The
burden can never be wholly obliterated, but it can be largely reduced by
a restriction of the reproduction of those who are themselves socially
inadequate.
[Illustration: TWO JUKE HOMES OF THE PRESENT DAY
FIG. 28.--The Jukes have mostly been country-dwellers, a fact
which has tended to increase the amount of consanguineous marriage among
them. Removal into a new environment usually does not mean any
substantial change for them, because they succeed immediately in
re-creating the same squalid sort of an environment from which they
came. In the house below, one part was occupied by the family and the
other part by pigs. Photographs from A. H. Estabrook.]
Alike then on biological, humanitarian and financial grounds, the nation
would be the better for a diminution in the production of physically,
mentally or morally defective children. And the way to secure this
diminution is to prevent reproduction by parents whose offspring would
almost certainly be undesirable in character.
Granted that such prevention is a proper function of society, the
question again arises whether it is an ethically correct procedure to
allow these potentially undesirable parents to marry at all. Should they
be doomed to perpetual celibacy, or should they be permitted to mate, on
condition that the union be childless.
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