has failed in the task of race-maintenance; it failed,
however, in ignorance. We cannot plead the same excuse. We are face to face
with conditions that we must solve quickly or our destiny will be decreed
before we apply the remedy.

A function of the eugenist is to gather and attest statistics, and to
establish conclusions based on these statistics. It has been conclusively
demonstrated that, if the race continues to progress as it exists now--that
is, if conditions remain the same, and our standard of enlightenment, so
far as racial evolution is concerned, does not prompt us to adopt new
constructive measures--_every second child born in this country, in fifty
years, will be unfit; and, in one hundred years, the American race will
have ceased to exist_. We mean by this that every second child born will be
born to die in infancy, or, if it lives, will be incapable of self-support
during its life, because either of mental degeneracy or physical
inefficiency. This appalling situation immediately becomes a problem of
civilization. No state can exist under these conditions. If these
statistics are reliable--and we know they are true and capable of
verification by any individual who will go to the trouble of [xxi]
investigating them--it is self-evident that a radical change must
immediately be instituted to obviate the logical consequences that must
follow as a sequence. The eugenic demand, that "every child born shall be a
worthy child," is, therefore, the solution of the problem.

This does not imply, however, that the eugenist must solve the elementary
problem of how the state will ensure its own salvation by guaranteeing
worthy children. Worthy children can come only from fit and worthy (clean
and healthy) parents. It becomes the imperative function of the state--the
function on which the very life of the state depends--to see that every
applicant for marriage is possessed of the qualities that will ensure
healthy, worthy children. We must, therefore, sooner or later devise a
system of scientific regulation of marriage, and it is at this point we
stumble against the problem that has prompted the ebullitions of the wit
and the sarcasm of the critic. A casual reference to the science
immediately suggests to the layman an impossible or quixotic system of
marriage by force. Even the word "eugenics" is associated in the minds of
many otherwise estimable old ladies, and others who should know better,
with a species