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The Making of the Modern World by Jesus The textbook chapter below was written with the permission (and encouragement) of Erik2175. Erik is an outstanding storyteller, who creates plausible and detailed plots, develops believable characters who seem to come alive, and writes with misspellings and grammatical errors. This last flaw is a very minor one compared to his great gift for storytelling. His stories create new and plausible alternative worlds within which we can see many other story possibilities. In his story "Raven's Last Day," Erik created a future world that could conceivably (though not probably) come to pass. I have written a chapter from a high school textbook describing how it came to be. The chapter is as dull and boring as any textbook you have ever read. (My teachers tell me that I write "boring" very well!) My wordprocessor tells me that it is written at a CURRENT 12th grade reading level--too high for today's high school students, but about right if such a world comes to pass. Erik and I would both like to encourage readers to create additional stories for the Archive set in this future world. Erik would like first person accounts of boys becoming drones--what happened to YOU on and around your fourteenth birthday (or to your brother for women writers). I would appreciate gentler stories of the domestic life of drones, wives, and their children, church services, classroom discussions, etc. (Why does the name "Farrell Squire" pop into my mind here?) Even simple scenes, without much or any plot, would help to flesh out this world. ----Jesus (also known as Anonymous37) THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD Chapter 37 The Eugenics Act: Its Precursors and Impact Certainly the Eugenics Act is the single most important government action within at least the past century. Few of us can imagine the state of the world before its enactment and its many benefits were created. The violence, poverty, and illness, which have been nearly erased within the past three generations, are amazing to consider in the light of the many centuries of effort that had been made to mitigate them. This one simple law and its consequences have accomplished in a few short years what millenia of other efforts have failed to do. The Eugenics Act as we currently know it was not enacted out of nowhere, however. In order to understand it, it is necessary to look first at its precursors both in legislation and in the greater society as a whole. We will also need to look at the later amendments that extended the original act to its current status. Following that, we will look briefly at the impact of the Eugenics Act on other nations of the world, mostly beneficial, but occasionally baleful in instances where it was misconstrued or intentionally misapplied. PRECURSORS The origins of the Eugenics Act can be seen clearly by the end of the twentieth century. Americans were becoming far more risk averse. In a time of declining crime, there was a great increase in prison construction. The United States soon had more of its population imprisoned than any other country in the world. The death penalty was increasingly imposed and prison terms for violent crime continued to increase in length. Prison terms for nonviolent crime also increased, soon including, in most states, life in prison without possibility of parole for a third nonviolent offense. Despite the fall in the crime rate and the rapidly increasing prison population, there was continued call for the construction of yet more prisons for yet more prisoners. Finally, during the presidency of George W. Bush, who as governor of Texas had presided over more executions than any other governor in American history, there came to be a national discussion on the causes and prevention of crime. The long-standing debate between those who believed in a genetic cause of criminal behavior and those who sought its causes in the social environment reached an important denouement in the understanding that either long-term imprisonment or execution was a solution for either possible cause of criminal activity, or for any combination of them. Either penalty reduced the reproductive ability of those convicted of a crime. If the cause was genetic, criminals had fewer offspring, especially if they were convicted of a crime at an early age and served prison terms through all or most of their biologically reproductive years. If the causes of crime were environmental, removing criminals from the environment would help to reduce their influence, their social reproduction, on other potential criminals. The prevention of reproduction, whether biological or social, by criminals came to be seen as a major route to crime reduction. Toward the end of President Bush's first term of office, he proposed and Congress quickly passed the Long-Term Violence Reduction Act to prevent the genetic reproduction of criminals and to greatly lessen their chances of social reproduction by providing a very visible example of the results of criminal behavior. The Long-Term Violence Reduction Act provided that any criminal sentenced to prison could opt, of his or her own free will, for permanent and irreversible sterilization in lieu of incarceration. Male criminals would have their testicles removed and females their ovaries. Sperm and egg specimens would be