Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1907 — Race Suicide Stirs Roosevelt. [ARTICLE]

Race Suicide Stirs Roosevelt.

An article in a recent number of the Review of Reviews by Dr. Cronin on “The Doctor in the Public School,” upholding small families, has drawn fi'om President Roosevelt a letter to Dr. Shaw, editor of the Review of Reviews, protesting against such teaching. Dr. Cronin makes the statement that physical defects go hand in hand with large families, whether of the rich or of the poor, but this the president says is not true. In proof of his position the president points out the fact that athletes are most apt to be found in fair-sized families, and lie points to the vital statistics erf Massachusetts showing that the average American family has so few children that the birth rate has fallen below the death rate. He reiterates his belief that tVtendency of well-to-do families to die out means the elimination instead of the survival of the fittest, and he declares that our country could not continue to exist if it paid heed tb the expressed or implied teacliings-of suCir anicies, which furnish excuse for -every unnatural prevent ion of child bearing, and for every "form of gross and shallow selfishness in American social life.