In a hundred years from now our descendants will read the history of the present time with amazement. The fact that with all our enlightenment and advantages we have permitted an economic and social condition to exist which produces a crop of half a million insane, feeble-minded, epileptic, blind and deaf, eighty thousand prisoners and one hundred thousand paupers which cost us one hundred millions to support, will seem to an enlightened and humane posterity as little short of monstrous. Why do we look passively on while this great menace to our race advances at an ever increasing ratio?
Child culture can no more be left to chance than can fruit culture, bee culture or cattle culture. Since our agricultural colleges have installed chairs in animal husbandry which supply thorough courses of instruction as to the propagation of domestic animals and plants, by what strange and pernicious process of reasoning do we conclude that the propagation of the human species can be conducted intelligently without enlightened preparation and instruction? Since it is the recognized duty of the state to provide education for its people, we may well ask if preparation for the serious responsibilities of parentage is not as worthy of a place in our school and college curriculums as the breeding of cattle or fruit raising.
If the voters of the United States were aware of the menace in this ever-increasing production of the unfit, they would cal't special elections to pass laws providing for the segregation and sterilization of these unfortunates; and to insure the right environment for normal children in order that they may not suffer deterioration. Consider the case of a feeble-minded woman of twenty-six, the mother of five illegitimate children. What elements of intelligence or self control think you, went into their mental or moral makeup? Still, society will not be slow in demanding that these children conduct themselves according to the rules and regulations laid down for the government of the normal person; nor will it fail to call them to account for infractions of these laws.
Another instance: A pitiful unfortunate, defective in speech, repulsive in person, unable to pass even into the second grade in school, is practically sold to a middle-aged man, a moral pervert. The community was shocked at the marriage; but it was nobody's business, so nobody interfered. Then, in an unspeakably filthy hovel on a lonely homestead, brutally treated, inadequately fed, she brought her first child into the world. Neighbors did what they could. They provided clothing for the luckless mite for whose coming no loving preparation had been made. It is probable that those garments were the only whole and clean ones he ever possessed until the state suddenly, though tardily, became interested in its ward and gave him a suit of stripes. Five other children were born to this woman; and all, including the mother, were in the county poorhouse the last time I saw them. The father is in an insane asylum.
There is vital need of an educated biological conscience which shall recognize these unfortunate defectives-not as enemies-but as victims of society to be protected from evil environment and trained for such useful work as they are capable of doing, at the same time taking measures to prevent them from reproducing and perpetuating degeneracy and abnormality. It is estimated that two-thirds of all feeble-mindedness is due to heredity; the remaining one-third to disease or accident.