maintained in case the individual was later determined to be innocent of the crime for which he or she had been convicted. Since most violent crime was committed by males, the loss of testosterone would also aid in their rehabilitation by calming them down once they were returned to society. The law was immediately attacked by a small minority as constitutionally "cruel and unusual punishment." The case moved rapidly to the Supreme Court, which had become far more conservative since the appointment of three new justices by President Bush. The court noted that the criminal was not compelled to accept sterilization, but had it as an option to avoid the long prison sentence that was generally accepted as a just punishment. Since there was no compulsion, and the criminal had a clear alternative punishment available which was historically and socially acceptable, sterilization was not cruel and unusual. While a small number of criminals decided to remain in prison for life, prison hospitals were soon performing frequent castrations and ovarectomies. Within only a few years, the majority of prisons could be closed and taxes dramatically reduced. Only a few criminals who had been released committed any further crimes and needed to be returned to prison. Within only a few years a great reduction in the crime rate was clearly apparent. Nearly all former criminals who were released became responsible citizens. Without testosterone, few male criminals ever committed another criminal act, and then almost never a violent act. The application of the act to juvenile criminals was especially useful in reducing violent crime, as young males, with overabundant testosterone, were responsible for the majority of violence in society. Sterilizing them before they had any children was also seen to aid in the long-term reduction of all criminal behavior. The lack of reproduction by criminals helped to reduce the poverty rate as well by reducing the number of children of those at the bottom of society, those who would be born into poverty and likely to remain in poverty. PASSING THE EUGENICS ACT Within only ten years after the passage of the Long-Term Violence Reduction Act, its powerful effect on the crime rate in America was apparent to all. The rate for all criminal activity, both violent and nonviolent, had dropped to its lowest level since statistics began to be kept in the middle of the nineteenth century. The reduction in reproductive frequency of those who had been convicted of criminal activity, resulted in the birth of fewer children into poverty, greatly reducing the poverty rate as well. With the benefits so clear in such a short time, discussion began on ways to extend these benefits more widely in society. Attention began to be paid to those persons in society who became less fit parents and to ways to reduce their fertility as had been done for those who committed criminal activity. Discussion included both coercive and non-coercive methods and focussed primarily on tax incentives in the early discussion, before deciding that unfit parents paid little in taxes anyway. They were already receiving more in tax subsidies than they were paying into the system. They did not deserve even greater subsidies. The result of this debate was the passage of the Eugenics Act to prevent those who would clearly be unfit parents from having children. The Eugenics Act, as originally written, required the examination of all children, nation-wide, during their fourteenth year to determine whether or not they were fit to reproduce. The decision was made to permanently sterilize all children, both boys and girls, who were in the bottom 10% in intelligence as determined by their school records; to sterilize all who were carriers of genetic diseases; and to sterilize all who were judged to be mentally or psychologically unstable. Age fourteen was chosen so that the children would have already become fertile, but not yet have reproduced. The law provided for the freezing and preservation of all testicles and ovaries that were removed. This was partially to guard against any errors in judgement that had been made-a remote possibility. It was also to ensure that should any of these children decide at a later date to pay the full social costs of a child, they would be able to have one. Full social cost was set at the cost of health insurance from birth to age twenty-one and the full cost of education through high school. The fee was to be paid in full before the testicle or ovary would be retrieved from long term storage and the fertilization take place. It was expected that fewer than one in ten thousand would take advantage of this opportunity, but that it was important psychologically to provide it. Despite the clear benefits that we now, in retrospect, perceive for this law, there was a long and vigorous debate in Congress before it was passed narrowly by both houses. The president expressed some reservations before signing it, but it did finally become law, to take effect on July first of the following year. The following months were spent establishing surgical clinics throughout the country, accumulating data on all of the children in the neighborhood of each of the clinics, and notifying all parents that their children would be required to visit the clinic on their fourteenth birthday for a full physical examination. During the month of June