d suggests uterine exhaustion
from too many frequent pregnancies.]

It is, we conclude, both desirable and possible to enforce certain
restrictions on marriage and parenthood. What these restrictions may be,
and to whom they should be applied, is next to be considered.

CHAPTER IX

THE DYSGENIC CLASSES

Before examining the methods by which society can put into effect some
measure of negative or restrictive eugenics, it may be well to decide
what classes of the population can properly fall within the scope of
such treatment. Strictly speaking, the problem is of course one of
individuals rather than classes, but for the sake of convenience it will
be treated as one of classes, it being understood that no individual
should be put under restriction with eugenic intent merely because he
may be supposed to belong to a given class; but that each case must be
investigated on its own merits,--and investigated with much more care
than has hitherto usually been thought necessary by many of those who
have advocated restrictive eugenic measures.

The first class demanding attention is that of those feeble-minded whose
condition is due to heredity. There is reason to believe that at least
two-thirds of the feeble-minded in the United States owe their condition
directly to heredity,[80] and will transmit it to a large per cent of
their descendants, if they have any. Feeble-minded persons from sound
stock, whose arrested development is due to scarlet fever or some
similar disease of childhood, or to accident, are of course not of
direct concern to eugenists.

The number of patent feeble-minded in the United States is probably not
less than 300,000, while the number of latent individuals--those
carrying the taint in their germ-plasm and capable of transmitting it to
their descendants, although the individuals themselves may show good
mental development--is necessarily much greater. The defect is highly
hereditary in nature: when two innately feeble-minded persons marry,
all their offspring, almost without exception, are feeble-minded. The
feeble-minded are never of much value to society--they never present
such instances as are found among the insane, of persons with some
mental lack of balance, who are yet geniuses. If restrictive eugenics
dealt with no other class than the hereditarily feeble-minded, and dealt
with that class effectively, it would richly justify its existence.

But there are other classes on which it