“I have been going over the records of one family in New York, the so-called Nam family. There were 55 per cent. consanguineous matings, marriage between cousins, in one generation, and, owing to the fact that the strain was already loaded with defects, we can see how these defects were concentrated by these cousinmarriages, so that about 90 per cent. of the strain is feeble-minded. There were fully 90 per cent. of the men who are unable to resist the lure of liquor. One-fourth of the children are born illegitimates. Infanticides, incest, murder, harlotry, are all over the chart. This is a highly inbred community, keeping a nearly pure strain of social defects, and the cost to the community has been a million and a half on a fair way of figuring, not directly in the care, but indirectly in the damage they have done. These constitute a rural community. Out of this community we can trace those who have gone to the cities and become murderers, prostitutes and thieves. They are not confined to one state; they spread out over the country. One branch of the family came to the state of Minnesota. We sent to one of Doctor Rogers’ trained field workers to learn whether she had ever heard of this family, and received a reply that the family was well known to social workers in the state of Minnesota. These strains of degenerates are not local matters at all; they are matters of national interest.”
“I have been going over the records of one family in New York, the so-called Nam family. There were 55 per cent. consanguineous matings, marriage between cousins, in one generation, and, owing to the fact that the strain was already loaded with defects, we can see how these defects were concentrated by these cousinmarriages, so that about 90 per cent. of the strain is feeble-minded. There were fully 90 per cent. of the men who are unable to resist the lure of liquor. One-fourth of the children are born illegitimates. Infanticides, incest, murder, harlotry, are all over the chart. This is a highly inbred community, keeping a nearly pure strain of social defects, and the cost to the community has been a million and a half on a fair way of figuring, not directly in the care, but indirectly in the damage they have done. These constitute a rural community. Out of this community we can trace those who have gone to the cities and become murderers, prostitutes and thieves. They are not confined to one state; they spread out over the country. One branch of the family came to the state of Minnesota. We sent to one of Doctor Rogers’ trained field workers to learn whether she had ever heard of this family, and received a reply that the family was well known to social workers in the state of Minnesota. These strains of degenerates are not local matters at all; they are matters of national interest.”
Concerning crime and delinquency, we find that all evidence tends to show that an alarming increase is in progress although satisfactory data are hard to obtain. It is certain that there is a tremendously disproportionate increase in the number of prisoners in recent years compared with general population, for while the total population has increased three and one-half fold, the prison element has increased fifteen fold. According to Wier, in this country there are four and one-half times as many murders for every million of our population to-day as there were twenty years ago.
It may be urged that this increase in prison population is not a disproportionate increase in the number of defectives or criminals, but only an increase in thenumber sent to prison, and this is probably a partial truth—but when we recall such pedigree as those of the Nams, the defective line of Kallikaks and other known unsound strains, he must be hopeful indeed who can find much consolation in this supposition. In any event, no such uncertainty exists regarding the number of murders and homicides, since these have in all probability been as fully recorded in the past as at present.
Vicious Surroundings Not a Sufficient Explanation in Degenerate Stocks.—It is sometimes urged that we are not dealing in such cases with degenerate strains, but merely with unfortunate individuals who have been subjected to pernicious surroundings from the beginning. And it can not be denied that parents who are mentally defective, dissipated or syphilitic afford most noxious developmental and environmental conditions for their children. But when one notes how intimately the moral degeneracy in such stocks is bound up with some degree of feeble-mindedness, he is strongly skeptical toward the sufficiency of such an interpretation, although environment undoubtedly intensifies the results. Concerning this point Davenport says:
“We have certain methods of testing whether it is bad environment or bad breeding which produced these people. Some of the children have been taken at an early age and ‘placed out’. We have traced their subsequent history. In most cases they have turned out quite as bad as those who have remained at home. In a few cases they have turned out well, but it is also true that some of the children who remained at home in bad environment have turned out well.”
