Questionable charity--Past protests--An increasing flood of defectives--Natural elimination of defectives done away with--Why not prevent our social maladies?--Eugenics defined--Improved environment alone will not cure racial degeneracy--Heredity and environment--Inter-racial marriage--Human conservation--Kindness in the long run--The problem has two phases--Constructive eugenics must be based on education--Inferior increasing more rapidly than superior stocks--An unselected population may contain much valuable material--The lack of criteria for judging fitness--The college graduate--Native ability, independence and energy eugenically desirable--Four children to each marriage required to maintain a stock--Factors contributing to low birth-rate in desirable strains--The educated public must be made to realize the situation--Utilization of family pride as a basis for constructive eugenics--The tendency for like to marry like--Public opinion as an incentive to action--Choosing a marriage mate means choosing a parent--The best eugenic marriage also a love match--The elimination of the grossly unfit urgent--Suggested remedies-- Inefficacy of laws which forbid marriage of mental defectives-- Systems of mating impracticable in the main--Corrective mating presupposes knowledge of eugenics--Segregation has many advocates--Sterilization as a eugenic measure--To what conditions applicable--In insanity--In feeble-mindedness--In cases of epilepsy--Sterilization laws--Social dangers in vasectomy--Our present knowledge insufficient--Sterilization laws on trial--An educated public sentiment the most valuable eugenic agent--The question of personal liberty--Education of women in eugenics needed--Much yet to be done--A working program--Which shall it be? GLOSSARY 343 REFERENCES FOR FURTHER READING AND STUDY 355 INDEX 361 BEING WELL-BORN CHAPTER I HEREDITY It is a commonplace fact that offspring tend to resemble their parents. So commonplace, indeed, that few stop to wonder at it. No one misunderstands us when we say that such and such a young man is "a chip off the old block," for that is simply an emphatic way of stating that he resembles one or the other of his parents. The same is true of such familiar expressions as "what's bred in the bone," "blood will tell," and kindred catch phrases. All are but recognitions of the same common fact that offspring exhibit various characteristics similar to those of their progenitors.