Heredity versus Environment.

During the 1920s various social commentators argued that the population of the United States was being "corrupted" by the birth of too many individuals of inferior genetic quality. According to such observers, an alarming number of mentally retarded women had been allowed to give birth to offspring who later displayed the same deficiency as their mothers. People who subscribed to such thinking were usually firm believers in eugenics, a science that deals with improving the hereditary quality of the human race by selective breeding practices. Eugenicists reject the premise that environment — especially socio-economic class — rather than heredity accounts for most personal differences among human beings.

Overcrowded Mental Institutions.

During the first decades of the twentieth century public health officials in Virginia placed a large number of "feeble-minded" women of child-bearing age in state mental asylums, causing such...