“We have certain methods of testing whether it is bad environment or bad breeding which produced these people. Some of the children have been taken at an early age and ‘placed out’. We have traced their subsequent history. In most cases they have turned out quite as bad as those who have remained at home. In a few cases they have turned out well, but it is also true that some of the children who remained at home in bad environment have turned out well.”
And to Davenport’s testimony may we add that of Doctor Wilmarth, who, speaking of children at the home for feeble-minded, says:
“In no place is this subject of the power of heredity in relation to environment so easily studied as among our children. A group of many little children came to us from the state school, being untrainable there. They have had with us the same teaching and the same companionship. Each one has lived, eaten and slept among the others, and, so far as we know, with but one exception, those of vicious parentage have turned instinctively to vicious traits by preference, while those of simple but honest stock do evil things only under strong temptation, and do not persist in them after the wrong is pointed out.”
“In no place is this subject of the power of heredity in relation to environment so easily studied as among our children. A group of many little children came to us from the state school, being untrainable there. They have had with us the same teaching and the same companionship. Each one has lived, eaten and slept among the others, and, so far as we know, with but one exception, those of vicious parentage have turned instinctively to vicious traits by preference, while those of simple but honest stock do evil things only under strong temptation, and do not persist in them after the wrong is pointed out.”
By No Means All Delinquents Are Defectives.—One must not overlook the fact, however, thatdelinquentanddefectiveare by no means synonymous terms, and that many delinquents are with little doubt the product of adverse social circumstances.
The recent careful work of Doctor William Healy[13]in connection with the juvenile delinquents of Chicago shows convincingly that the underlying causations of delinquency are many. Such factors as immorality or constant quarreling of parents, bad companions, lack of parental control, defective sense organs, debilitating habits, lack of healthy mental interests and a host of other environmental factors are not infrequently sufficient in themselves to develop delinquency in the absence of inherited deficiency. The present-day effortsof the student of heredity should not be misunderstood. They are not attempts to make all delinquents out defectives, but rather to determine what percentage of delinquents may be legitimately reckoned as defective and to make the facts known. Since there is no longer any reasonable doubt that, to express it in the mildest terms, an amount of delinquency far from negligible is due in great measure to congenital omissions or propensities, then the sooner the public learns this the better, for we may then set about supplementing our present efforts at race betterment through external improvement by devising means of cleansing the fountain source as well.
It can scarcely be doubted that the average man differs little if any in inherent personality and capacity from many a criminal who is such by occasion rather than by undue predisposition. Who can truthfully answer how many individuals there are who are not potentially criminals to some extent, given sufficient evocative conditions of ignorance, vice, adverse economic pressure and undue temptation?
“Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied.”
“Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied.”
No Special Inheritable Crime-Factor.—The main difficulty in trying to find a hereditary basis for crime lies in the multiplicity of things crime may be. The individual impulsions which lead to certain offenses may be utterly different from those which conduce to others. Undoubtedly many inborn tendencies which are perfectly normal or neutral in themselves may be warped by circumstances into the commission of whatare classified as crimes. The moral man may have the same desire for a thing that the criminal does, but when he finds that this desire can only be gratified by injury to others, he inhibits it because of his repugnance to such injury. The criminal makes no such inhibition.
In general, crime means an offense of some kind against person, property or state. But a biological analysis of it, could it be made, would require among other things knowledge of crime in terms of motive or lack of motive, whether the act was intended to benefit the perpetrator, some other person, or even the race or state; whether the offense was one of dishonesty, of cupidity, of lust, or of violence against another.
As a matter of fact no satisfactory classification of crime can be made since so many factors enter and in such varying degrees. Most classifications made in our legal codes are a hodge-podge based on a mixture of motive on the part of the participant, degree of turpitude involved, nature and extent of the injury inflicted, and the object against which the offense was perpetrated, whether an individual, society or the state. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that in many instances what was crime in the past is no longer so, and vice versa many things which are regarded as criminal to-day were not considered so in the past. So the futility of seeking a specific inherent propensity for “crime” is manifest. How, for instance, in terms of hereditary determiners shall we draw the fine lines of distinction among those who bribe legislators and legal officials, those who are avaricious and dishonestin the world of trade, and those who are wilfully obtuse in providing proper safeguards for employees?
