Tonopah bonanza. [volume] (Butler City [i.e. Butler], Nev.) 1901-1909, 1909-01-09
EDITORIAL COMMENT.
DRASTIC MEASURES REQUIRED

That cause in the message which Governor Sheldon Of Ne
braska sent to the legislature of that state, which suggests that a
law should be passed providing that confirmed criminals and incur
able insane be unsexed, in order that they may not produce off
spring, seems at first sight verging upon the inhumane, but it is
along the lines of most advanced thought and doubtless at some time
in the future, society in general will demand such a law and its exc
eution. And it will undoubtedly be made broader, including in the
category of those who shall bring no children into the world con-
sumpives and those suffering from certain incurable and unmen-
tionabie diseases, and which science has proved are transmitted from
generation to generation.
Scientists now generally agree that the confirmed criminal is in
a way suffering some distortion or alment of the mind. That
children born of criminal parentage. whether the criminaty be on
one or both sides OF the parentage, re prone TO lave criminal III
stncts, is not denied by the greatest authorities in the medical
world. The same applies to the physical condition of children born
to those suffering from blood diseases. Not infrequently. due to
the mysterious workings of that law which is called avatism, the
children born to the diseased of mind or body escape the curse of
their parents, but when these children, in turn. are married or
given in marriage, their children Ire criminals, insane, or are affnt-
ed with deadly or loathsome diseases.
Daily there are marriages where one or the other of the con-
tracing parties knows that he or she has the faint of insanity. of
crime, or of disease in his or her veins. This faint may not be
visible, or may have never made tangible expression to its unfortu-
nate possessor-who knows it is there, hcwever-who knows that
the children of that marriage are liable to this curse. Sentiment
alias may pirate of the love which causes a woman to wed and to
bear children for a man whom she knows is n incurable consump-
tive. or an imbecle. Yet is it love. or is it a blind, unreasonng
selhshness which will bring into the world a line of descendants.
cursed from generation to generation with disease Of mind or body?
So long as the law permits the marriage Of this class of people. they
will marry. Marriage forbidden. This same selfshness will cause a
like race of beings TO be perpetuated outside of and in violation of
marriage VOWS. Again, sentimentaly, it is cruel. to say to the man
or woman who is born with insane, criminal or blood faint, through
no sin of their own, that they shall not marry. shall not rear fam
lilies, shall not enjoy all the rights of the pure and wholesome.
Through all the history of the ages. the survival of the fttest
has been the chief Law of the world. Just as the mighty sporadic
negotiations of earlier ages have given way to the oak and the pine;
as the dinosaurias gave way by graduation which lasted for ages, to
the fauna Of the present day. so the people of the world who are
pure of blood and Of mind must and inevitably will take precautions
by which they will escape the danger Of bringing any curse of blood
into their families. Left to personal action, the wedding bells for
the epleptic, the periodically insane, the chronicaly and heredi-
iarily criminal the consumptive and the synthetic will ring merrily
on and the stork will daily add to the population of the asylums,
the prisons and the hospitals. Governor Sheldon merely had the
hardihood to voice that which the leading lights of the medical
world have long had in mind, and may his fearless stand go far to-
ward chrystalliing popular sentiment in the right direction. The
htest will survive, as they have always done; sometimes by force,
sometimes by more gentle means, but always surviving.