"The South's fight for race purity," by R.W. Wooley, Pearson's Magazine (1)

677. [marginalia]A:3174-5[end marginalia] The South's Fight for Race Purity 207 world degenerated, physically and mentally. And yet the land abounds with good, well-meaning persons who earnestly protest that this loathsome vampire must not be mentioned except to a physician and that the young must be kept absolutely in the dark as to its existence or its terrible effects. They enable it to thrive upon ignorance and thereby work a harvest for the most dangerous type of quack physician and the maker of destructive nostrums. Already they have given it a leeway, of which it has taken such marked advantage that the medical profession is alarmed and on the defensive. There are many who will condemn the publication of an article dealing with this subject - the negro and social diseases - in any but a medical journal. The general reader rarely, if ever, sees one; the scientific and professional terms would be so much Greek to him if he did. The American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, which has established branches in a number of the large cities of the North and East, issues from time to time pamphlets setting forth the horrors of impure lives, but their circulation is necessarily very limited. Let me say right here that it is the duty of every father and mother, every young man and young woman, to read what such eminent physicians as Drs. Prince A. Morrow, of New York, Howard A. Kelly, of Baltimore, Robert N. Wilson of Philadelphia, and J. Tabor Johnson, of Washington, have to say of the dangers of these diseases and of the awful consequences of the failure of parents to talk plainly to their children. Indiana's Law Indiana read the handwriting on the wall and recently she has placed upon her statute books a marriage law which has attracted the attention of leading sociologists and medical men of the old and new world. It requires the State Board of Health to furnish to the several county clerks forms containing questions as to physical condition which must be answered by the persons about to wed. In part, it says: "Nor shall any license issue when either of the contracting parties is afflicted with a transmissible disease, or at the time of making application is under the influence of an intoxicating liquor or drug." The answers have to be sworn to. The clerk must satisfy himself that deception is not being practiced, else the consequences of his negligence are liable to react upon him. If he entertains any doubt whatever, he must refer the application to the circuit judge of his district, who is required to review the matter and render the final decision - without cost to either of the applicants. If deceit or fraud of any kind be practiced in the procuring of the license, the marriage becomes void. Moreover, the law says: "If persons resident of this State, with intent to evade to provisions,... go into another State and there have their marriage solemnized with the intention of afterward returning and residing in this State, and do so return and reside in this State, such marriage shall be void," and the contracting parties shall be subject to prosecution. Let every State in the Union pass and enforce such a law and soon there will be little talk of small families and the advantages thereof. Many a physician knows from the lips of wives who brave the world childless today that hundreds of thousands of those who are accused of practicing race suicide would give all they possess if they could gladden their firesides with babies. Social diseases are bringing about more wretchedness, breaking up more homes and playing more havoc among the young than any other known causes. Eliminate them and there will be such an exodus of house dogs to the kennels that the few remaining will only be badges of dishonor. The Cause of Blindness Just a year ago a leading magazine published an article written by Helen Keller, America's most distinguished victim of infantile ophthalmia, in which she quoted Dr. Morrow as follows: "The cruelest link in the chain of consequences is the mother's innocent agency. She is made a passive, unconscious medium of instilling into the eyes of her new-born babe a virulent poison which extinguishes its sight." We know that only when ignorance presides at the accouchement does this link materialize; as Miss Keller pointed out, it can be prevented by dropping into the eyes of the child, immediately after her birth, a solution of nitrate of silver. The disease which produces this virulent poison does its most diabolical work when it makes barren the woman for all time, often causing her to be so mutilated that death alone brings relief from suffering, and render impotent the