nd behind him an array of his
descendants numbering in 1900, 1,394, of whom 295 were college
graduates; 13 presidents of our greatest colleges; 65 professors in
colleges, besides many principals of other important educational
institutions; 60 physicians, many of whom were eminent; 100 and more
clergymen, missionaries, or theological professors; 75 were officers in
the army and navy; 60 prominent authors and writers, by whom 135 books
of merit were written and published and 18 important periodicals edited;
33 American states and several foreign countries, and 92 American cities
and many foreign cities have profited by the beneficent influences of
their eminent activity; 100 and more were lawyers, of whom one was our
most eminent professor of law; 30 were judges; 80 held public office, of
whom one was vice president of the United States; three were United
States senators; several were governors, members of Congress, framers of
state constitutions, mayors of cities and ministers of foreign courts;
one was president of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company; 15 railroads,
many banks, insurance companies, and large industrial enterprises have
been indebted to their management. Almost if not every department of
social progress and of the public weal has felt the impulse of this
healthy and long-lived family. It is not known that any one of them was
ever convicted of crime."

Every one will agree that the nation needs more families like that. How
can it get them? Galton blazed the way in 1865, when he pointed to
selective breeding as the effective means. The animal breeder knows what
marvels he can accomplish by this means; but it is not practicable to
breed human beings in that direct way. Is there any indirect method of
reaching the same ends?

There are, in our opinion, a good many such means, and it is the
principal purpose of this book to point them out. The problem of
constructive or positive eugenics, naturally divides itself into two
parts:

1. To secure a sufficient number of marriages of the superior.

2. To secure an adequate birth-rate from these marriages.

The problem of securing these two results is a complex one, which must
be attacked by a variety of methods. It is necessary that superior
people first be made to desire marriage and children; and secondly, that
it be economically and otherwise possible for them to carry out this
desire.

It may be of interest to know how the Germans are attacking the problem