CHAPTER VII

knowledge, in anyone who assumes to pass judgment upon a measure as being eugenic or dysgenic—as likely to improve the race or cause its deterioration. Eugenics is a biological science which, in its application, must be interpreted with the help of the best scientific method. Very few social workers, whose field eugenics touches, are competent to understand its bearings without some study, and an appreciation of eugenics is the more difficult for them, because an understanding of it will show them that some of their work is based on false premises. The average legislator is equally unlikely to understand the full import of eugenics, unless he has made a definite effort to do so. All the more honor, then, to the rapidly increasing number of social workers and legislators who have grasped the full meaning of eugenics and are now striving to put it in effect. The agriculturist, through his experience with plants and animals, is probably better qualified than anyone else to realize the practicability of eugenics, and it is accordingly not a matter of mere chance that the science of eugenics in America was built up by a breeders' association, and has found and still finds hundreds of effective advocates in the graduates of the agricultural colleges.