entire population live less intelligently and therefore to less purpose than they might live if, for the almost complete ignorance of the hereditary processes there could be substituted a reasonable conception of the things that connect the individual with his ancestry and which show that the welfare of the race, while advanced by the improvement of the individual, is still of greater moment than that of any one individual, and conditions which are seriously detrimental to the individual are not infrequently beneficial to a large number of the race.
The American Breeders' Association is an organized agency working to bring human needs and industries into more intimate relation with the fundamental science of heredity. One branch of the work of this association, of vital importance to the nation, has been given some prominence in late magazine numbers. This is the study of human inheritance as carried on by the association's committee on eugenics.
The objects of this committee are "to investigate and report on heredity in the human race; to devise methods of recording the values of the blood of individuals, families, peoples and races; to emphasize the value of superior blood and the menace to society of inferior blood; and to suggest methods of improving the heredity of the family, the people and the race."
The personnel of the committee is a guarantee that the matter will be thoroughly studied and that there will be no premature recommendations of legislation. David Starr Jordan is the chairman of the committee and Professors C. B. Davenport, Castle and Kellogg are among the members. Their plan is to first study the situation and effect a reform in the tabulation of vital and social statistics, then to work for the education of the race upon the facts of human inheritance. The situation is well expressed by the secretary of the committee in a recent publication:
A new plague that rendered four per cent, of our population, chiefly at the most productive age, not only incompetent but a burden costing one hundred million dollars yearly to support, would instantly attract universal attention, and millions would be forthcoming for its study. . . . But we have become so used to crime, disease and degeneracy that we take them as necessary evils. That they were, in the world's ignorance, is granted. That they must remain so, is denied. Vastly more effective than ten million dollars to "charity" would be ten million to eugenics. He who, by such a gift, should redeem mankind from vice, and suffering, would be the world's wisest philanthropist.
