36 PEOPLE [italics]Mendel Journal,[end italics] in 1912, E. Torday tells us that: "It is a well-known fact that the child is the real aim of marriage among the Negroes; tribes exist where a man can divorce his wife at will if she has not borne him a child, whereas the birth of one at once makes the union indissoluble. Thus the racially valueless sterile females are not a drag upon the husband's energies, disappointing his hopes and cutting short the stock of which he is the representative and the gametic bearer. It is considered a shame as well as a misfortune to be childless... Fond as the savage Negro is of his children, the welfare of his race is still instinctively dearer to his heart. The true purpose of the initation ceremony is to aid the boy and girl in the fulfillment of their duties as husband and wife...The girl, when she leaves the 'fattening house' or the bush, knows how to conduct her life so as to have every chance of fulfilling the expectations of her race. She also has been taught what her conduct must be during the quickening of a life yet forming, and how to prepare for its advent to the world. Thus the life of the first-born child is more likely to be preserved than among the ill-informed and needlessly apprehensive young European mothers. When the infant is born it is examined carefully; if it is weak or deformed, than in one way or another it is no longer allowed to burden its own life nor handicap its race in the struggle for suvival." In the Bible we find prohibitions on degrees of kinship in marriage, some of which tended to have eugenic effects. The Jewish Talmud also has much to say on marriage, and many of the admonitions are distinctly eugenic. Without doubt they have had a very great deal to do with making the Jews the people they are. The power of an idea is far greater in racial consequences than most people imagine. It was the idea that what we are was decided by influences from outside of ourselves that caused the dark ages. It was the mistaken idea that it is smart to have only one or two children which started a decline in the birth rate of the better people of our nation. Conversely, anther idea in the mind of Francis Galton which is now gaining ascendancy will make the people of the world happier, because they will come of sounder stock. Custom based upon ideas, good or false, has changed the whole type of the primitive races of the past, has raised the quality or has lowered it; and we would do well to take not of these past effects for our best interests. [photo][photo credit]Ewing Galloway [photo caption]A GOLD COAST CHIEF Trader Horn Says, "Talk of history - those...tribes were just as particular as we were ... Their genealogies are as honorable cared for as a duke's. Aye, and there'll be less blots on the 'schutcheon." [end]