What Is Meant by a Born Criminal?—All we can do is to fall back on the assurance that any act directly or indirectly injurious to society is an offense, and that those offenders who are congenitally unable to distinguish between what is generally accepted as right and wrong, or who if recognizing this are nevertheless uncontrollably impelled toward or are unable to refrain from anti-social acts because of some inherent condition of intellectual or volitional make-up, may be legitimately classed as individuals born with an aptitude for crime and social transgressions. In such individuals the natural mental make-up is lacking in some of its necessary elements so that memory, judgment, or will-power are not up to the minimum that is necessary for the establishment of proper conduct. In some cases, apparently, this lack finds expression in almost any kind of vice or crime into which circumstances happen to lead the individual. In others, however, there seem to be tendencies toward the commission of certain types of crime or vice. Certain family strains are characterized by petty thieving, others by deeds of violence, and still others by sexual offenses. Certain types of mental defect are closely associated with certain crimes. Thus sufferers from incipient paresis seem particularly prone to commit assaults and larceny; epileptics, crimes of brutality and violence.
The Epileptic Criminal Especially Dangerous.—One of the characteristics of epilepsy, indeed, emphasized by various psychiatrists, is that frequently itleads to loss of those forms of self-restraint which are absolutely indispensable to morality and the safety of society. Cruelty, atrocious sexual offenses and other vicious crimes are the result. It is a noteworthy fact, moreover, that often in the milder forms of affliction, where instead of well-marked convulsions only momentary lapses of consciousness occur, the greatest amount of mental and moral deterioration and fluctuation is sometimes found.
The situation as regards the epileptic is well presented by Doctor William Healy, Director of the Juvenile Psycopathic Institute of Chicago, in an article entitled “Epilepsy and Crime; the Cost”, in theIllinois Medical Journal, November, 1912. He says:
“In the work of our institute,[14]which represents the most thoroughgoing research into the genetics of criminalism ever undertaken in this country, we have with the help of parents and others carefully studied nearly 1,000 young repeated offenders. We have found that no less than 7½ per cent. of these are ordinary epileptics, and we have reason to suspect others. This by no means represents the total number of epileptics seen in connection with juvenile court work, where, of course, first offenders as well as large numbers of dependents are seen. In addition to my above enumeration, other cases seen by the Detention Home physicians and myself amount up to many scores of cases. If one remembers that it is ordinarily calculated that one person in every 500 is epileptic, the significance of this high criminal percentage is clear, and the practical bearing of it is still further accentuated by the fact that some of the worst repeaters are epileptics, and that many of the gravest crimes are committed bythose unfortunates. The connection between epilepsy and crime has everywhere been recognized by students of the subject, but it apparently needs constant emphasis in order that common sense steps may be taken toward guardianship of these who suffer from a disease which wreaks such extravagant vengeance on society.”
“In the work of our institute,[14]which represents the most thoroughgoing research into the genetics of criminalism ever undertaken in this country, we have with the help of parents and others carefully studied nearly 1,000 young repeated offenders. We have found that no less than 7½ per cent. of these are ordinary epileptics, and we have reason to suspect others. This by no means represents the total number of epileptics seen in connection with juvenile court work, where, of course, first offenders as well as large numbers of dependents are seen. In addition to my above enumeration, other cases seen by the Detention Home physicians and myself amount up to many scores of cases. If one remembers that it is ordinarily calculated that one person in every 500 is epileptic, the significance of this high criminal percentage is clear, and the practical bearing of it is still further accentuated by the fact that some of the worst repeaters are epileptics, and that many of the gravest crimes are committed bythose unfortunates. The connection between epilepsy and crime has everywhere been recognized by students of the subject, but it apparently needs constant emphasis in order that common sense steps may be taken toward guardianship of these who suffer from a disease which wreaks such extravagant vengeance on society.”
