“All of us know that in many instances the criminal inherits his instincts. The detective of forty years’ experience will tell you that a large percentage of prison inmates are hereditary criminals. Now, if the grandfather had been sterilized, what a lot of crime and suffering would have been prevented. In our enlightened age we should stop this hideous reproduction of criminals and sterilize the grandson for the good it will do in the coming years. “Certain families in Virginia have been regularly represented on our prison rolls for the past fifty years, and will go on unless the breed is stopped. I have sterilized two prisoners in my connection with the State Penitentiary, and in each case it proved as proper a health measure as the removal of an appendix.” In a paper on “Tuberculosis and the Colored Convict,” Dr. Julian W. Sloan, of Richmond, said in part: “Taking up the colored convict himself as a cause we readily recognize in his heredity, his racial predilection for tuberculosis, his poverty with its attendant evils, his almost total ignorance of proper living methods, factors potent for the propagation and spread of tuberculosis. “Add to these factors inherent in nearly all our colored convicts the devitalizing and resistance-lowering factor of cell life--a factor in itself capable of so increasing the receptivity of convicts as to leap with a single bound to the first place as a means by which tuberculosis is propagated and spread. Add again labor in factories where hygiene and sanitation do not hold sway, where factory dust constantly fills the lungs of the convict. Add yet again the depressing effects inevitable from even the best prison discipline--add these causes together, I say, and we have a sum total that appals us and seems to deprive the poor convict of every chance to escape this terrible scourge. “Conquering tuberculosis in our prisons, as elsewhere, is not to follow upon any one method or agency or from the unaided efforts of the medical profession. I am here reminded to quote to this effect from Dr. Alfred Meyer, of New York: ‘The most hopeful sign in the world-wide combat with tuberculosis is the steady growth and coöperation among all the agencies engaged. The first impulse in the campaign came from the medical profession. Then gradually there came to our assistance sociologists, philanthropists, charitable and religious organizations, and finally municipal, State and national governments. If the chain which is to bind the scourge is ever to be forged it will be by the union of all the links hitherto disunited and by the substitution of systematic for sporadic efforts. That we are on our way toward this end was well illustrated during the recent session of the International Congress and Exhibition on Tuberculosis at Washington.’