can act with safety as well as
profit, and one of these is made up by the germinally insane. According
to the census of 1910, there are 187,791 insane in institutions in the
United States; there are also a certain number outside of institutions,
as to whom information can not easily be obtained. The number in the
hospitals represented a ratio of 204.3 per 100,000 of the general
population. In 1880, when the enumeration of insane was particularly
complete, a total of 91,959 was reported--a ratio of 188.3 per 100,000
of the total population at that time. This apparent increase of insanity
has been subjected to much analysis, and it is admitted that part of it
can be explained away. People are living longer now than formerly, and
as insanity is primarily a disease of old age, the number of insane is
thus increased. Better means of diagnosis are undoubtedly responsible
for some of the apparent increase. But when every conceivable allowance
is made, there yet remains ground for belief that the proportion of
insane persons in the population is increasing each year. This is partly
due to immigration, as is indicated by the immense and constantly
increasing insane population of the state of New York, where most
immigrants land. In some cases, people who actually show some form of
insanity may slip past the examiners; in the bulk of cases, probably, an
individual is adapted to leading a normal life in his native
environment, but transfer to the more strenuous environment of an
American city proves to be too much for his nervous organization. The
general flow of population from the country to large cities has a
similar effect in increasing the number of insane.

But when all is said, the fact remains that there are several hundred
thousand insane persons in the United States, many of whom are not
prevented from reproducing their kind, and that by this failure to
restrain them society is putting a heavy burden of expense, unhappiness
and a fearful dysgenic drag on coming generations.

The word "insanity," as is frequently objected, means little or nothing
from a biological point of view--it is a sort of catch-all to describe
many different kinds of nervous disturbance. No one can properly be made
the subject of restrictive measures for eugenic reasons, merely because
he is said to be "insane." It would be wholly immoral so to treat, for
example, a man or woman who was suffering from the form of insanity
which sometimes follows ty