Mental Disorders Most Frequently Associated With Crime.—Doctor Charles Mercier, an English authority on crime and insanity, in enumerating the mental disorders most frequently associated with crime, places the insanity of drunkenness first. Any one who will take the trouble to verify the facts in his own community will find that a large percentage, frequently considerably over half, of the arrests made by the police are for acts committed while the offender was more or less under the influence of alcohol. Next to drunkenness among mental disorders which lead to crime Doctor Mercier places feeble-mindedness. Next to feeble-mindedness comes epilepsy; then paranoia or systematized delusion; next paresis; and lastly melancholia.
Paranoics are peculiar in that they are particularly apt to attack persons of prominence. Highly egotistical, they almost invariably believe themselves or some one or some cause dear to them, the subject of a plot, perhaps to rob them, to torture them, to steal their inventions or literary productions, or to persecute them in some way. Two if not three of our murdered presidents owe their assassinations to paranoics. Many rulers have been attacked and some killed by such insane individuals. Most of the “cranks” who write threatening letters are lunatics of this type.
Of the kinds of mental unsoundness known to be inheritable which are of special significance from the standpoint of crime and delinquency undoubtedly feeble-mindedness ranks first. We have already seen that as our methods for detecting the higher grades of feeble-mindedness become more accurate we disclose in border-line cases a veritable hot-bed of mental incapacity suitable for the engendering of the criminal and the vicious. Here in addition to some of the more pronounced criminal types belong hosts of our chronic petty offenders, our sexually vicious and our “won’t-works”. One interesting outcome of a recent investigation into the army of unemployed in England was the discovery of the general unfitness of these unemployed. In our own country the habitually unemployed are so not because of lack of work, but largely because it is unprofitable to employ them.
The Bearing of Immigration on Crime and Delinquency.—Perhaps in no field more than this of crime and delinquency, especially in so far as it is based on innate deficiency, does the gravity of the immigration question impress itself on us. How stupendous this problem[15]has become may be realized from the fact that according to the census of 1910, 13,345,545, or one out of seven of the inhabitants of the United States, were foreign born. And if we add to these the 18,897,837 of whom one or both parents were of foreign birth, we reach the astonishing total of over 32,000,000, or more than one-third ofour total population, who are foreign born, or who have one or both parents of foreign birth.
During the decade from 1900 to 1910, 8,500,000 foreigners came to the United States, of whom 5,250,000 remained to make a permanent home. This shows how rapidly our whole population might be radically changed. In recent years the source of our immigrants has shifted proportionately from northwestern Europe to southern and eastern Europe (Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia), and whether for weal or woe this new blood must inevitably leave its impress upon us. Does it not behoove us then to seek with anxious eyes some knowledge of these invading hordes with whom we are to mingle our life-blood?
Even the most superficial examination may well cause us grave concern. We find that in one year (1908) at Ellis Island alone, 3,741 paupers, 2,900 persons with contagious disease, 184 insane, 121 feeble-minded, 136 criminals, 124 prostitutes and 65 idiots were denied entrance, and yet, according to the estimate of Doctor F. K. Sprague, of the United States Public Health Service, probably only about 5 per cent of the mentally deficient and 25 per cent. of those who will become insane have been detected. When confronted by such data we can begin to realize what we are facing. Others estimate that from 6 to 7 per cent. of the immigrants who are now arriving are feeble-minded. We learn further that recently while the foreign-born population of New York state was about 30 per cent., the foreign-born population of the insane hospitals of the state was over 43 per cent., and atone time approximately 65 per cent. for New York City. In one year (1908) 84 per cent. of the patients in Bellevue Hospital, New York City, were of foreign parentage. Paresis, which probably always has syphilis as its antecedent, is proportionately twice as prevalent among foreigners as among natives in New York City.
