“To bring about the adoption of systems of farming that will restore our depleted Eastern and Southern soils, and that will maintain or increase the productive power of our remaining fertile lands of the Great Central West, where we are now producing half of the total corn crop of the entire world, is not only the most important material problem of the United States; but to bring this about is worthy of, and will require, the best thought of the most influential men of America.  Without a prosperous agriculture here there can be no permanent prosperity for our American institutions.  While some small countries can support themselves by conducting trade, commerce, and manufacture, for other countries, American agriculture must not only be self-supporting, but, in large degree, agriculture must support our other great industries.

“Without agriculture, the coal and iron would remain in the earth, the forest would be left uncut, the railroads would be abandoned, the cities depopulated, and the wooded lands and water-ways would again be used only for hunting and fishing.  Shall we not remember, for example, that the coal mine yields a single harvest—­one crop—­and is then forever abandoned; while the soil must yield a hundred—­yes, a thousand crops, and even then it must be richer and more productive than at the beginning, if those who come after us are to continue to multiply and replenish the earth.

“Even the best possible system of soil improvement, we must admit, is not the absolute and final solution of this, the most stupendous problem of the United States.  If war gives way to peace and pestilence to science, then the time will come when the soils of America shall reach the limit of the highest productive power possible to be permanently maintained, even by the general adoption of the most practical scientific methods; and before that limit is reached, if power, progress, and plenty are to continue in our beloved country, there must be developed and enforced the law of the survival of the fittest; otherwise there is no ultimate future for America different from that of China, India, and Russia, the only great agricultural countries comparable to the United States.  An enlightened humanity must grant to all the right to live, but the reproduction and perpetuation of the unfit can never be an absolute and inalienable right.

“Under the present laws and customs, a man may spend half his life in the insane asylum or in the penitentiary, and still be the father of a dozen children with degenerate tendencies.  There should be no reproduction from convicted criminals, insane persons, and other degenerates.  Thieves, grafters, bribers and bribe-takers all belong in the same class, and it should not be left possible for them to reproduce their kind.  They are a burden upon the public which the public must bear, but the public is under no obligation to permit their multiplication.  The children of such should never become the parents of others.  It is a crime against both the child and the public.