C O P Y

Fayerweather Hall
Marietta College
Marietta, Ohio

May 2, 1938

The American Eugenics Society
50 West 50th Street
New York, N.Y.

Gentlemen:

It is with regret that I must decline the invitation to the annual
meeting of the society. My hope is that circumstances will allow me to
attend some of the future meetings.

After a not too careful perusal of the new pamphlet, *Practical Eugenics*, I can find, with one possible exception, no adverse criticism. Under the section headed "A Sterilization" I find this statement, "Sterilization is being applied more and more on social rather than specifically eugenic grounds. This is desirable because mentally deficient or defective parents cannot provide a home environment suitable for rearing children, even in cases where there is no certainty that the traits of the parents will be passed on to their children through their heredity." If, as is probably the case, the writer meant that eugenic sterilization is coming to be justified on social grounds, I have no criticism except that the paragraph is open to another less defensible interpretation; that social condition is coming to be the criterion for determining subjects for the operation. The scientific inadequacy of this latter interpretation is, of course, immediately apparent.