a name, to the statistician a number, but to the City and the State they mean cemeteries, hospitals, prisons, asylums, as well as barracks. But I am not dealing here with the whole problem of poverty. Eugenics aims at breeding the fittest from the fittest and it sees

Even in the most unpromising surroundings one sees noble sparks of life not to be quenched by poverty or any other vital enemy. The Christ continues to be born in a stable.

It is when we reach the exclusive circles of the rich that we see how the race is decaying. Children are at a discount. Parentage is coming to be considered a waste of time. A man cannot spare his wife from social functions. Dressmakers agree that the coming of a child destroys symmetry and prevents fashionable tight-lacing. Besides there are other pastimes to consider. Neither the State nor the individual will make the public believe that the production of healthy children is as important as baseball, horse-racing or stamp collecting. Millions of dollars are spent on securing the best breeds of horses. Seven thousand dollars recently was the price of a single four-cent stamp. Dogs, in the highest circles, have luxuries of food, clothing and housing which the servants who feed them never possessed. Dog-cemeteries exist where more money is spent on the tombstone of a dead dog than would keep a live human family for a year. "Foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests" but the children of the poor starve and the rich prefer the pastime of the moment to the permanent interests of the race.

Degeneracy is not a disease by specific intention, it is an attribute to our social neglect, it is the result of our inattention to vital issues, it is a sign that we are no longer keenly anxious to elevate the race. Race improvement requires, under modern conditions of life, eternal vigilance and deliberate aim. The prolific character of the degenerate type has often been remarked. It finds expression in the homely proverb "Ill weeds grow apace." But the "growth" is in the undesirable direction—they do not grow better. If it were not for the wasteful cruelty of it all one would see some gleam of satisfaction in the admitted fact that many of these breeds of degenerates are almost as short-lived as they are prolific. The handsome villain of contemporary romance, healthy in physique and mentally alert is a misleading picture entirely at variance with fact. The degenerate child is neither beautiful, robust nor mentally sound. While the number of children per family is four on the average, Dr. Tredgold tells us that the average of births in a degenerate family is over seven, in addition to the still-born who in the case of the degenerates amount to about fifteen per cent of the children born. Almost every prison in the civilised world bears record to the direct injury inflicted on the community by the degenerate class. The feeble-minded alone amount to an appreciable percentage of the ordinary population of our prisons, and, if to these are added other victims of hereditary degeneracy, there will be left only what may be described as the "Criminals by accident." I am not claiming too much for the science when I say that Eugenics is capable of revolutionising these terrible conditions. The hereditary nature of the taint of criminality is proved by the history and bodily characteristics of its unhappy victims. Eugenists as such have no special remedy for the present day criminality. Their work is to point to the breeding of the criminal and to urge the importance of stopping his multiplication. As soon as society begins to take steps towards cutting off the supply of the degenerate there will be no object in perpetuating cruel punishments whose only object was deterrence.

Alcoholism may be treated as a separate phase of this great question or it may be regarded as but a manifestation of feeble-mindedness. In either case it can be shown that the children of degenerates are those most often prone to the drink evil. It is not a fact that a drunkard's children necessarily grow up drunkards. This assertion which is sometimes met with in Temperance literature is based on a misconception of what heredity is and a misunderstanding of what alcoholism is. Alcoholism tends to eliminate the alcoholic. The children of the drunkard may not be drunkards but they may exhibit weaknesses, cravings for destructive media or absence of self-control which at length terminate their generation. There is only one final cure for national intemperance and that is a more humane imitation of Nature's own plan. Nature seems cruel in its work because its effectiveness is not hindered by moral or humane considerations. Man cannot and must not imitate Nature's ruthlessness even if the process of elimination becomes a slower one. We can imitate Nature's methodical incisiveness without following Nature's murderous indifference. In some directions we may even accelerate Nature's processes, not by increasing the pains and penalties which she inflicts on a gradually disappearing progeny, but by narrowing the circle of the victims; by declining to longer tolerate the procreation of a hopeless generation.

I do not deny that temperance and similar effort at moral suasion form a valuable buttress against the worst phenomena of alcoholism. It serves the same purpose of help that bread does to the starving destitute, it does not solve the problem but it is a necessary work all the same, a valuable adjunct to a radical cure, and only objectionable if it stands in the way of prevention which is better than cure.

There is a heritage for children worse, perhaps, than criminality, feeble-mindedness or a tendency to alcoholic excess. I refer to venereal diseases. Painful or otherwise the subject must be discussed in this connection sooner or later. Like alcoholism, this disease contributes to its own elimination, its victims do not survive many generations. It is impossible to obtain statistics reasonably complete of the depredations wrought by these diseases. Professor Fournier regards them as social danger (1) By the individual damage inflicted, (2) The damage inflicted on the family, (3) The hereditary consequences, especially the infant mortality which is terrible, (4) The race deterioration and depopulation entailed. Public opinion is ripe for Eugenic treatment of this subject for one good reason, namely that every other remedy has either failed after trial or is in the nature of things incapable of adequate enforcement. State regulation of vice, with its corollary, State examination of women, is nowadays opposed by medical authorities because of the illusory security from infection which it implies, and is bitterly resented by all reformers as an intolerable tyranny applicable only to a single sex.

If I have emphasised the evils which are the heritage of so large a number of our children, it must never be forgotten that great as is the proportion of the unfit, we have not yet reached the stage when there are more unfit than fit. The heritage of evil represents the need for Eugenics in its negative aspect. We are perfectly well aware of the characteristics which we desire to eliminate, and this is of very great importance, not only because of the active harm which a decadent type represents in our civilisation, but there is the further consideration that ninety-nine per cent of the reformative effort of our legislative and social crusades, and of the philanthropic side of our religious life, is