What are the principal items of life waste?
What evidence have we of degenerate tendencies? Here are some of them—the estimates are from competent sources and are based upon official records.
AN INDICTMENT.
Our birth rate is steadily declining, and at the same time the span of life is steadily shortening.
Twenty-seven per cent. of our annual deaths are of babies under age 5; 200,000 of them die from preventable disease; about 150,000 of these are under age 1.
To offset this waste of life, large families are demanded. Would it not be well to stop this needless destruction of infants before asking for an increase in the supply?
Of the 20,000,000 school children in this country not less than 75 per cent. need attention for physical defects which are prejudicial to health.
Insanity and idiocy are increasing.
Diseases of vice, the most insidious enemy of this and future generations, are spreading rapidly according to medical men. So far we have lacked the moral courage to openly recognize and fight this scourge.
The alcohol and drug habits are constantly adding new victims to the degenerate list and to the death roll.