eme measures planned to accomplish what may be good in
the abstract but is still not practical, we can make the cause
ridiculous.

Eugenic reformers, for instance, plan to rush right into regulation of
human society and arrange marriages just as horses are bred at a stock
farm. It has made some progress in Wisconsin, where they have required
examination of those about to marry and certificates of health before
issuing the marriage license. But I don't think the American people are
quite ready to submit to that kind of regulation. If it could be
enforced, it might be a good thing for the race, but a strong sentiment
on the other side makes it impractical. In Wisconsin the law is being
ignored and in foreign countries where restrictions upon marriages are
rigorously enforced, marriage is dispensed with and concubinage results.

There is another feature of this present hysterical condition that, I
hope, is going to disappear. But we might as well recognize it. That is
this wish to exculpate the sins of those who are unfortunate by putting
the blame on society at large. The desire seems to be, if possible, to
make scapegoats of those who are fortunate. It is this sentiment that
has given rise to investigations into the cooperative stores in order to
charge their managers with responsibility for the prostitution of some
of their employees because of the wages they pay. As the investigation
shows, there never was a more unfounded charge, but the very fact that
it was used is an indication of what I mean. It manifests itself in the
movement to dispense with all reticence and amplify in every way sex
education on the theory that society is to blame because it is not
telling young people of the danger of sin. You do not have to stand over
a sewer and breathe in the bad smell in order to recognize that it has a
bad smell when you meet it again.

I am strongly in favor of having young men and young women know certain
things about sex matters, the young men through lectures in school or
college, and the young women through instruction by women who can tell
them in a short time all they need to know; but this idea of emphasizing
and expanding the subject and of cultivating a free interchange of
thoughts between the sexes is most dangerous. For one hundred years
these subjects have been suppressed in America to the great benefit of
society and it is well that they should remain so. So-called reforms in
this direction are made the e