there was, of course, a great deal of media attention paid to the new law and its potentially beneficial effects. Television and newspaper reporters were at nearly all clinics nationwide on the morning that the first children arrived for their examinations. This was clearly the most important news story in the world for that date. The standards required about one boy and girl in six to be sterilized, and the news media was filled with interviews of children both before and after their visits to the clinics. Within a few days there were thousands of boys nationwide who had had their testicles removed and thousands of girls who had had their ovaries removed. Despite the initial enthusiasm, negative reactions to the Eugenics Act began to be seen in many communities, especially poor, inner city communities. The first Anti-Eugenics Riot began in the Mexican barrio of Chicago three days after the first sterilizations. A large mob attacked and destroyed the neighborhood clinic. The televised scenes of the Chicago riot provoked similar riots in several other cities, most notably Los Angeles, where the rioters destroyed seven neighborhood clinics on the following day. The National Guard was immediately called and thousands of rioters were arrested. The riots that began so spontaneously ended abruptly within hours, however, after the Attorney General announced that the Long-Term Violence Reduction Act would be applied to all who were arrested. Most rioters were male and there were over 10,000 judicial castrations and over 500 judicial ovarectomies during the next few months. While there were scattered non-violent demonstrations after the riots were suppressed, there was no major protest other than a small armed uprising by the Aryan Brotherhood, a militia group in northern Idaho. This uprising required nearly a month to put down with the ultimate arrest by the National Guard of all residents of the militia compound. All militia members over the age of eight were tried and convicted under the Long-Term Violence Reduction Act. This was the last time that the Act has needed to be applied to any large group, though it was still applied on very rare occasions for several years after this event. As the Eugenics Act began to be refined in actual practice, clinics began to evaluate school records of standardized tests, school grades and intelligence tests to determine the bottom 10% in mental ability. School psychologists provided information on basic mental health of all children. Family health histories and a physical examination on the date of the fourteenth birthday were used to determine physical health and the status of any genetic defects. Nationwide about 15% of all boys and girls were being sterilized on their fourteenth birthdays, though the rate varied somewhat from neighborhood to neighborhood. FIRST AMENDMENT Only three years after the application of the original Eugenics Act, the first amendment was passed. The date of the physical examination and determination of genetic status was changed to the eighth birthday. This allowed ample time for reconsideration of all decisions. Parents and teachers were able to present any additional information to clinics that might change the determination. The first amendment, because it moved the actual sterilization operation to six years after the determination, required some permanent means of indicating which children were in each group. The act provided for small tattoos to be placed in an inconspicuous location on each child on his or her eighth birthday. Boys were to receive a honeybee (drone) tattoo if they were scheduled for sterilization and a bull tattoo if they were not. Girls were to receive a tattoo of ivy (a rarely flowering plant) if they were to be sterilized and a rose if they were not. While the bull and drone tattoos are still in use, the ivy and rose tattoos can be seen today only on elderly women. This first amendment greatly reduced any anxiety that physicians and school officials had about possibly making any mistakes in their determinations. The six years between the determination and the actual sterilization operation was reassuring to everyone involved. What little opposition there had been to the original Eugenics Act now seemed to disappear. The genetic improvement of the American population was clearly underway. It was generally acknowledged that the rates for both crime and poverty would fall further yet. Genetic disease, and all of its associated social and economic expense, would decline dramatically. The state of public health would improve. It was expected that the improved intelligence of the population over the next two or three generations would allow for even more rapid economic and social advance. SECOND AMENDMENT Based on the success of the Eugenics Act and its first amendment, there began to be a movement to further improve the population by increasing the percentage of the population who fell under its provisions. The second amendment extended the act to include the bottom 25% in intelligence and the bottom 15% in physical health. This brought the number of children to be sterilized to slightly less than one third of the population. The second amendment also provided tax incentives for fit parents to have more children. While a stable, or even slightly falling, population was desired, sterilizing one third of the population would still