individuals; as economic conditions are straightened out, universal education will become practically feasible.  It is not only as a matter of justice, but in the interests of public welfare, that education should be given to all.  It will actually pay in dollars and cents, in increased efficiency, more intelligent voting, decreased crime, decreased commercial prostitution, and crazy propaganda of all sorts.  The city of Boston was right in inscribing on its public library the motto:  “The commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty.”  What can be done by eugenics?  Environment and education are of enormous importance in determining what the mature individual shall be.  But the result is strictly limited by the material they have to work upon; the individual who is handicapped by heredity cannot expect to catch up with him who starts the race of life better equipped, if both have equally favorable influences and opportunities.  These influences can effect little permanent improvement in the human stock; that can only be radically bettered by seeing to it that individuals of superior stock have children and those of inferior stock do not.  We have “harnessed heredity” to produce better types of wheat and roses and cattle and horses and dogs; why not produce better types of men?  The study of these possibilities constitutes the new science of eugenics, which its founder, Francis Galton, defined as the study of “those agencies which humanity through social control may use for the improvement or the impairment of the racial qualities of future generations.”  Dr. Kellogg defines it as “taking advantage of the facts of heredity to make the human race better.”  “Good breeding of the human species.”  We may first ask what duties the disclosures of this new science lay upon the individual.

(1) The constitutional health of children is partly deter parents at the time of conception and birth.  Most deaths of newborn infants are due to prenatal influences.  Overstrain, malnutrition, alcoholism, and all physical excesses tend to cause physical degeneracy in the offspring.  It is obviously the duty of prospective parents- and that means practically all healthy young people-to keep themselves well and strong, so as to give a good endowment of health to their children.

(2) Feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, some forms of insanity, and some venereal diseases are inheritable defects; those who suffer from them must refrain from having children.  Studies of the “Jukes” family and the “Kallikak” family, and others, show convincingly the spread of these defects where defectives marry.  To bring children into the world to bear such burdens-and to cost the State, as they are almost sure to, for their support [Footnote:  The descendants of the original degenerate couple of “Jukes” cost New York State in seventy-five years $1,300,000.  See R. L. Dugdale, The Jukes.  H. H. Goddard, The Kallikak Family]-ought to be regarded as a grave sin.