physical diseases but for mental instability and irresponsibility also.
They are susceptible, exploitable, hysterical, non-resistant to external
suggestion. Devoid of stamina, such folk become mere units in a mob.
"The habit of crowd-making is daily becoming a more serious menace to
civilization," writes Everett Dean Martin. "Our society is becoming
a veritable babel of gibbering crowds."(3) It would be only the
incorrigible optimist who refused to see the integral relation between
this phenomenon and the indiscriminate breeding by which we recruit our
large populations.

The danger of recruiting our numbers from the most "fertile stocks" is
further emphasized when we recall that in a democracy like that of the
United States every man and woman is permitted a vote in the government,
and that it is the representatives of this grade of intelligence who may
destroy our liberties, and who may thus be the most far-reaching peril
to the future of civilization.

"It is a pathological worship of mere number," writes Alleyne Ireland,
"which has inspired all the efforts--the primary, the direct election
of Senators, the initiative, the recall and the referendum--to cure the
evils of mob rule by increasing the size of the mob and extending its
powers."(4)

Equality of political power has thus been bestowed upon the lowest
elements of our population. We must not be surprised, therefore, at
the spectacle of political scandal and graft, of the notorious and
universally ridiculed low level of intelligence and flagrant stupidity
exhibited by our legislative bodies. The Congressional Record mirrors
our political imbecility.