stock may, as Dr. Tredgold
points out, gradually disseminate this trait far and wide until it
undermines the vigor and efficiency of an entire nation and an entire
race. This is no idle fancy. We must take it into account if we wish to
escape the fate that has befallen so many civilizations in the past.

"It is, indeed, more than likely that the presence of this impairment
in a mitigated form is responsible for no little of the defective
character, the diminution of mental and moral fiber at the present day,"
states Dr. Tredgold.(2) Such populations, this distinguished authority
might have added, form the veritable "cultures" not only for contagious
physical diseases but for mental instability and irresponsibility also.
They are susceptible, exploitable, hysterical, non-resistant to external
suggestion. Devoid of stamina, such folk become mere units in a mob.
"The habit of crowd-making is daily becoming a more serious menace to
civilization," writes Everett Dean Martin. "Our society is becoming
a veritable babel of gibbering crowds."(3) It would be only the
incorrigible optimist who refused to see the integral relation between
this phenomenon and the indiscriminate breeding by which we recruit our
large populations.

The danger of recruiting our numbers from the most "fertile stocks" is
further emphasized when we recall that in a democracy like that of the
United States every man and woman is permitted a vote in the government,
and that it is the representatives of this grade of intelligence who may
destroy our liberties, and who may thus be the most far-reaching peril
to the future of civilization.

"It is a pathological worship of mere number," writes Alleyne Ireland,
"which has inspired all the efforts--the primary, the direct election
of Senators, the initiative, the recall and the referendum--to cure the
evils of mob rule by increasing the size of the mob and extending its
powers."(4)

Equality of political power has thus been bestowed upon the lowest
elements of our population. We must not be surprised, therefore, at
the spectacle of political scandal and graft, of the notorious and
universally ridiculed low level of intelligence and flagrant stupidity
exhibited by our legislative bodies. The Congressional Record mirrors
our political imbecility.

All of these dangers and menaces are acutely realized by the Eugenists;
it is to them that we are most indebted for the proof that reckless
spawning carries with