Licking Valley courier. [volume] (West Liberty, Ky.) 19??-current, 1913-05-08

~ VI CluIlllully uClliCu'
First, No man who is not phys
ically, mentally and morally sound
has the right to beget a child.
Second, No woman who is not
physically, mentally and morally
sound has the right to become a
mother.
Third, No two people who are
not in good health, of sound
mind and good character have
the right to marry. In using the
word right" Imean in a sense
of looking to the perpetuity of
the race, not from a legal view.
Fourth, Capitalization except
for the purpose of propagating
the species is a crime against ma
ture.
Fifth, The marriage of people
who are not tempermentally and
physically adapted to each other
produces more imbeciles, degen-
crates and criminals than any
other one cause.
y u
Some one may rear up and say
that the child of parents of bad
morals sometimes becomes a
model for rectitude. Granted. 1t
only emphasizes the truth that
heredity reaches further back
than the parent. Medical sci
ence teaches us that the child
may inherit disease from a re-
mote ancestor, the immediate an
cestor having escaped. Mental
traits and physical peculiarities
are often tracable back to the
third and fourth generation. Is
it not written that "the sins of
the father shall be visited on the
children. even to the fourth gen.
eration?" The boy is frequently
in habits and physique more like
the grandfather then the father.
Emerson recognized these things
when he wrote: Every child is
at least a thousand years old at
its birth" By some hidden rule
of heredity, nature sometimes
withholds certain traits or pro-
pensities for a generation or two,
or even more, and then bestows
the whole on the one individual,
and the result is an abnormal
person either a genius or a de-
PRAYED intellectually. We see
the effect of the law of heredity,
but the reason thereof is beyond
our ken. Just as we harness the
force we call electricity and COM
pei it to do our will, yet do not
know what it is. We know that
we transmit to our children our
physical likeness, our mental
traits and our good or bad char.
ter, yet we do not know why il
is so. We know that the grain
of wheat will grow and produce
similar grains of wheat, yet we
can not tell why.
y y
You don't SOW oats and ex
pect to reap a crop of clover, mol
plant an acorn and expect t
grow a pine. Yet we pretend Il
expect diseased parents to pro
duce healthy offspring; pretend
to expect moral degenerates tt
give to the world children Of
good character; pretend to be
lieye that from ill-mated mar
riage will come children mental
ly and physically perfect. Thar
the race has not become extinc
is due solely to the one fact tina
nature is always striving to RICH
the wrongs that we do. Their,
is constantly in all nature ;
struggle to return to type" l
is this fundamental law that ha
prevented the race from destroy
ing itself.
But the alarming condition
: are attracting the attention o
the thinkers of the land, and
crusade has started in the inter
est of the child yet to be born
The demand is to be made tina
children of the future shall hav
the right to be well born. 1t /
a question of the preservation o
the human race, and it will TAX
precedence over all other ques
tons. The whole social fabri
} may have to be built anew, an,
, all our present ideas reformed