First National Conference on Race Betterment
NEWS AND COMMENT.
Four hundred men and women, comprising the first representative group of scientific experts ever gathered in America for that purpose, met in Battle Creek, Michigan, January 8-12, 1914, to assemble evidence of race deterioration and to consider methods of checking the downward trend of mankind. The meeting was known as the First National Conference on Race Betterment. Through the co-operation of the press, the objects and aims of the Conference have been very widely disseminated and a resultant influence for better race ideals is anticipated.
Already the effect of the Conference is apparent in Battle Creek where popular interest in mental and physical efficiency was awakened by a series of public school tests which showed a high percentage of defective children in all The Conference had its inception in the efforts of four men, particularly interested in race betterment, Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., Dr J. H. Kellogg of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, Sir Horace Plunkett, former minister of agriculture for Ireland, and Prof. Irving Fisher of Yale University. At the invitation of a central committee chosen largely by these men, fifty men and women of national prominence in the fields of science and education consented to share in the program. Their addresses together with open discussion of many of the points considered, represented a very wide study of all phases of race degeneracy and the advocacy of many ideas of reform. Some of the suggested methods of race improvement include frequent medical examination of the well, outdoor life, temperance in diet, biologic habits of living, open air schools and playgrounds, the encouragement of rural life, the segregation or sterilization of defectives, the encouragement of eugenic marriages by requiring medical certificates before granting licenses, and the establishing of a eugenics registry for the development of a race of human thoroughbreds.
Among those having a share in the program were:?Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, Jacob Riis, Judge Ben B. Lindsey, Booker T. Washington, Dr Victor C. Vaughan, Dr S. Adolplius Knopf, Dr C. B. Davenport, Dr J. N. Hurty, the Very Reverend (Dean) Walter Taylor Sumner and many others of equal prominence.
Some of the interesting statements of the Conference were as follows:? “In order that the race may survive it will apparently be necessary to make a eugenic selection of healthy mothers and to provide that the cost of bearing and rearing children shall be equally shared by all.”?Prof. J. McKeen Cattell, editor Popular Science Monthly.
“It will be no easy task to improve the race to the point where there will be no dependent children, but the elimination of the dependent child will be one of the best indices of the superiority of otir national stock.”?Dr Gertrude E. Hall, New York State Board of Charities.
Malta Fever Transmitted in Goats’ Milk.
Scientists of the Bureau of Animal Industry have compiled a bulletin is of practical interest to physicians, to farmers who raise goats, and to invalids who have been prescribed goats’ milk as a diet. Proofs have conclusively established that the transmission of a fever known variously as “Malta,” “mountain,” “slow typhoid,” or by certain other designations, to man is accomplished by the milk of infected goats.
Careful observations in Texas and New Mexico show that the disease has always made its appearance among people connected with goat raising. Entire families have been taken sick with it on goat ranches. The sickness appears usually after the kidding season, during the months of April, May, and June, when the people are in closer contact with the animal. Observations have also shown that just over the border in Mexico goat herders are not nearly so liable to the disease. Conclusions have been drawn that this is not due to any natural immunity but to the fact that the Mexicans always boil the milk before drinking it, while the Americans use it raw. The general opinion has prevailed that the United States is free from Malta fever and that the disease has only occurred through importations. However, it now seems evident that Malta fever has existed in Texas and New Mexico for at least twenty-five years. The fever takes its name from Great Britain’s island in the Mediterranean where the disease has been exceedingly prevalent among British soldiers and sailors. Its occurrence in tropical and subtropical localities has been noted in almost every country. A number of cases have been reported among our soldiers who had just returned from the Philippine Islands. Pasteurization of infected milk for twenty minutes at 145? F. is sufficient to destroy the organism which transmits the disease. Therefore, milk pasteurized for the destruction of typhoid and tuberculosis germs will also be free from the Malta fever germ.
The symptoms in human beings are usually pronounced and give rise to a more or less severe affection. The most striking symptom is an attack of fever with periods of normal temperature. The duration of these periods varies considerably during the disease. The course of the disease may extend for from six weeks up to a year and cases have even been observed in which relapses have occurred for three years. In human beings the mortality is estimated at 3 per cent. Cases have been noted in goats that extended over a period of more than a year. Although the disease has no active effect on the animals, its eradication must be considered for public health and it is particularly important since there has been a tendency recently among physicians to advise the drinking of goats’ milk for children and invalids.
Annual Convention of Religious Education Association.
The eleventh annual Convention of the Religious Education Association, March 5-8, 1914, is to be given to the single topic of the Relation of Higher Education to the Social Order. Educational experts and well known leaders in the universities and colleges will present the reports on which they have been working for the past year on the efficiency of the colleges in preparing young people for the more exacting demands of modern social living. The interest of the convention centers in the question whether the colleges are consciously training for the more complex civilization in which their graduates must live and serve and especially whether these institutions succeed in developing moral competency and leading to a religious interpretation of life. Four days will be devoted to this study and one and a half days to the problems of instruction in religion in the churches and Sunday Schools. The meetings will be held in New Haven where the convention will be the guest of Yale University.
An especially notable array of speakers will address the evening meetings in Woolsey Hall. Among the speakers are, John R. Mott; President A. Gandier, of Knox College, Toronto; Charles S. Whitman, District Attorney of New York; Governor Simeon Baldwin, of Connecticut; President William De Witt Hyde; President Samuel A. Eliot; Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, of New York, and Ex-president Taft. Programs may be obtained from the Religious Education Association, Chicago, and all persons interested are invited to attend the convention. Dr Edmund B. Huey died December 30, 1913.
We learn with deep regret of the death at Connell, Washington, on December 30, 1913, of Dr Edmund Burke Huey. Born December 1, 1870, Dr Huey took his A.B. degree at Lafayette in 1895 and his Ph.D. degree at Clark University in 1899. During the academic year 1901-02 he studied at Berlin and Paris. He was professor of psychology and education in the University of Pittsburgh from 1904 to 1908. After spending the years 1909-11 as resident psychologist in the Lincoln State School and Colony, Lincoln, 111., he engaged in psychoclinical investigation at the Johns Hopkins Dispensary as Fellow by Courtesy in psychology and education, 1910-11, and assistant in psychiatry and lecturer on mental development, 1911-12. In 1912 his failing health led him to the Pacific Coast.
Dr Huey’s early death is the more to be regretted because he had already accomplished valuable scientific work of a pioneer character, and it was to be expected that his continued labors would have added measurably to our knowledge in the field of applied psychology. He was the author of several books, among them being “The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading” (1909), and “Backward and Feebleminded Children” (1912). The latter book, which is reviewed on page 261 of this issue, is one of the most important of the current contributions to clinical psychology.
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