But from the standpoint of inheritance, however great the danger may be from classifiable defectives, it is probably far greater from that much larger class of aliens we are now receiving with open arms who are below the mental and physical average of their own countries. Moreover, with our present system of inspection there is no way of detecting the grades of feeble-mindedness above idiocy and imbecility in the great numbers of foreign children under five when brought in, who are beginning to show up in alarming numbers in the schools of some of our larger cities. About thirty per cent. of the annual increment of our population is due to immigration and not to births; and once in our country the alien far outbreeds the native stock, with relatively little increase in death-rate, thus making a double contribution to the increase of population. When we take all these facts into consideration it certainly is high time that we arouse from our self-complacent attitude and consider the whole question of immigration most earnestly.
In spite of the fact that many individuals are caught in the net of inspection at our portals, it is clear that still more rigid rejection[16]is imperative. The inspectorsat our various ports are doing the best they can under the circumstances, but there are at present too few of them and they are too restricted in their powers to meet the situation satisfactorily. Moreover, when at one of our ports in one year (1910), of 1,483 immigrants certified by the inspecting surgeons as unfit to land because of serious mental or physical defects, 1,370 were landed anyway, it is evident that there is a strong and reprehensible pull somewhere to evade the obvious intent of the law.
It remains for us as a people to decide whether we shall continue to let the large employers of cheap labor, the railroad and steamship agents and brokers, who care nothing about the innate fitness of the immigrants they bring, determine the character of our future population, or whether we shall insist on a proper regulation of this flood so that we may receive only an honest, intelligent, industrious and healthy stock. To continue to absorb these aliens with as little selection as we now do is nothing short of criminal carelessness. Let us not be deceived by the promptings of a misguided sentiment, “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” The voice is Jacob’s voice, nor should this voice of the easily persuaded, the sentimentalist, the interested organization to which the relatives of the defective alien belong, or any other pressure move us from our obvious duty of refusing to fasten upon this country an incubus of degeneracy for which we as a nation are in no way responsible.
To render us safe we should not only have more carefully drawn laws and more rigid selection at ourports of entry, but we should if possible also know the stock from which our future citizens come. This is peculiarly desirable for such defects as feeble-mindedness and various other mental imperfections, some of which require prolonged observation for detection. Davenport estimates that it is wholly within the realm of possibility and good business sense to maintain a corps of trained inspectors abroad in the chief centers from which our immigrants come who shall certify the desirable applicants. He makes the point that the national expense would be far less than the cost of maintaining the army of defectives we are now admitting to our own country, many of whom almost immediately become public charges, to say nothing of the hordes of carriers who though normal themselves, will transmit undesirable traits.
Sexual Vice.—As to sexual vice, the skein is indeed a tangled one. Since nine-tenths of the difficulty centers in a lack of self-restraint, and inasmuch as the mating instinct is one of the strongest that tugs at the flesh of humanity, it is obvious that those by nature deficient in volitional control will almost without exception give way to the call. So as might be expected the hordes of our feeble-minded and epileptic are always a source of grave danger in this respect. However, the mentally enfeebled are by no means the only offenders; indeed, they are probably not the majority. The true situation is finally dawning on society and the reformer’s call for instruction in “sex-hygiene” resounds through the land. The whole matter is one of the most perplexing and momentous that confronts us to-day.
The Question of School Instruction in Sex-Hygiene.—While the writer does not for an instant underestimate the gravity of the situation, and has only contempt for the nonsense that is palmed off on children about their origin, or the indelicate self-consciousness which puts under the ban the discussion of so serious a problem by adults, still he is not convinced that the universal teaching of the subject to children in schools by the average teacher, as advocated by some, is to be the solution of the matter or is even a wise attempt at solution. Yet he freely admits that he is possibly overfearful of the effects of the undesirable features of such instruction. True it is that all children do learn, frequently at an astonishingly early age, about sex, and their knowledge is usually of an undesirable kind from unreliable and often vicious sources, and it is equally true that parents, either through ignorance or prudery, generally can not be depended on to give the child necessary instruction. But before entering on a wide-spread campaign of undiluted sex-instruction in schools might it not be more prudent to make an attempt toward reaching fathers and mothers and convincing them of the necessity of dealing more frankly and intelligently with their children regarding sex?