require fit parents to have an average of slightly more than three children. An unforeseen consequence of the Eugenics Act was found only a few years after passage of this second amendment. An increasing number of fertile women preferred to marry drones, rather than unsterilized men. While these women were happy to produce children through artificial insemination by fertile men, they felt that drones made kinder, gentler husbands. They felt that they made both better husbands and better fathers than did fertile men, even though they were acknowledged to be less intelligent and less healthy than were breeders. Women and drones soon became a powerful lobby posing questions which led to the third amendment to the Eugenics Act. THIRD AMENDMENT Within only a few years after the passage of the second amendment to the Eugenics Act, it came to be generally realized by the American populace that even humans require only a few male breeders in order to reproduce. For nearly 10,000 years, humans in most areas of the world have been consistently working to improve the genetic strain of many different animal species, making them both stronger and healthier. In the case of nearly all of these species, it became the practice as early as four or five thousand BC to castrate all but the finest male specimens and to use only those remaining few as breeders. With the invention of modern artificial insemination in the twentieth century, it became necessary to preserve even fewer intact males to use as breeding stock. As a result of choosing only the very finest breeding males and being able to send their frozen sperm worldwide, vast improvements in the genetic stock of most domestic animals became possible. For the best results, only about one or two percent of males were used for breeding purposes and the rest were rendered sterile, though they still remained useful. In the case of dogs and cats, which were the animals best known to most people, those which had been sterilized seemed to lead both happier and healthier lives than those which were kept fertile for breeding purposes. Castrated male cats lived longer and healthier lives than unaltered toms. Castrated dogs were clearly happier and gentler around humans than those that retained their testicles. Retention of testicles was clearly not important for either health or happiness, and might actually lead to a lower quality of life. The improvement in both the genetics of other animal species and the increased health and happiness of those individuals which had been neutered to remove them from the breeding pool was apparent to all who considered it. Only humans had not been subject to such careful, intelligent genetic improvement. The Eugenics Act and its first two amendments had clearly been steps in the right direction, but more could and should be done if the human race were to be improved as much as had been done with sheep and cattle. There seemed to be general agreement that human genetics should receive at least as much consideration as that of pigs and dogs. The third amendment to the Eugenics Act was passed to ensure the intelligent reproduction of humans and the increase in health, happiness and intelligence of all Americans. It was decided that only the minimal number of genetically superior males would be used for reproduction, but that to maintain genetic diversity nearly all females would remain fertile. This was necessary because females can produce only a limited number of healthy babies during their lifetime while males can produce an almost unlimited amount of healthy sperm. Through use of artificial insemination, only those females judged worthy of reproduction would reproduce, and the sperm could be selected for ideal offspring in each case. In order to foster genetic diversity, no female would be allowed to have more than one child sired by any single male. Since the sterilization of females is much more complex than that of males, the existing clinics would actually require fewer resources to sterilize ninety-five percent or more of all males than they had required to sterilize only about one in three of the total population turning fourteen years old. During the transition to the new system, while all boys from eight to fourteen were being reexamined for suitability for genetic reproduction, all boys were required to report to their neighborhood clinic on their fourteenth birthdays. School records and existing health reports were used to select ninety percent of these boys for immediate sterilization. Of course all boys who had been selected to become drones at their eighth birthday examination were castrated, but so were a majority of those boys who had thought that they were to become breeders. In order to speed the transition to the new and improved system, large tax incentives were also made available for all males over the age of fourteen who agreed to be sterilized. As an additional incentive, first the government bureaucracy and later large companies made it clear that males who retained their testicles would not be hired, and if already hired, would not be promoted. Over the next five years, nearly eighty-five percent of adult males visited their neighborhood clinics during extended evening and weekend hours so that they might be sterilized. It had become clear during the years since the original passage of the Eugenics Act that drones were much