Eugenics Record Office. BULLETIN No. 10A - DNA Patent Database ...

58 EUGENICS RECORD OFFICE, BULLETIN NO. 10 A.
earlier and the greater the primary investment, in accordance with the
familiar principle of geometrical progression, the vastly greater the end
result. This particular investigation aims to fit into the general scheme
of social betterment by attempting to point out a practicable means for
accomplishing the cutting off of the supply of innate social misfits.
It thus purports to be only one of several agencies of social advancement.
It is the duty of human society to grasp every possible means
for its amelioration, and, if it finds in the segregation and sterilization
of defectives a means for improving the innate qualities of future
generations without inflicting a present moral wound, it is the duty of
society even at great cost and effort to bestir itself in applying such
remedy. This investigation points very strongly to the fact that with
all of the upbolstering influences of modern humanitarianism, natural
forces no longer suffice to select only the fittest for the human breeding
stock. We contend that the perpetuity of our civilization depends
primarily upon the conservation of the best inborn traits of our citizens;
and that a social order finding a key to the conservation of its best
units—and failing to use it, is remiss in its social duty and will suffer
racial deterioration. A successful society must at all hazards protect
its breeding stock, and since, under modern conditions, a vigorous
program of segregation supported by sterilization seems to present the
only practicable means for accomplishing such end, a progressive social
order must in sheer self-preservation accept it.
By the time a consistent elimination program has been in operation
for two generations, the lines of descent of lowest levels of the American
population will have been cut off, and during this time the institutions
can be made more and more self-supporting, due continually to
receiving a higher class of inmates and to administrative reform, and
experience in practical self-maintenance. Gradually these institutions
can be transformed into industrial schools, and can be used perpetually
for educating, training and segregating the more unfortunate, and the
least gifted members of the population. There will always be insane,
feeble-minded and deformed individuals; but they need not constitute
so large a proportion of our total population, nor need they contaminate
our more worthy families. If the history of human civilization and of
plant and animal breeding have taught us anything they have taught
us clearly that the human race is capable of vast improvement by
rational selection of parents. And this can be done without sacrificing
one whit our ideals of love and fidelity. Hand in hand with the work-