4 HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EUGENICS 



probable slow tendency of this proportion to increase is 

 deserving of serious attention. 



It is a reproach to our intelligence that we as a people, 

 proud in other respects of our control of nature, should 

 have to support about half a milUon insane, feeble-minded, 

 epileptic, blind and deaf, 80,000 prisoners and 100,000 

 paupers at a cost of over 100 milhon dollars per year. A 

 new plague that rendered four per cent of our population, 

 chiefly at the most productive age, not merely incompetent 

 but a burden costing 100 million dollars yearly to support, 

 would instantly attract universal attention. But we have 

 become so used to crime, disease and degeneracy that we 

 take them as necessary evils. .That they were so in the 

 world's ignorance is granted; that they must remain so is 

 denied. 



3. The General Procedure in Applied Eugenics 



The general program of the eugenist is clear — ^it is to 

 improve the race by inducing young people to make a more 

 reasonable selection of marriage mates; to fall in love in- 

 telligently. It also includes the control by the state of the 

 propagation of the mentally incompetent. It does not 

 imply destruction of the unfit either before or after birth. 

 It certainly has only disgust for the free love propaganda 

 that some ill-balanced persons have sought to attach to 

 the name. Rather it trusts to that good sense with which 

 the majority of people are possessed and beUeves that in 

 the Hfe of such there comes a time when they realize that 

 they are drifting toward marriage and stop to consider if 

 the contemplated union will result in healthful, mentally 

 well-endowed offspring. At present there are few facts so 

 generally known that they will help such persons in their 

 inquiry. It is the province of the new science of eugenics 

 to study the laws of inheritance of human traits and, as 