more productive than breeders. They had fewer distractions and worked much harder and more efficiently at whatever task was set before them. They were also happier and had fewer illnesses than breeders and companies had found them to be superior employees. With nearly all reproduction now produced through artificial insemination, it was possible to select the optimum parents for each child. While it was decided that no two children should share the same set of parents, women were permitted from zero to five children depending on their genetic qualities. The sperm from breeders was frozen for wide distribution so that no two children sired by the same male would be born in any one community. Each breeder was expected to sire from two or three to over one hundred children depending on his genetic qualities. As other developed countries enacted legislation similar to the Eugenics Act, frozen sperm began to be shipped internationally as well and the offspring of any one breeder might be found in several different countries. For example, high quality Swedish and Italian sperm is now widely used in America and American sperm is used in France and Poland. The intelligent selection of optimal parents for any child has meant the gradual disappearance of racial and ethnic distinctions within the developed world, not just America. The scourge of racism has disappeared in all modern countries and people today have a difficult time understanding how distracting and destructive it was in the past. We have found that drones make much more caring and nurturing fathers than do breeders and that few women today are willing to marry a breeder, even after he has served his commitment as a sperm provider. Nearly all drones become fathers providing a loving and stable home for their children (produced by their wives and anonymous sires). They also provide an effective role model for their sons, most of whom will also become drones on their fourteenth birthdays. Within only fifty years since the passage of the original Eugenics Act, America has seen the near elimination of genetic disease, a large increase in the general intelligence of the population, and an elimination of the scourge of poverty. Americans are truly happier and healthier than ever before in their history. The Eugenics Act has been the most important political decision in the history of our country. While even after fifty years of enforcement of the Eugenics Act most boys initially seem reluctant to become drones on their fourteenth birthdays, nearly all of them quickly realize the advantages soon after the fact. It is mostly those boys who are selected to become breeders who are unhappy about their fate by the time of their twenty-first birthday. IMPACT ON THE OUTSIDE WORLD Within only a few years of the initial adoption of the Eugenics Act in the United States, similar measures began to be adopted in other developed countries. The clear genetic advantages of such legislation made adoption imperative if other countries were not to all too far behind America in health, economics, and intellectual capabilities. While there was strong opposition within several countries, similar legislation was adopted in the entire developed world and nearly all developing countries within only twenty years. The resulting reduction in crime and improvement in quality of life was quickly apparent wherever eugenic legislation was adopted. In the fifty years since the first Eugenics Act was adopted in America, there has never been an armed conflict between any two countries with such legislation. The world is looking forward to universal peace and prosperity as the few remaining countries see the advantages that will accrue to them through such laws. While the effect of eugenic legislation has been similar in most countries, there have been some interesting differences both in original application and in the consequences of the various laws. Some of these differences are instructive as we consider how the Eugenics Act has impacted American society during the past fifty years. Germany was the first European country to consider adopting a eugenics law. Because of the German experience under Hitler, there were violent street protests against the law in Berlin and other cities as it was under discussion. Several prominent historians pointed out that, while similar in title and actual wording to the eugenics laws passed under the Nazi regime, the intent and the potential impact would be far different. Germany was now a democratic country and the law would be uniformly and fairly applied. After lengthy debate and the inclusion of safeguards against aribitrary enforcement, a eugenics law was finally passed. The new German law was closely modeled on the American legislation after its first amendment, but with a ten year expiration date to allow for thorough reconsideration once its impact became known. The clear success of the law in Germany resulted in passage of permanent legislation even before the original law expired. The current German legislation is essentially identical to the American law. The very large Turkish immigrant community in Germany was especially wary of the legislation, fearing that it would be unfairly applied to them as the earlier Nazi legislation had been applied to minority ethnic groups within Germany. Within days after the law was passed, nearly three-quarters of all