476 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 
individuals probably were the bearers of very little germplasm that 
we are nationally not better off without. 
Eugenically, the weak point in the present application of immi- 
gration laws is that criteria for exclusion are phenotypic in nature 
rather than genotypic, and consequently much bad germplasm comes 
through our gates hidden from the view of inspectors because the 
bearers are heterozygous, wearing a cloak of desirability over undesir- 
able traits. 
It is not enough to lift the eyelid of a prospective parent of Ameri- 
can citizens to discover whether he has some kind of an eye-disease or 
to count the contents of his purse to see if he can pay his own way. 
The official ought to know if eye-disease runs in the immigrant’s family 
and whether he comes from a race of people which, through chronic 
shiftlessness or lack of initiative, have always carried light purses. 
In selecting horses for a stock-farm an expert horseman might rely 
to a considerable extent upon his judgment of horseflesh based upon 
inspection alone, but the wise breeder does more than take the chances 
of an ordinary horse trader. He wants to be assured of the pedigree 
of his prospective stock. It is to be hoped that the time will come 
when we, as a nation, will rise above the hazardous methods of the 
horse trader in selecting from the foreign applicants who knock at our 
portals, and that we will exercise a more fundamental discrimination 
than such a haphazard method affords, by demanding a knowledge of 
the germplasm of these candidates for citizenship, as displayed in 
their pedigrees. 
This may possibly be accomplished by having trained inspectors 
located abroad in the communities from which our immigrants come, 
whose duty it shall be to look up the ancestry of prospective applicants 
and to stamp desirable ones with approval. The national expense 
of such a program of genealogical inspection would be far less than 
the maintenance of introduced defectives, in fact it would greatly 
decrease the number of defectives in the country. At the present 
time this country is spending over one hundred million dollars a year 
on defectives alone, and each year sees this amount increased. 
The United States Department of Agriculture already has field 
agents scouring every land for desirable animals and plants to intro- 
duce into this country, as well as stringent laws to prevent the importa- 
tion of dangerous weeds, parasites, and organisms of various kinds. 
Is the inspection and supervision of human blood less important ? 
