A. D. Juilliard
Chairman, Executive Committee,
The American Protective Tariff League.
New York
Eugenics in Wisconsin
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE FORUM]
Dear Sir,—As supplementary to your editorial on Eugenic Tests, which appeared in the August issue of The Forum, I am submitting herewith my editorial on the general subject, which appeared in The Milwaukee
Daily News recently. As, of course, you know, Wisconsin, at the last session of its legislature, placed on its statute books a law requiring certain examinations and tests to be made before the intending groom could secure a license to marry. The law provoked widespread discussion and far from general approval. It was thought, in some quarters, to be too drastic to be capable of full and complete compliance. However, it is still on our statute books, and while some of its most drastic provisions, like the laboratory tests, are not being insisted upon, the belief is general that the law is doing some good along new and, heretofore, untried lines. It gives notice that something beside matrimonial misery must be a condition precedent to the marriage relation.
However, your editorial suggestion that popular education rather than drastic legal enactments should be employed to secure a reasonable standard of health preceding marriage, is undoubtedly sound and should lead to what ought be the much-desired condition. Legislation, here as elsewhere, is not the panacea of all the matrimonial ills of which we know. But silence is an inexcusable crime in the premises.
Duane Mowry
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The Fourth Dimension