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Show Parents, Children And Duly IN ALL his speeches Col. Roosevelt advocates large families. In the abstract that is all right. If the parents could all be healthy, of sound bodies and minds, that surely would be an exce'-lent exce'-lent culmination, but as the human race exists today to-day in so-called civilized countries, nothing is more certain than that there are hosts of men and women who have no right to become parents, and who, when perfect 'civilization is realized, will not be permitted to become parents. There are certain diseases which as yet medical medi-cal science cannot master, and which are hereditary. heredi-tary. The land Is filled with convicts, criminals and nothing seems so prone to manifest Itself In the child as a criminal taint in the parent. The taxes paid to maintain prisons and hosp'-tals hosp'-tals and to employ officers to run down, arrest and convict criminals, in large measure Is the penalty exacted because men and women who were never fit to be parents, were permitted to be. And the money is nothing compared with the suffering of the victims themselves. Surely the state ought to be as Careful as are the men who are engaged In the live stock business. busi-ness. They are busy a'l the time eradicating bad breeds of stock and securing all the time the best. Last winter, under the law, a veterinary went out where herds of cattle were kept and ordered large numbers slaughtered. Yet the possibilities are that were his daughter to become engaged to a young man whose father and mother had died of tuberculosis, he would give the misguided pair his blessing. We suspect there was a time in ancient Greece, when society had reached the stage which society in this country promises to reach after a whi'e; and then there came an awakening and the lawmakers law-makers determined upon drastic reforms. They determined that physically, at least, men and women should not be permitted to reach maturity except that they might be able to become parents of soldiers. So deformed and sickly children were given up to tho cold and the wild beast, with the result that after a generation or two, the Greeks were the most perfect race, physicaMy, that the world has ever seen. ' The modern world, of course, would not tolerate that system, but it could and ought to prevent men and women tainted by hereditary diseases or crimes from becoming parents. Men should be as careful of their children at least, as they are of their horses, cattle and pigs. |
