At its annual meeting in 1914 the German Society for Race Hygiene adopted a resolution on the subject of applied eugenics. "The future of the German people is at stake," it declares. "The German empire can not in the long run maintain its true nationality and the independence of its development, if it does not begin without delay and with the greatest energy to mold its internal and external politics as well as the whole life of the people in accordance with eugenic principles. Most important of all are measures for a higher reproduction of healthy and able families. The rapidly declining birth-rate of the healthy and able families necessarily leads to the social, economical and political retrogression of the German people," it points out, and then goes on to enumerate the causes of this decline, which it thinks is partly due to the action of racial poisons but principally to the increasing willful restriction of the number of children.
The society recognizes that the reasons for this limitation of the size of families are largely economic. It enumerates the question of expense, considerations of economic inheritance—that is, a father does not like to divide up his estate too much; the labor of women, which is incompatible with the raising of a large family; and the difficulties caused by the crowded housing in the large cities.
In order to secure a posterity sufficient in number and ability, the resolution continues, The German Society for Race Hygiene demands:
1. A back-to-the farm movement.
2. Better housing facilities in the cities.
3. Economic assistance of large families through payment of a substantial relief to married mothers who survive their husbands, and consideration of the number of children in the payment of public and private employees.
4. Abolition of certain impediments to marriage, such as the army regulation forbidding officers to marry before they reach a certain grade.
5. Increase of tax on alcohol, tobacco and luxuries, the proceeds to be used to subsidize worthy families.
6. Medical regulations of a hygienic nature.
7. Setting out large prizes for excellent works of art (novels, dramas, plastic arts) which glorify the ideal of motherhood, the family and simple life.