Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 78.djvu/277

Rh mentally or physically defective should be illegal and increase of the criminal or vicious should be made impossible by aid of the surgeon. With smaller families, with better surroundings, all could be well fed and conditions favoring degeneracy in the young would be reduced to the minimum. This is not to say that only those in independent circumstances should marry; with constantly improving sanitary conditions everywhere and with work for all competent to perform it, the average expectation of life for a sound man would be itself a large capital.

It is true that restriction of immigration and severe regulation of marriage would not abolish poverty; the poor will be with us alwayalways [sic]. Disease and disaster are liable to befalbefall [sic] the best of men; temperamental differences will continue and men and women without good sense will be found everywhere. The dependent and vicious class will not disappear while the earth lasts. But the community would have done its best in one direction, at least, to prevent any but that unavoidable poverty, which demands not only sympathy but also beneficence.