent, successful, educated citizens will control 

 the number of their offspring to suit themselves. We hope that in time 

 it will become popular and fashionable for such parents to have four or more 

 children. It is the unfit that is dangerous to civilization. The real problem 

 is to prevent their inferior posterity from deteriorating the race. 



Nature's law of the survival of the fittest took care of that problem in 

 past ages. In those stages of race development it was only the physically 

 strong and mentally alert that could survive the severe tests of endurance, 

 reach manhood and womanhood, and become the fathers and mothers of 

 the next generation. "Nature bred from the top." 



With the dawn of the spirit of charity and human sympathy, of which 

 we are justly proud, nature's hard but effective law was nullified. The 

 weak and unfit are nursed to maturity and allowed to reproduce their kind. 

 Our charity organizations have not completed their job until they have 

 made some provision for the prevention of reproduction in the recognized 

 cases of the hereditary inadequate. 



The method of segregation is impractical, because no country has suf- 

 ficient buildings to house more than a small per cent of the increasing multi- 

 tudes of that class. Besides it must be remembered, such a method means 

 imprisonment and unhappiness for the unfortunate victims. 



Birth control by contraceptives cannot be used by the unfit. They have 

 not the necessary intelligence, stability, or will power. Sterilization, as 

 used in California continuously for 23 years, offers the only adequate method 

 of materially checking this approaching shadow of race degeneracy. The 

 study of actual results in more than 6,000 cases by the Human Betterment 

 Foundation has shown that the operation did not in any degree unsex the 

 patient, that it had no effect upon the health or sex life of the patient, except 

 to make parenthood impossible, that the patients with few exceptions were 

 pleased with the results, that the families of the patients, the social workers 

 parole officers, and physicians familiar with the work were practically a unit 

 in favor of sterilization as practiced in California. The same report further 

 shows that among the feebleminded girls released on parole after ster- 

 ilization, most of them had made good in their social adjustments, largely 

 as servants in homes, many were married to men of similarly limited men- 

 tality, and such marriages were as successful as usual. They could never 

 have properly cared for children, particularly deficient children. Such unfit 

 and their families, when the problem is understood, welcome sterilization. 



The misinformation or utter lack of information as to eugenic sterilization 

 among the educated as well as the uneducated people is simply monumental. 

 An editorial in a prominent magazine recently referred to eugenic ster- 



