girl, only strong enough to be innocent, must be protected in her innocence, for she cannot protect herself. I have not made a very careful estimate of the necessary initial expense of the plan I propose. I know it will amount to a large sum. Perhaps for the whole country, divided among the different states, as much as the cost of five or even six battleships. Perhaps as much as Mr. Carnegie's libraries have cost him. Perhaps twice as much as the amount of the fine which the Standard Oil Company did not pay. But whatever the cost, the expenditure should be made, for it would certainly be an excellent investment. From the day we had corralled and properly cared for all the present stock of degenerates the burdens of the citizens would begin to lighten, not only those of feeble-mindedness, epilepsy and insanity, although the results would be seen there the most rapidly, but the burdens of pauperism, drunkenness, the dreadful things which come from prostitution, all those evils which we regard as such a serious menace to us, which add to the burden of the hard-working, underpaid taxpayer, the man who pays high rent for a city tenement, the man who pays taxes on his little farm. So hard it seems sometimes to pay those taxes to support people he has not much interest in. It would relieve all those burdens more quickly than anything else you could do. I think it is practical and sensible. It is not a new scheme. Many of the states are doing it a little. Enough is being done to clearly indicate the proper method for the whole work. In my state we have five hospitals for the insane and we are building a sixth. We have one institution for the feeble-minded and we have begun one for the epileptic. We have about equal numbers of insane and epileptic. In this country we provide fairly good care for about eighty per cent of all the insane. We provide for about fifteen per cent of the idiotic and epileptic something like fairly good care, and the danger to the body politic is ten times as great from the latter class as from the former. We fear the insane and despise the idiot. So we give the insane care and the idiot neglect, while in nine times out of ten the danger to us is much greater from the idiot. The danger of increase is extremely great from the idiotic and from the insane relatively little. Every man and woman ought to read the presidential address. of the last National Conference of Charities and Correction, entitled "The Burden of Feeble-Mindedness." The president, very familiar with the work being done for the feeble-minded, told in a plain, simple way the exact facts, and showed how this feeblemindedness, or degeneracy, affects not only insanity, idiocy and epilepsy, not only those diseases of the mind or malformations. of the brain, but also affects every other form of trouble. It affects the educational problem, the crime problem, and, more or less, nearly all our social problems. In an appendix are given statistics of a great many families of degenerates and the degrees of heredity which occur in them are shown. When you have read that address you will realize the need of the plan I propose or of some other and better one. For the classes I have named I think public opinion is ready to approve and endorse some such plan as I suggest. There are other classes for which we shall be ready when we are completely doing the work which we have already begun. What these next classes will be I am not prepared to say. Perhaps the chronic drunkards may be among them; certainly the habitual tramp will be and other classes of paupers, besides the one I have described. I do not offer a panacea for the ills of society. Possibly positive eugenics, the conscious selection of the best types for reproduction may come some day. Possibly, probably, it will never come. But for the important step in negative eugenics which I have briefly described, I believe the world is ready, nay is impatiently, waiting. PART TWO Influence of City Environment on POPULAR RECREATION AND PUBLIC MORALITY BY LUTHER H. GULICK, M.D., CHAIRMAN, PLAYGROUND EXTENSION COMMITTEE, RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION, NEW YORK CITY EVIDENCES OF RACE DEGENERATION IN THE UNITED STATES ESTABLISHMENT OF A NATIONAL CHILDREN'S BUREAU BY HON. HERBERT PARSONS, MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM NEW YORK CITY DETERIORATION AND THE NEED FOR CITY SURVEY BY PROFESSOR PATRICK GEDDES, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DUNDEE, SCOTLAND |