individual only in regard to the unrestricted and irresponsible bringing
into the world of filth and poverty an overcrowding procession of
infants foredoomed to death or hereditable disease, is now confronted
with the problem of protecting itself and its future generations
against the inevitable consequences of this long-practised policy of
LAISSER-FAIRE.

The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced
immediately. Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary
type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the
reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile
children, who in turn are just as certain to breed other defectives. The
male defectives are no less dangerous. Segregation carried out for one
or two generations would give us only partial control of the problem.
Moreover, when we realize that each feeble-minded person is a potential
source of an endless progeny of defect, we prefer the policy of
immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely
prohibited to the feeble-minded.

This, I say, is an emergency measure. But how are we to prevent the
repetition in the future of a new harvest of imbecility, the recurrence
of new generations of morons and defectives, as the logical and
inevitable consequence of the universal application of the traditional
and widely approved command to increase and multiply?

At the present moment, we are offered three distinct and more or less
mutually exclusive policies by which civilization may hope to protect
itself and the generations of the future from the allied dangers of
imbecility, defect and delinquency. No one can understand the necessity
for Birth Control education without a complete comprehension of the
dangers, the inadequacies, or the limitations of the present attempts at
control, or the proposed programs for social reconstruction and racial
regeneration. It is, therefore, necessary to interpret and criticize
the three programs offered to meet our emergency. These may be briefly
summarized as follows:

(1) Philanthropy and Charity: This is the present and traditional method
of meeting the problems of human defect and dependence, of poverty and
delinquency. It is emotional, altruistic, at best ameliorative, aiming
to meet the individual situation as it arises and presents itself. Its
effect in practise is seldom, if ever, truly preventive. Concerned
with symptoms, with the allaying