In the United States the subject has interested many women's clubs, college organizations and Young Men's Christian Associations, while the periodical press has given it a large amount of attention. Public enthusiasm, often ill-guided, has in a few cases outrun the facts, and has secured legislation in some states, which by no means meets the approval of most scientific eugenists.
When we speak of scientific eugenists, it may appear that we use the word in an invidious way. We use it deliberately, and by using it we mean to intimate that we do not think enthusiasm is an adequate substitute for knowledge, in anyone who assumes to pass judgment upon a measure as being eugenic or dysgenic—as likely to improve the race or cause its deterioration. Eugenics is a biological science which, in its application, must be interpreted with the help of the best scientific method. Very few social workers, whose field eugenics touches, are competent to understand its bearings without some study, and an appreciation of eugenics is the more difficult for them, because an understanding of it will show them that some of their work is based on false premises. The average legislator is equally unlikely to understand the full import of eugenics, unless he has made a definite effort to do so. All the more honor, then, to the rapidly increasing number of social workers and legislators who have grasped the full meaning of eugenics and are now striving to put it in effect. The agriculturist, through his experience with plants and animals, is probably better qualified than anyone else to realize the practicability of eugenics, and it is accordingly not a matter of mere chance that the science of eugenics in America was built up by a breeders' association, and has found and still finds hundreds of effective advocates in the graduates of the agricultural colleges.
The program of eugenics naturally divides itself in two parts:
(1) Reducing the racial contribution of the least desirable part of the population.
(2) Increasing the racial contribution of the superior part of the population.
The first part of this program is the most pressing and the most easily dealt with; it is no cause for surprise, then, that to many people it has seemed to be the predominant aim of eugenics. Certainly the problem is great enough to stagger anyone who looks it full in the face; although for a variety of reasons, satisfactory statistical evidence of racial degeneracy is hard to get.
Considering only the "institutional population" of the United States, one gets the following figures:
Blind: total, 64,763 according to census of 1900. Of these, 35,645 were totally blind and 29,118 partly blind. The affection is stated to have been congenital in 4,730 cases. Nineteen per cent of the blind were found to have blind relatives; 4.5% of them were returned as the offspring of cousin marriages.
Deaf: total, 86,515, according to the census of 1900. More than 50,000 of them were deaf from childhood (under 20), 12,609 being deaf from birth. At least 4.5% of the deaf were stated to be offspring of cousin marriages, and 32.1% to have deaf relatives. The significance of this can not be determined unless it is known how many normal persons have deaf relatives (or blind relatives, in considering the preceding paragraph), but it points to the existence of families that are characterized by deafness (or blindness).
Insane: the census of 1910 enumerated only the insane who were in institutions; they numbered 187,791. The number outside of institutions is doubtless considerable but can not be computed. The institutional population is not a permanent, but mainly a transient one, the number of persons discharged from institutions in 1910 being 29,304. As the number and size of institutions does not increase very rapidly, it would appear probable that 25,000 insane persons pass through and out of institutions, and back into the general population, each year. From this one can get some idea of the amount of neurotic weakness in the population of the United States,—much of it congenital and heritable in character.