certain that many of the pauper class, which fills up almshouses, are similarly deficient. Indeed, the census of 1910 discovered that of the 84,198 paupers in institutions on the first of January in that year, 13,238 were feeble-minded, 3,518 insane, 2,202 epileptic, 918 deaf-mute, 3,375 blind, 13,753 crippled, maimed or deformed. A total of 63.7% of the whole had some serious physical or mental defect. Obviously, most of these would be taken care of under some other heading, in the program of restrictive eugenics. While paupers should be prohibited from reproduction as long as they are in state custody, careful discrimination is necessary in the treatment of those whose condition is due more to environment than heredity.
In a consideration of the chronic inebriate, the problem of environmental influences is again met in an acute form, aggravated by the venom of controversy engendered by bigotry and self-interest. That many chronic inebriates owe their condition almost wholly to heredity, and are likely to leave offspring of the same character, is indisputable. As to the possibility of "reforming" such an individual, there may be room for a difference of opinion; as to the possibility of reforming his germ-plasm, there can be none. Society owes them the best possible care, and part of its care should certainly be to see that they do not reproduce their kind. As to the borderland cases—and in the matter of inebriety borderland is perhaps bigger than mainland—it is doubtful whether much direct action can be taken in the present state of scientific knowledge and of public sentiment. Education of public opinion to avoid marriage with drunkards will probably be the most effective means of procedure.
Finally, there is the criminal class, over which the respective champions of heredity and environment have so often waged partisan warfare. There is probably no field in which restrictive eugenics would think of interfering, where it encounters so much danger as here—danger of wronging both the individual and society. Laws such as have been passed