period, are again set free to reproduce, and so the stupid work goes on
of preserving and increasing our socially unfit strains."

The philosophy of Birth Control points out that as long as civilized
communities encourage unrestrained fecundity in the "normal" members
of the population--always of course under the cloak of decency and
morality--and penalize every attempt to introduce the principle of
discrimination and responsibility in parenthood, they will be faced with
the ever-increasing problem of feeble-mindedness, that fertile parent
of degeneracy, crime, and pauperism. Small as the percentage of the
imbecile and half-witted may seem in comparison with the normal members
of the community, it should always be remembered that feeble-mindedness
is not an unrelated expression of modern civilization. Its roots strike
deep into the social fabric. Modern studies indicate that insanity,
epilepsy, criminality, prostitution, pauperism, and mental defect, are
all organically bound up together and that the least intelligent and the
thoroughly degenerate classes in every community are the most prolific.
Feeble-mindedness in one generation becomes pauperism or insanity in the
next. There is every indication that feeble-mindedness in its protean
forms is on the increase, that it has leaped the barriers, and that
there is truly, as some of the scientific eugenists have pointed out, a
feeble-minded peril to future generations--unless the feeble-minded are
prevented from reproducing their kind. To meet this emergency is the
immediate and peremptory duty of every State and of all communities.

The curious situation has come about that while our statesmen are
busy upon their propaganda of "repopulation," and are encouraging the
production of large families, they are ignoring the exigent problem of
the elimination of the feeble-minded. In this, however, the politicians
are at one with the traditions of a civilization which, with its
charities and philanthropies, has propped up the defective and
degenerate and relieved them of the burdens borne by the healthy
sections of the community, thus enabling them more easily and more
numerously to propagate their kind. "With the very highest motives,"
declares Dr. Walter E. Fernald, "modern philanthropic efforts often tend
to foster and increase the growth of defect in the community.... The only
feeble-minded persons who now receive any official consideration are
those who have already become