OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS AND NATIONAL EUGENICS 
3v 
be the better for coming. Steamship 
agents and brokers all over Europe and 
eastern Asia are today deciding for us 
the character of the American race of 
the future. 
It is no argument against practicing 
eugenic ideas, in the selection of our 
alien immigrants, to say that the New 
England country towns are full of hope- 
lessly degenerate native Americans, who 
are inferior, mentally, morally, physi- 
cally, to the sturdy peasants of Europe. 
The degeneracy of our country native 
stock is probably chiefly due to the draw- 
ing ofl: of the stronger and more capable 
men and women to the cities ; to pro- 
longed inbreeding, and to the continued 
reproduction of f eeble-mindedness, which 
is rife in many of our country districts. 
It will not help to reduce the number of 
our native degenerates if we admit alien 
degenerates. National eugenics, for us, 
means the prevention of the breeding of 
the unfit native, as well as the prevention 
of the immigration and of the breeding 
after admission of the unfit alien. 
care;?ul about importing cattle;, 
care;i,e;ss about importing 
MAN 
Should we not exercise at least the 
same care in admitting human beings 
that we are now exercising in relation 
to animals, to insect pests, or to disease 
germs? Yet it is actually true that we 
are today taking more pains to see that 
a Hereford bull or a Southdown ewe, 
imported for the improvement of our 
cattle, are sound and free from disease 
than we take in the admission of an alien 
man or woman who will be the father 
and mother of American children. We 
do not hesitate to prohibit the importa- 
tion of cattle from a foreign country 
where a serious cattle disease is preva- 
lent. It is only in very extreme cases, 
indeed, that we have ever taken such a 
step in connection with the importation 
of aliens. Yet there are certain parts of 
Europe from which no aliens should be 
allowed to enter this country, for rea- 
sons which are eugenically of the first 
importance. 
Our present laws aim to exclude some 
twenty-one classes of mentally, physi- 
cally, morally, and economically unde- 
sirable aliens. On paper the list of the 
excluded classes is long and formidable, 
and seems more than sufficient to accom- 
plish our eugenic purposes ; but the fact 
is that careful and unprejudiced students 
of immigration agree that these laws do 
^^rt keep out the unfit so as to preserve 
the status quo, to say nothing of promot- 
ing eugenic improvement. We already 
have an army of probably not less than 
150,000 feeble-minded in the United 
States, of whom only about 10 per cent 
are in institutions, the rest being free to 
propagate their kind. And of those in 
institutions, the large proportion are kept 
there only temporarily, being at liberty 
for much of the time during their repro- 
duction period. 
The same is true of thousands of 
criminals, whom we shut up for varying 
periods of time, but allow, in the inter- 
vals when they are out of prison, to 
populate the world with children, much 
of whose inheritance is criminal. We 
are today legalizing the begetting of 
criminal children by failing to give per- 
manent custodial care to habitual crimi- 
nals. 
Further, there are over 150,000 insane 
in the institutions of the United States 
alone, and of these many have already 
left offspring to perpetuate their insanity. 
In spite of this appalling situation — 
appalling from the standpoint of mere 
sentiment and of mere philanthropy — 
doubly appalling from the standpoint of 
eugenics, we have been admitting alien 
insane and alien imbeciles, and alien epi- 
leptics and alien criminals, partly because 
of a lax administration of the law under 
former administrations, partly because 
the law is incapable, under existing con- 
ditions, of effective enforcement. The 
disproportionate increase of alien insane, 
of alien imbeciles, of alien criminals, and 
many other facts which may be ascer- 
tained by any person who is interested 
in this question, shows that, as just 
stated, our immigration laws do not now 
enable us to preserve the status quo. 
Sir Francis Galton has clearly shown 
that "each married degenerate produces 
on the average one child who is as de- 
generate as himself or herself, and others 
in whom the taint is latent, but liable to 
appear in a succeeding generation." 
