When we inquire into the cause of this trend toward race degeneracy, we find that poverty and the inability of the workingman to support large families, luxurious living, and the life of ease and amusement on the part of the women of wealth; the fact that an increasingly large number of women have entered professions that prevent motherhood, and that the number of apartment-houses where children are not wanted are on the increase, all play their part. In this age of intense living, it is not to be wondered at that many shrink from the responsibility of rearing children, and the same conditions that contribute to this decadent ideal intensifies sex-hunger, and it is this dominating passion that tolerates and makes possible the most frightful crime of the age--infanticide. Greece and Rome paved the way for their ultimate annihilation when their beautiful women ceased to bear children and their men sought the companionship of courtesans. Baby contests have demonstrated that only one child in ten was found to be good enough to justify a second examination. In a test examination in the public schools, only eight in five thousand were competent to qualify in all the tests. One of these eight was a Chinese boy and another an American-born son of a native Greek. Of the twenty million school-children in the United States, not less than 75 per cent. need immediate attention for physical defects. While man has been assiduously improving everything else, he has neglected to better his own condition. Every animal that man has taken from its native haunts and domesticated, he has efficiently improved. He has even produced more marvelous results by the application of the same principles to the vegetable kingdom. In his haste to civilize himself, however, he has failed to apply the principles that are essential to self-preservation. It is regrettable, also, to know that, while the government has spent many thousands of dollars in sending out literature to the farmers, instructing them how to raise profitable crops and to breed prize horses and pigs, absolutely none of the public money has been used in instructing American mothers how to raise healthy children. [Page xxvi] A distinguished insurance expert has proved that there was an increase of nearly 100 per cent. in the mortality from degenerative diseases in the United States between 1880 and 1909. The growing prevalence of these diseases indicates a falling-off in the vitality of the race. It means that the diseases of old age are invading the younger ranks. The Life Extension Institute, of New York City, in its recent report, states that "forty of every hundred men and women employed in the Wall Street district require medical attention; twenty of the forty need it immediately, and ten of the forty must have it to avert serious results."