[left side]
II. A PLAN FOR FURTHER WORK [superior 1]
In what I have just said I have tried to be cautious, and have felt, at every step, that generalizations are restricted by lack of sufficient facts. This is the serious need of time. To fill this need the American Breeders' Association has organized a Committee on Eugenics composed as follows: David Starr Jordan, Chairman; Alexander Graham Bell, Luther Burbank, W. E. Castle, C. R. Henderson, A. Hrdlicka, V. L. Kellogg, Adolf Meyer, J. Arthur Thomson, W. L. Tower, H. J. Webber, C. E. Woodruff, Frederick A. Woods, C. B. Davenport, Secretary. The various duties of this Committee may be summed up in the three words: investigation, education, legislation.
The first, and for some time the main work of the Committee must be [italics]investigation[end italics]. We want, above all, to learn as soon as possible how human
[footnote][superior 1] This part is substantially from a report of the Committee of Eugenics of the American Breeders' Association, read at the Omaha meeting, Dec. 8, 1909.
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[right side]
A Plan for Further Work
characteristics are inherited. The results of the new science of heredity give reason for anticipating that many, if no most, characteristics are of an alternative sort either not re-appearing in the offspring or re-appearing in predictable proportions depending upon the distribution of these characteristics in the ancestry. We have already seen that a score or more of characteristics, largely specific diseases, are inherited in such alternative fashion, and about their behavior in progeny definite information has been given. We must ascertain the facts about other characteristics.
The data must first be collected; then analyzed. This work is so vast that it must be divided between many people, -- specialists able to weigh and analyze scientifically the results. Consequently it has been found desirable to appoint sub-committees to collect and study the data. A sub-committee on Feeble-mindedness has been organized under the chairmanship of Dr. A. F. Rogers, Superintendent of the Minnesota School for the Feeble Minded and Colony for Epileptics, and with Dr. H. H. Goddard, Direc-
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