It is impossible for the State to correct this evil, except by lessening the burden the fit man has to bear; and the elimination of the unfit, by artificial selection, is the surest and most effective way of bringing this about.
We have learned from the immortal Pasteur the true and scientific method of artificial selection of the fit, by the elimination of the unfit.

We have already seen that he examined the moth, to find if it were healthy, and rejected its eggs if it were diseased.

Medical knowledge of heredity and disease makes it possible to conduct analogous examinations of prospective mothers; and surgery secreted in the ample and luxurious folds of anaesthesia, and protected by its guardian angels antiseptics, makes it possible to prevent the fertilization of human ova with a vicious taint.

It is possible to sterilize defective women, and the wives of defective men by an operation of simple ligature, which produces absolutely no change whatever in the subjects of it, beyond rendering this fertilization impossible, for the rest of life.

This remedy for the great and growing evil which confronts us to-day is suggested, not to avenge but to protect society, and in profound pity for the classes who are a burden to themselves, as well as to those who have to tend and support them.
The problem of the unfit is not new.