“It is, indeed, more than likely that the presence of this impairment in a mitigated form is responsible for no little of the defective character, the diminution of mental and moral fiber at the present day,” states Dr. Tredgold.(2) Such populations, this distinguished authority might have added, form the veritable “cultures” not only for contagious physical diseases but for mental instability and irresponsibility also.  They are susceptible, exploitable, hysterical, non-resistant to external suggestion.  Devoid of stamina, such folk become mere units in a mob.  “The habit of crowd-making is daily becoming a more serious menace to civilization,” writes Everett Dean Martin.  “Our society is becoming a veritable babel of gibbering crowds."(3) It would be only the incorrigible optimist who refused to see the integral relation between this phenomenon and the indiscriminate breeding by which we recruit our large populations.

The danger of recruiting our numbers from the most “fertile stocks” is further emphasized when we recall that in a democracy like that of the United States every man and woman is permitted a vote in the government, and that it is the representatives of this grade of intelligence who may destroy our liberties, and who may thus be the most far-reaching peril to the future of civilization.

“It is a pathological worship of mere number,” writes Alleyne Ireland, “which has inspired all the efforts—­the primary, the direct election of Senators, the initiative, the recall and the referendum—­to cure the evils of mob rule by increasing the size of the mob and extending its powers."(4)

Equality of political power has thus been bestowed upon the lowest elements of our population.  We must not be surprised, therefore, at the spectacle of political scandal and graft, of the notorious and universally ridiculed low level of intelligence and flagrant stupidity exhibited by our legislative bodies.  The Congressional Record mirrors our political imbecility.

All of these dangers and menaces are acutely realized by the Eugenists; it is to them that we are most indebted for the proof that reckless spawning carries with it the seeds of destruction.  But whereas the Galtonians reveal themselves as unflinching in their investigation and in their exhibition of fact and diagnoses of symptoms, they do not on the other hand show much power in suggesting practical and feasible remedies.

On its scientific side, Eugenics suggests the reestabilishment of the balance between the fertility of the “fit” and the “unfit.”  The birth-rate among the normal and healthier and finer stocks of humanity, is to be increased by awakening among the “fit” the realization of the dangers of a lessened birth-rate in proportion to the reckless breeding among the “unfit.”  By education, by persuasion, by appeals to racial ethics and religious motives, the ardent Eugenist hopes to increase the fertility of the “fit.”  Professor Pearson thinks that it is especially necessary to awaken the hardiest stocks to this duty.  These stocks, he says, are to be found chiefly among the skilled artisan class, the intelligent working class.  Here is a fine combination of health and hardy vigor, of sound body and sound mind.