"Even the best possible system of soil improvement, we must admit, is not the absolute and final solution of this, the most stupendous problem of the United States. If war gives way to peace and pestilence to science, then the time will come when the soils of America shall reach the limit of the highest productive power possible to be permanently maintained, even by the general adoption of the most practical scientific methods; and before that limit is reached, if power, progress, and plenty are to continue in our beloved country, there must be developed and enforced the law of the survival of the fittest; otherwise there is no ultimate future for America different from that of China, India, and Russia, the only great agricultural countries comparable to the United States. An enlightened humanity must grant to all the right to live, but the reproduction and perpetuation of the unfit can never be an absolute and inalienable right. "Under the present laws and customs, a man may spend half his life in the insane asylum or in the penitentiary, and still be the father of a dozen children with degenerate tendencies. There should be no reproduction from convicted criminals, insane persons, and other degenerates. Thieves, grafters, bribers and bribe-takers all belong in the same class, and it should not be left possible for them to reproduce their kind. They are a burden upon the public which the public must bear, but the public is under no obligation to permit their multiplication. The children of such should never become the parents of others. It is a crime against both the child and the public. "No doubt you will consider this extremely visionary, and so it is; but unless America can see a vision somewhat like this, a population that is doubling three or four times each century, and an area of depleted soils that is also increasing at a rapid rate will combine to bring our Ship of State into a current against which we may battle in vain; for there is not another New World to bring new wealth, new prosperity, and new life and light after another period of 'Dark Ages.' "Whether we shall ever apply any such intelligence to the possible improvement of our own race as we have in the great improvement of our cattle and corn is, of course, an open question; but to some extent you will agree that the grafter and the insane, like the poet, are born and not made. Of course there are, and always will be, marked variations, mutants, or 'sports,' but, nevertheless, natural inheritance is the master key to the improvement of every form of life; and it is an encouraging fact that some of the states, as Indiana, for example, have already adopted laws looking toward the reduction of the reproduction of convicted degenerates." CHAPTER XVI PAST SELF REDEMPTION "BUT I have rambled far from the subject assigned me," Percy continued.