According to the Registrar General, the average number of births to a marriage in the whole population of this country is 4.6. I have ascertained that the average number of births in these degenerate families is no less than 7.3. It is obvious that if this alarming propagation is not checked, the time must inevitably come when our nation will contain a preponderance of citizens lacking in that intellectual and physical vigor which is absolutely essential to progress. P. 98.

RASSENVERBESSERUNG. Translated from the Dutch of Dr. J. Rutgers. Second Edition, Dresden, 1911.

A not insignificant factor in the use of houses of prostitution is furnished by married men who in the “old fashioned” way wish to “protect” their wives, in order not to be burdened with too many children. Neo-Malthusianism is also the best weapon against this class of supporters of prostitution. P. 73.

MASSACHUSETTS COMMISSION FOR INVESTIGATION OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC.

This investigation under Dr. Walter Fernald, included a physical examination study of family and personal history, social reactions, and standards, etc. Out of the 300 prostitutes 154 were feeble-minded (all doubtful were called normal). The 154 were so pronounced as to warrant legal commitment. None of them had the mentality of a normal child of 12 years old. Majority were that of 10 or 9 years old.

INVESTIGATION OF VIRGINIA STATE BOARD OF CHARITIES.

This investigation presents a very high percentage of aments among the prostitute residents of the Richmond red light district. Of 120 persons tested the examiner found 42 or 35% imbeciles and 58 or 48.3% to be morons. That is 100 or 83.3% were mentally defective and only twenty or 16.7% were declared normal. Out of this number 93 were found to be between the ages of 20 to 30 and 16 between 30 to 40. All in the child-bearing age, as one will note. That 100 out of the 120 needed institutional care, that they should not reproduce their kind, was of course apparent.

THE MENTALITY OF THE CRIMINAL WOMAN. A Comparative Study of the Criminal Woman, the Working Girl and the Efficient Working Woman in a Series of Mental and Physical Tests. Jean Weidensall, formerly Director of the Department of Psychology, Laboratory of Social Hygiene, Bedford Hills, N. Y. Warnick and York Inc. 1916.

Tests applied to a group of children of working age by the Bureau of Educational Guidance of Cincinnati were also used on a group of 20 maids at Vassar as a norm for testing the women committed to Bedford. 100 reformatory subjects were used for the tests. It is a matter for question whether loss of the parent is the cause of the child’s leaving school and going to work early and of the ultimate unsocial conduct in the case of the Bedford group, or whether loss of parent, retardation, misconduct, etc., are not for the most part but manifestations of the same thing—irresponsibility, mental, physical and social inferiority on the part of both parents and child. The facts at our disposal and eugenic investigations lead us to believe that the latter is in the larger measure true. Out of 100 women recorded 30 had had from one to five illegitimate children. Of the 100 tests for syphilis and gonorrhoea, 45% positive, 4% doubtful, 51% negative, for syphilis. 60% positive, 22% doubtful, 18% negative for gonorrhoea. At best strong character cannot be the rule among individuals ⅔ of whom have less intelligence than that possessed by the average individual among a group of children of 15, (of whom half are themselves retarded), and almost surely not when they have been too untrained industrially and too unschooled socially to have acquired simple every-day habits of restraint and inhibition. Even the more intelligent third of the reformatory subjects differed very obviously and unmistakably in stability and emotional control from the group of Vassar maids.

THE MENACE OF MENTAL DEFICIENCY FROM THE STANDPOINT OF HEREDITY.[[51]] By Henry H. Goddard, Ph.D., Vineland, N. J. New Jersey Training School.