=Unpardonable to Permit Delinquent Defectives to Multiply Their Kind.--=As for our mental defectives and moral imbeciles, knowing now how strongly hereditary the underlying factors of these conditions are, and with no preventive or curative agents in sight, to let them produce progeny, is clearly unpardonable. CHAPTER X RACE BETTERMENT THROUGH HEREDITY Most of us have heard in one form or another the fairy story of the youth on adventure bent, who was captured by the giant and under dire penalty in case of failure was set the task of sweeping out the giant's stable before sundown. The peculiarity of this stable, it will be recalled, was that, as fast as the refuse was swept out at the door an even greater quantity poured in through the windows so that the sweeper, just in proportion to his zeal, became more and more encumbered with his burden. =A Questionable Form of Charity.--=Though we smile at the childishness of this legend, are we not as a civilized people attempting through our charities a feat parallel to that of this unfortunate youth? We foster and favor our social wastage with the inevitable result that it runs riot under our sheltering hand and deluges us with an ever accumulating flood of its like. For are we not constantly building more asylums, sanitaria and prisons, to preserve more unfit, to produce more defectives, to require still greater numbers of asylums, sanitaria and prisons, to preserve more unfit, and so on in unending progression? At nearly every period of history there have been certain individuals who have seen the necessity of a state eliminating its supply of defectives. =Past Protests.--=For instance, we find the importance of this strongly urged by Plato. After pointing out the fact that the shepherd, in order to maintain the standard of his flocks, bred only from the best individuals, as did likewise the huntsman with his dogs and horses, and the fancier with his various pets, Plato went on to show the danger to the state of allowing the constantly increasing body of defectives and degenerates to multiply their kind. Repeated expression of the same idea has occurred from time to time during the succeeding centuries. Little heed was paid to these remonstrances, however, with the result that is known to us all. To-day, "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" is still sung by the poet, but the original nations themselves have long since passed into the night. =An Increasing Flood of Defectives.--=Strive to ignore the unpleasant facts as we may, we have to admit that the same problem of what the human harvest shall be is with us in grave form to-day. The alarming phase of the situation, however, lies in the fact that we are facing an ever increasing flood of social wastage.