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C. Judson Herrick 
reduced about 25 per cent, and this reduction is sure to continue 
with the diffusion among the people of better sanitary and medical 
knowledge. But the birth rate has fallen off even more rapidly 
and the percentage of defectives has increased. 
This is the great problem of the twentieth century — eugenics. 
It is by no means insoluble and we already have the data neces- 
sary to make great progress. Our knowledge of human heredity 
is well advanced. We know, for instance, that certain defects, 
like congenital deaf-mutism, will reappear in every generation as 
a family trait when two deaf mutes marry; but, on the other hand, 
this defect can be bred out of a family by suitable crosses with 
family lines in which it is unknown. The extreme forms of 
degeneracy, like feeble-mindedness, are distinctly hereditary. In 
one case on record, in a single family of 319 members many died 
in infancy, and of the surviving children 119 are feeble-minded 
and only 42 are sufficiently near to normal to be able to care for 
themselves. In such cases, all of the children should be kept 
under surveillance and prevented (by committal to institutions, 
if necessary) from the inevitable propagation of their defects 
which results from intermarriage with their own kind. 
Dean Sumner, of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral of Chicago, 
has recently announced that he will in the future solemnize no 
marriages save in cases where both parties bring a certificate from 
a reputable physician of freedom from certain physical and mental 
taints. This marks one of the greatest advance movements of 
our time, and the day should speedily come when the matter of 
the granting of marriage licenses will be placed by the State in 
the hands of an expert medical board. Today we examine and 
license all applicants who wish to run an automobile or a pedlar’s 
wagon, but make the assumption of the responsibilities of matri- 
mony a subject for flippancy and jest. 
These are simply illustrations of practical movements which 
can be begun at once, to ensure the improvement of our heredi- 
tary racial stock. The whole matter of ‘^National Vitality, its 
Wastes and Conservation,” is discussed in a comprehensive way 
in the Bulletin of the Committee of 100, published by the Govern- 
ment Printing Office at Washington in 1909. 
President Taft, on the 9th of this month, signed a bill creating 
a Children’s Bureau in the National Department of Commerce 
and Labor, which is destined to play a large part in the future 
