If the members of each generation of United States citizens were grouped and trained according to their gifts, it might be well to give up the "one man, one vote"idea. Plural voting for the higher grades of trained intelligence is surely sensible, and it might be an incentive to accomplishment. It sounds so heretical, however, that I shall not advocate it. Yet there is no reason why one should be overcautious in suggesting educational qualifications for suffrage that are high enough to insure some real fitness in the electorate. The principle has been accepted, but as applied to-day it means nothing. The requirement in the most advanced states is merely the ability to read by rote a few sentences of the constitution. The result is a democracy of voters of which not over 50 per cent rationalize their duties. The remaining half is a mob swayed by clerical wowsers, venal editors, and political demagogues.

These suggestions may seem too generally theoretical, and therefore too vague to enlist general interest. Really they are not. They give this impression because they concern the whole political system. Perhaps the biological point of view can be made to appear more practical, however, if some definite and concrete problems where its adoption would make for a better world are mentioned.

Most readers are familiar with the fact that the larger cities are starting medical and psychiatrical clinics in connection with the courts. This is a real scientific advance in one of our most important social institutions. Our penological system is a fossilized remnant of the dark ages. One may not be convinced that law breakers come, in the main, from the feeble-minded and insane. Possibly the majority possess normal intelligence. If so, either our early teaching of the malcontents or the formulation of some of our laws is at fault. On the other hand, there is satisfactory evidence that a lot of the petty crime is committed by easily led morons, and that nearly all of our revolting crimes are committed by people who should be in psychopathic wards.

Obviously, the asocial individual is often ill and demands treatment instead of punishment. He is a human being, not a machine. There is no good reason why his case should be disposed of by the gentlemen of the bar, men versed solely in legal precedent, instead of by the psychologist and physician. And such a change in judicial procedure is imminent. But what would you say to going still further and demanding preventive medicine as well as correctives? I firmly believe that this should be done. I go so far as to advocate clinics where every child is examined both physically and mentally at stated ages.

Presumably such institutions would pay their way as public safety devices. Maniac depressives and paranoiacs would frequently be detected before they got in their deadly work. The epileptic and the feeble-minded would be earmarked, so to speak, and limited in their activities.

To-day I am told that the moronic young male naturally gravitates toward truck-driving, while the mentally defective female tends to qualify as elevator girl. Not a very wholesome situation!

But there is another and more important function which could be performed in such clinics; namely, the fitting of our various types of human pegs into the right-shaped holes. The minister, I believe, always receives a "call" to his life work. He is a favored class. All of the rest of us over thirty know what a perfectly awful time we had trying to decide upon a profession. And, having decided, we spend the rest of our lives wondering if an excellent senator or saxophone player wasn't spoiled by the decision. Perhaps we should suspect that we were fitted for higher things, no matter what the tests showed; but at least we should be in the possession of expert advice on the subject.

Other political matters where one might urge that genetic knowledge be weighed are those connected with marriage, divorce, and reproduction.

Our state marriage laws are in quite a chaotic condition. For example, three states forbid the marriage of cousins once removed, while one state permits a man the somewhat embarrassing privilege of marrying his grandmother. In few states have sufficient safeguards been placed against marriage between feeble-minded persons or persons having certain forms of insanity. Unions between genetically feeble-minded persons, it will be recalled, produce only feeble-minded children. It is clearly the province of the state, therefore, to make such unions illegal. It is also the part of wisdom to provide impediments to marriage in other cases where defective children are the probable result. How this is to be done is still a question; but the registration of certain essential data before the marriage license is granted appears to be the solution.

Our divorce laws are even worse than our marriage laws. For the most part they are projections of outworn theological tabus having ofttimes no rational basis. We are not thinking of the delight which some of our theologians appear to take in punishing a couple for a mistake in judgment by a lifetime of misery; we refer to their punishment of the next generation by refusing to see in feeble-mindedness or a heritable tendency to insanity a just cause for divorce.

There are also other laws of biological import in dire need of revision. We should humanize our statutes regarding illegitimacy, making it possible, or even inevitable, that the child born out of wedlock be legitimatized and given certain rights of protection. Our mediaeval laws regarding contraception should be modified. At present they fail to safeguard mothers against unwanted pregnancies when, through certain diseases of the heart, lungs, and kidneys, pregnancy means probable death; and they fail adequately to guarantee the child that reasonably healthy start in life which would be guaranteed by the proper spacing of children. We should also encourage the more general adoption of laws providing for the sterilization of the feeble-minded, of the type so effective in California. The California laws are sound scientifically, and they have been pronounced constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States. Three generations of imbeciles are enough," said Justice Holmes in his brief.