constantly increasing production of intellectual and moral degenerates. Millions are willingly appropriated to aid in the invention and purchase of deadly weapons with which the human family may be destroyed. Thousands of the healthiest young men are called to the army and the criminal and idiotic are left to keep up the work of propagation. All our states maintain a Health Board, the duty of which is to prevent the spread of smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, etc. We have state officers to inspect cattle and to use measures to prevent Texas fever. Our state fairs give large premiums to the fastest trotter, the best Durhams, Southdowns and Poland Chinas. Mothers and children are neglected.
Marriage of the feeble-minded.—Our laws are such that the county clerk must grant marriage license to criminals, paupers, drunkards, prostitutes and the feeble-minded, if they are of the proper age, or have their parents’ consent. Where a couple of this class have secured their legal right to marry, they hunt up a preacher who, standing before them with civil and ecclesiastical authority, says, “Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” Such is a crime against society, an insult to the holy estate of marriage, a curse to future generations, and a libel on God. I don’t believe that God ever sanctions such unions. When the states make laws prohibiting such marriages they will hasten the millennium of marriage.
More dangerous than smallpox.—If I carelessly expose others to smallpox; if I refuse to remove filth from my premises, dangerous to the community’s health; if I knowingly sell diseased meat to my customers, I shall be arrested and punished. But a man may live a fast life, acquire a disease that will poison his wife, also his children to the third and fourth generations; in this way he can worse than murder his wife and children and go unwhipped and unpunished.
Effects of alcoholic fathers.—If statistics can be relied on, drunkards produce one hundred per cent. more of the alcoholics, criminals, and mental defectives than do the sober men. In justice to overtaxed citizens and the demands of the coming generation we should enact a law preventing the marriage of habitual drunkards. The periodic drunkard should be required to remain sober for a considerable time before his marriage and give reasonable evidence that his reformation is permanent.
Property qualification.—A property qualification, or its equivalent in an established remunerative calling, profession or occupation, should be required as a condition for marriage license. It is a known fact that pauper families furnish more than their proportion of criminals and other classes of dependents.
The victim of venereal disease.—Persons having a venereal disease, in a mild form, should be allowed to marry only when a competent health board, after careful examination, decides that they are entirely free from poison, then, and then only after a reasonable time has expired since being treated. If the applicant for marriage license has at one time had one of the worst forms of venereal disease, he should be forever debarred from the privilege of marriage. The need of these restrictive and prohibitory marriage laws will be better understood and appreciated by you when I give a few statements from the best obtainable authority. Eighty per cent, of the children born blind is due to gonorrhœal infection. (Education with Med. Prof.) This is nearly always due to the uncured condition of the father. Neiser tells us that there are over 30,000 blind persons in Germany whose blindness is due to gonorrhœal ophthalmia. Pinnard claims that sixty to seventy per cent. of hereditary syphilitics die at or before birth, and that those who survive are unfit to meet the battles of life; 20,000 children die every year in France from syphilitic conditions. Dr. Fournier states that in his practice seventy-five per cent. of the syphilis in married women could be traced to their husbands. Dr. Morrow puts it at seventy per cent. A large per cent. of the surgical operations of a sexual nature among married women is due to venereal disease contracted from their husbands.
Sterilization a remedy.—To prevent unsuitable marriages, by law, would in a measure bring relief, yet, the degenerate, criminals and imbeciles would, to a considerable extent, continue their propagation. This class cares but little for marriage. The ablest physicians of this country, the leaders in the great purity movement, and many advanced thinkers in other professions, are rapidly committing themselves to the opinion that all the worst cases of hereditary degeneracy should be deprived of the creative function. In females this operation is attended by only one-sixth the fatalities of child-birth. In males it is attended by no danger to life. The results would be absolutely effectual. The feeble-minded class would be much more easily managed and the degenerate criminal would settle down to the life of a peaceable citizen.
At first, one naturally opposes this measure as a solution to the problem. Later, all opposition to it vanishes and it then appears to be a most kind, benevolent and philanthropic solution of this vital problem.