Salt Lake Telegram | 1907-04-30 | Page 10 | President Talks of Race Suicide

PRESIDENT TALUS Of RACE SUICIDE In Massachusetts the Birth late Is Lower Than the )eath Rate; Good Families Fami-lies Are Dying Oat EW YORK, April SO. In a letter to t he editor of the Review of Reviews President . Roosevelt takes exception to ertain statements made in an article arti-cle on "The Doctor in the Public 8chol," published in the April number num-ber of the periodical, and taxes occasion occa-sion to renew his expressions on the sub; ect of race suicide. "'This writer states clearly," says the, President, "that it is an erroneous idea to assume that the average family shot Id have a larger number ,? healthy children than the present Mirth rate shovs. The vital statistics of a State like Massachusetts show that there the average native American family of native American descent has so few chil ren that the birth rate has fallen below the death rate. This, of course, mea is race suicide, and it ought to be und( rstood that after a while when then are no children to go to school the question of their health in school would not even be academic." Continuing, Mr. Roosevelt says: "'?h greatest problem of civilization civiliza-tion is to be found in the fact that the well-to-do families tend to die out; then results in consequence, a ten-dene ten-dene r to the elimination, instead of the Burv val of the fittest, and the moral attit ide which helps on this tendency is, of course, strengthened when it is apolc gized for- and praised in a magazine maga-zine like yours. "Our people could still exist under all kinds of iniquities in government; unde a debased currency; under official offi-cial :brruption, under the rule of a social so-cial iroletariat, or a wealthy oligarchy. "All these things would be bad for up, tat the country would still exist. But t could not continue to exist, if it paid heed to the expressed or implied leadings of such articles as these."