ethnic Turks in the country moved back to Turkey. While there were minor economic problems in Germany for a couple of years after these mostly manual laborers left, the German economy was able to cope much more easily than was the Turkish economy which had a sudden influx of thousands of recent emigrants and children and grandchildren of emigrants who had left for the west a generation or more earlier. The immediate reaction in Turkey was the passage of its own eugenics legislation. While largely patterned after the original Eugenics Act in the United States, it added a provision that all immigrants to Turkey within the past five years were to be automatically sterilized. This included the entire group which had returned from Germany. The Italian eugenics law, which was passed only two years after the German law and modeled closely after it, was soon amended to allow parents to choose immediate sterilization as soon as a son was determined to be a drone on his eighth birthday. There has been a consequent flowering of Italian music with a return to the stage of castrati. Italian popular music has swept the world and the opera is again dominated by Italian voices. The most popular singers in the world are mostly Italian. While no other country has as many boys being castrated before puberty as Italy, several other countries, notably India, and the Philippines have increasing numbers of parents making similar choices. With only a very few exceptions, adoption of the principles of the Eugenics Act has had positive consequences around the world. Today, only a handful of countries are yet to enact similar legislation. Most have acted responsibly in looking to improve their populations. Only a very few have misapplied the principles for political gain. MISUSES OF THE EUGENICS ACT PRINCIPLES The most brutal misapplication of the basic principles behind the Eugenics Act took place in Africa. In both Burundi and Rwanda, two small countries in East Africa, a deliberate misinterpretation of the Eugenics Act did lead ultimately, however, to the end of each country's centuries long civil war. In Burundi the Hutu tribe gained military dominance, though by no means full control, of the country. On orders from the military command, the army went on a month long rampage killing or castrating every male they could find, including infants and small children, of the now subordinate Tutsi tribe. Only after the fact, did the military commanders declare that their intention was eugenic and that the Tutsis would now cease to exist within a single generation, leaving behind a peaceful country which would be entirely Hutu. All future children born of a Tutsi mother would have a Hutu father and be treated and cared for as a member of the dominant Hutu tribe. For the most part, this has happened. There were only scattered rebellions of Tutsi and half-Tutsi over the next thirty years that were easily put down by the Hutu troops. In each case, all male rebels and any sons that they might have were immediately castrated. About half the male population is still selected for sterilization at puberty, but the decisions seem to be made on health and intelligence grounds, rather than by ethnicity. The country is extremely fertile and had been badly overpopulated. The civil war, killings, castrations, and subsequent population reduction allowed for the economy to grow dramatically on a per capita basis and Burundi is now wealthier than any of the surrounding countries. The case in Rwanda was similar in effect, but quite different in application. The long civil war between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes had gradually been brought to a somewhat peaceful status through large-scale use of outside forces. Both the United Nations and the adjoining countries of Uganda and the Congo, whose rulers are closely related to the Tutsi, sent troops to put down a Hutu rebellion and to restore Tutsi control of a country in which they were a slight majority. An act, which on paper, looks very similar to the original version of the Eugenics Act in this country, was passed with the approval of this outside support. Application, however, fell entirely on the subordinate Hutu population and only a very few, mostly politically dissident, Tutsi were ever sterilized. Within only a few years the vast majority of the adult male Hutu had been castrated and most young sons of Hutu or part-Hutu mothers (almost entirely now with Tutsi fathers) still continue to be castrated at about the time that they reach puberty. Rwanda does maintain the fiction of a neutral and dispassionate examination of all children at the time of the traditional coming of age ceremony, however the decision to sterilize falls almost entirely on part-Hutu boys. A few Tutsi boys are sterilized, as are a very few girls from both tribes. Each year a very few part-Hutu boys are allowed to keep their testicles and become breeders. These boys, as well as those few Tutsi boys who are castrated, are featured prominently in the Rwandan news media as evidence of the neutrality of the decision-making process. Few outsiders believe that the process is non-racist, however. The Chinese example is another misapplication of the principles of the Eugenics Act. At the time of the passage of the Eugenics Act in America, China was embroiled in yet another interregnum. The fall of the Communist Party