Hence, women have up to a recent time been more sinned against than sinning if they passed on defective germ plasm or doomed their children to suffering lives.
=Responsibility of Women in Marriage.=--Now the case is different.

No woman of usual physical strength or natural ability or average vocational efficiency is necessarily tempted to make "marriage a trade." If she has any strength of character she can make her own way and find many good things in life for herself.

She can, therefore, exact such a standard of character and attainment from any man who seeks her in marriage as he may well demand of her and can pass by as incompetent to family demand all who do not measure up to the requirements.
This may mean (in some circles of society, it is already coming to mean) what Wallace indicated when he said, "Woman is to be the great selective agent of the future." This cannot be, however, unless women hold themselves to the best standards that men in the past have exacted of their sex and so holding themselves (where the race needs that they should stand) hold men also where the race needs that men should find their place.

The defrauded children of every generation call with pathos of unique appeal upon men and women that the "racial poisons" shall be abolished, and evil inheritance be checked, and that every potential father and every potential mother shall hold sacred the torch of life to pass it on the brighter for their handling.
Meanwhile, such agencies as "The Committee on Provision for the Feeble-minded," with its central office in Philadelphia, and the "National Committee for Mental Hygiene," with its headquarters in New York City and its important quarterly publication, together with local associations of similar type, are at work, as is well stated by one national body, "to disseminate knowledge concerning the extent and menace of feeble-mindedness and to suggest and initiate methods for its control and ultimate eradication from the American people." On such social effort afflicted parents of a defective child may depend for aid and direction.
In Whittier's tribute to Samuel Gridley Howe, the pioneer in this social care of defectives, one false hope is pictured, namely, that "the idiot clay" could "be given a mind." That hope could not be realized.

The gates of destiny close at birth for many of the children of men.