but classified the parents as those who drank, and those who were sober; the latter were not, for the most part, teetotalers, but merely persons whose use of alcohol was so moderate that it exercised no visible bad influence on the health of the individual or the welfare of the home. Something can be said on both sides of all these objections; but giving them as much weight as one thinks necessary, the fact remains that the Elderton-Pearson investigation failed to demonstrate any racial poisoning due to alcohol, in the kind of cases where one would certainly have expected it to be demonstrated, if it existed.
Much more observation and measurement must be made before a generalization can be safely drawn, as to whether alcohol is or is not a racial poison, in the sense in which that expression is used by eugenists. It has been shown that the evidence which is commonly believed to prove beyond doubt that alcohol does injure the germ-plasm, is mostly worthless. But it must not be thought that the authors intend to deny that alcohol is a racial poison, where the dosage is very heavy and continuous. If we have no good evidence that it is, we equally lack evidence on the other side. We wish only to suggest caution against making rash generalizations on the subject which lack supporting evidence and therefore are a weak basis for propaganda.
So far as immediate action is concerned, eugenics must proceed on the basis that there is no proof that alcohol as ordinarily consumed will injure the human germ-plasm. To say this is not in any way to minify the evil results which alcohol often has on the individual, or the disastrous consequences to his offspring, euthenically. But nothing is to be gained by making an assumption of "racial poisoning," and acting on that assumption, without evidence that it is true; and the temperance movement would command more respect