=Property qualification.=--A property qualification, or its equivalent in an established remunerative calling, profession or occupation, should be required as a condition for marriage license. It is a known fact that pauper families furnish more than their proportion of criminals and other classes of dependents. =The victim of venereal disease.=--Persons having a venereal disease, in a mild form, should be allowed to marry only when a competent health board, after careful examination, decides that they are entirely free from poison, then, and then only after a reasonable time has expired since being treated. If the applicant for marriage license has at one time had one of the worst forms of venereal disease, he should be forever debarred from the privilege of marriage. The need of these restrictive and prohibitory marriage laws will be better understood and appreciated by you when I give a few statements from the best obtainable authority. Eighty per cent, of the children born blind is due to gonorrhœal infection. (Education with Med. Prof.) This is nearly always due to the uncured condition of the father. Neiser tells us that there are over 30,000 blind persons in Germany whose blindness is due to gonorrhœal ophthalmia. Pinnard claims that sixty to seventy per cent. of hereditary syphilitics die at or before birth, and that those who survive are unfit to meet the battles of life; 20,000 children die every year in France from syphilitic conditions. Dr. Fournier states that in his practice seventy-five per cent. of the syphilis in married women could be traced to their husbands. Dr. Morrow puts it at seventy per cent. A large per cent. of the surgical operations of a sexual nature among married women is due to venereal disease contracted from their husbands. =Sterilization a remedy.=--To prevent unsuitable marriages, by law, would in a measure bring relief, yet, the degenerate, criminals and imbeciles would, to a considerable extent, continue their propagation. This class cares but little for marriage. The ablest physicians of this country, the leaders in the great purity movement, and many advanced thinkers in other professions, are rapidly committing themselves to the opinion that all the worst cases of hereditary degeneracy should be deprived of the creative function. In females this operation is attended by only one-sixth the fatalities of child-birth. In males it is attended by no danger to life. The results would be absolutely effectual. The feeble-minded class would be much more easily managed and the degenerate criminal would settle down to the life of a peaceable citizen. At first, one naturally opposes this measure as a solution to the problem. Later, all opposition to it vanishes and it then appears to be a most kind, benevolent and philanthropic solution of this vital problem.