398 



IMPROVEMENT OF THE HUMAN RACE 



Since our knowledge of heredity has been increased, the demand 

 has become more urgent that we do something to prevent the race 

 from handing down diseases and other defects, and that we apply 

 to man some of the methods we employ in breeding plants and 

 animals. This is not a new idea ; the Greeks in Sparta had it, 

 Sir Thomas More wrote of it in his Utopia, and to-day it has been 

 brought to us as the science of eugen'ics. The word comes from 

 the Greek word eugenes, which means well born. Eugenics is the 

 science of being well born, or born well, healthy, fit in every way. 

 A tendency to cancer, or tuberculosis, or chorea, or feeble-minded- 

 ness, is a handicap which it is not merely unfair, but criminal, to 

 hand down to posterity. 



Two Notorious Families. — Studies have been made on a num- 

 ber of different families in this country, in which mental and moral 

 defects were present in one or both of the parents as far back as it 

 was possible to trace the family. The ^' Jukes " family is a notori- 

 ous example. " Margaret, the mother of criminals, is the first 

 mother in the family of whom we have record." Up to 1915 there 



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£S E hM 



This chart begins with a grandson of Margaret, " mother of criminals," and 

 shows the character of some of his descendants. Squares represent males ; circles, 

 females. A^", normal ; C, criminal ; Sx, immoral. 



were 2094 members of this family ; 1600 were feeble-minded oi 

 epileptic, 310 were paupers, more than 300 were immoral womenj 

 and 140 were criminals. The family has cost the state of New Yorl 

 more than $2,500,000, besides immensely lowering the moral tone 

 of the communities which the family contaminated. 



Another careful investigation (up to 1912) concerned the " Kal- 

 likak " family. This family was traced to the union of Martii 

 Kallikak, a young soldier of the War of the Revolution, with 



