Eugenists

Last week, eugenists met in Manhattan to discuss the problems of generating children sound in mind and body.

Discussed was Professor Roland McMillan Harper's striking discovery that there is a definite correlation between the ownership of motor cars and the prevalence of divorce. Professor Harper, geographer, now research professor of economics at the University of Georgia, adduced as proof that, in the U. S., wealth, motor cars and divorces have all increased in recent years faster than the population, and that they all are more prevalent in cities than in country districts.

California, he noted, has one motor car for every three persons, one divorce for every 3.3 marriages, $4,007 per capita wealth. Georgia has one car (or truck) to 7.7 persons, one divorce for every 14 marriages (many of Georgia's divorce cases go there from South Carolina, whose laws do not allow divorces), $1,306 per capita wealth.

Ingenious, but not strictly logical was his interrelating tobacco and coffee with divorce and crime: "Nearly every smoker drinks coffee (perhaps because the stimulant caffeine is a sort of antidote to the sedative nicotine), and the per capita consumptions of coffee and sugar in this country have both increased about 50 per cent in the last twenty years. All this is probably partly responsible for the increase of crime and divorce, though perhaps few smokers would concede that. Some very estimable gentlemen indeed use tobacco, but at the same time it can hardly be disputed that the great majority of criminals do. . . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.