demonstrated that absolute
sterilization can be produced by the application of the Roentgen Ray,
but at what period of treatment this result may be obtained still
remains an unsettled question, thus leaving the possibility of
incurring the risk of effecting only a doubtful degeneration of the
germs.

We can but consider all legislation and all police measures which are
intended to regulate the sexual intercourse in the human family, as
absolute failures, as inhuman, in fact as down-right detrimental to
the race. Exacting laws have never improved the morals of any race or
nation; hypocrisy and secret evasion are the only results obtained. It
would be better by far if steps were taken to enlighten the masses on
the questions of sexual heredity and degeneration. Wisdom of this kind
does not corrupt. It is rather the unrestricted power of capital and
wealth that brings the rot into the community. Healthy people should
be made to know that a large number of sound, industrious children is
a blessing, in fact, riches to the family, but on the one condition
only, viz.: that they are not relegated to detestable slavery through
the overbearing suppression of capital.

When the dignity of labor shall once have been raised on the pedestal
of worship now occupied by Mammon, there will no longer be need for
complaint about small families and decreasing birth-rates, such as we
hear so much at the present day in France and in the United States.

A few examples might throw some light on this subject.

(1) Dr. Pelman of Bonn, assisted by the local authorities, made an
inquiry into the progeny of a certain Ada Jurke (born in 1740, died in
the beginning of the nineteenth century), who was hereditarily
tainted, a drunkard and a degenerate. Her descendants down to the
present time number 834 persons. The lives of 709 of these individuals
have been officially recorded as follows: 106 were illegitimate
children; 142 were mendicants and tramps; 64 were unable to perform
any kind of work towards their own support and became a charge to the
community; 181 of the women were prostitutes; 7 persons were convicted
of murder and 69 of other crimes. All this within a period of 75 years
at a cost to the state, according to the public records, of five
millions of marks (about $1,250,000) in the shape of monetary support,
jail and law expenses, claims for damages, etc., etc.

(2) Dr. Joerger, Director of the Insane Asylum at Waldhaus, by Chur, in
Sw