y come for the consideration of practical eugenic
measures, here is a place to begin, a subject worthy of the most careful
study--how to rearrange our social and economic system so that more of
the superior members of our race will stay on the land and raise
families, instead of moving to the city and remaining unmarried or
childless, or allowing their children to grow up in unfavorable urban
environments that mean deterioration and extinction."

"The cities represent an eliminating agency of enormous efficiency, a
present condition that sterilizes and exterminates individuals and lines
of descent rapidly enough for all but the most sanguinary reformer. All
that is needed for a practical solution of the eugenic problem is to
reverse the present tendency for the better families to be drawn into
the city and facilitate the drafting of others for urban duty.... The
most practical eugenists of our age are the men who are solving the
problems of living in the country and thus keeping more and better
people under rural conditions where their families will survive."

"To recognize the relation of eugenics to agriculture," Mr. Cook
concludes, "does not solve the problems of our race, but it indicates
the basis on which the problems need to be solved, and the danger of
wasting too much time and effort in attempting to salvage the derelict
populations of the cities. However important the problems of urban
society may be, they do not have fundamental significance from the
standpoint of eugenics, because urban populations are essentially
transient. The city performs the function of elimination, while
agriculture represents the constructive eugenic condition which must be
maintained and improved if the development of the race is to continue."

On the other hand, city life does select those who are adapted to it. It
is said to favor the Mediterranean race in competition with the Nordic,
so that mixed city populations tend to become more brunette, the Nordic
strains dying out. How well this claim has been established
statistically is open to question; but there can be no doubt that the
Jewish race is an example of urban selection. It has withstood centuries
of city life, usually under the most severe conditions, in ghettoes, and
has survived and maintained a high average of mentality.

Until recently it has been impossible, because of the defective
registration of vital statistics in the United States, to get figures
which show the