had led to a power vacuum. The county had splintered into a series of warring states, each contending to dominate the entire country. The new small states on the periphery, with majorities of non-Chinese peoples, such as the Tibetans, Mongols, and Uighurs, declared their independence and sought political and trade ties with the outside world. Once the political unit centered on Guangdong Province in southeastern China achieved dominance over the other Chinese states during fifteen years of civil war, they began immediately to re-take the border areas that had slipped from Chinese control. The new Chinese government looked at the American Eugenics Act as if it were a modern version of the ancient Chinese method of expansion of governmental control. One which had first been used during the great push south over three thousand years ago and which had continued to be used effectively until less than three hundred years ago. In that early Chinese expansion, which lead to their domination of East Asia and the clear subordination of the few remaining other peoples within their territory, they had used highly effective methods to gain both cultural and genetic control. In the early Chinese state, there was both polygamy with wealthy men having multiple wives and primogeniture where the eldest son inherited the entire family property. This left all younger sons of the several wives to find their own fortunes through either warfare or scholarship. A few sons, of course, studied hard to become scholars and government bureaucrats. But, most joined the army to seek their fortune. They knew that their only hope for the future lay in the success of their military campaigns against the non-Chinese peoples on their borders. It was Chinese policy to settle successful soldiers in the territory that they had added to the country. Any successful military operation was concluded with the execution of all adult males and elderly women and the castration of all small boys of the defeated group. The castrated boys were mostly sent as eunuchs to guard the harems of the central part of the country or to be trained for the palace bureaucracy. The young women of the tribe were then married to the successful soldiers and their children were raised as Chinese. In this way the relatively small number of militarily superior Chinese quickly engulfed most of East Asia. Chinese histories are filled with documentation of this practice and its success may be clearly seen in the vast Chinese linguistic and cultural area. The most frequently cited case in Chinese history is the well-documented conquest of one of the Hmong tribes in what is now southern China during the reign of Emperor Ying Ts'ung in the mid-Ming Dynasty. Detailed historical records from the period show that all males past puberty and all old women of the tribe were killed and that 1,565 young Hmong boys were castrated and sent to serve in the imperial palace in Beijing. Some of the younger boys who had been castrated at five or six years of age eventually became well educated and influential in palace administration. The soldiers took the young women as wives and settled to farm the new territory, which has remained Chinese to this day. The policy was used successfully against several other Hmong tribes in the region, causing most of the remaining Hmong to flee south toward modern Laos. Most of the descendants of these survivors of Chinese expansion migrated to America in the late twentieth century, where their sons are now mostly castrated on their fourteenth birthdays, rather than as small boys. The expansion policy was highly effective and many prominent Chinese officials over a period of nearly two thousand years were eunuchs from the periphery of the country who had been castrated when their tribe or area had been conquered. Cheng Ho, the most famous admiral in Chinese history, for example, was the son of a prominent Moslem scholar who was castrated at the age of eight along with hundreds of other boys when the part of modern Yunnan Province where he was born was captured by Chinese troops. As the newly reunified Chinese state gradually retook those border regions which had declared independence, it declared all adult males as suspect and either executed them as traitors or castrated them as violent criminals. The Chinese version of the eugenics act was imposed on the newly reconquered territories and nearly all boys who were of non-Chinese ethnicity were also castrated as soon as they came under Chinese control. In addition, the Chinese version of the Eugenics Act was also applied within the territories occupied by the ethnically Chinese people though primarily as a means of population reduction. Children of political dissidents do seem to be selected for sterilization at a very high rate, however. The population of China, both as a result of the long civil war and the eugenics act is rapidly approaching the optimum number set by the government and the minority populations of China have by now nearly disappeared. Fortunately, few countries misapplied the lessons of the Eugenics Act in such ways as these three examples. In most of the world, versions of the Act have served both to improve the overall quality of the population and to limit population numbers to that sustainable by the environment. The American Eugenics Act has spread worldwide to the greater benefit of mankind.