Even to the novice in psychology the powerful nature of suggestion is known, and with this knowledge before us, is it not wiser to strive in the main to keep the child’s mind off of sex rather than specifically to focus it on it by special convocations and discourse? If our psychology means anything, then the worst possible thing we can do for a child is to make him undulysex-conscious. Something might be done profitably perhaps in schools in an unobtrusive way by specially gifted persons, but the self-conscious way in which most teachers go about topics of sex is certainly not reassuring to the thoughtful observer as regards the benefit derived from such instruction. The one evident method of accomplishing wholesome sex-instruction in schools, devoid of all possibility of undesirable suggestion and sex-consciousness, is in the form of biological work where plants and animals are studied in all their relations, the subject of propagation being taken up in as matter-of-fact a way as the functioning of any other organ system of plants or animals. In such a course, long before the subject of sex in higher animals need be approached the pupil will have developed an attitude of mind which will lead him to see nothing unusual or suggestive in the function of sex no matter where it may be found. Incidentally, inasmuch as the manner in which germs affect living organisms should be studied in such a course anyway, it would be a simple matter to give all necessary information about the dangers of infection from venereal diseases.
Mere Knowledge Not the Crux of the Sex Problem.—However, desirable as correct knowledge about sex is, knowledge alone is not the crux of the sex problem. The moral dangers and abuses that we are trying to circumvent lie rather in the realm of the emotions than that of the intellect. The problem must be solved from a broader foundation than mere information. The all-important consideration is the early establishment of general habits of self-controlso that these may become incorporated in the nervous organization of the child and become inhibitory anchors against passions and temptation. Children must be taught to suppress the present impulse, to sacrifice the immediate pleasure for the more distant or permanent good. They must be practised in calling up feelings that will counteract other promptings which if followed blindly are inimical to social welfare. Their control must come from within not as a matter of external compulsion. That way character lies.
So in viewing the problem of sexual hygiene the writer feels that our attempts toward damming the torrents in the adolescent by a belated effort at verbal instruction on sex-hygiene is at best only a palliative or an attempt to cure the symptoms of a more deeply-seated, organic, social malady. The treatment should have been in progress long before in the form of training in self-control, and in the inculcation of the sense of dignity and self-respect which springs from the individual’s consciousness of being, not a slave to his desires, but his own master. This, together with the judicious schooling of boys in a greater chivalry and respect for womanhood, and of girls in the necessity of meriting such esteem, will, in my estimation, carry us further than formal courses in sex-hygiene.
Early Training in Self-Restraint an Important Preventive of Crime and Delinquency.—As to crime and delinquency in general, it is evident that the same early training in self-restraint is a most important factor of prevention. A wise warden in charge of a large prison says, “Most of these men are here because they have not learned sufficiently the lesson ofself-control.” This is the age of preventive medicine, why not also of preventive crime and delinquency? Instead of confining our practise to punishing offenders, necessary as this may be under the present conditions, why not strive more to prevent the commission of offenses? As far as normal individuals are concerned much can be done by early cultivation in self-discipline and through the establishment of moral backbone by training in the overcoming of difficulties. Much, very much, also remains to be done in the correction of wrong social conditions.
Unpardonable to Permit Delinquent Defectives to Multiply Their Kind.—As for our mental defectives and moral imbeciles, knowing now how strongly hereditary the underlying factors of these conditions are, and with no preventive or curative agents in sight, to let them produce progeny, is clearly unpardonable.
RACE BETTERMENT THROUGH HEREDITY
Most of us have heard in one form or another the fairy story of the youth on adventure bent, who was captured by the giant and under dire penalty in case of failure was set the task of sweeping out the giant’s stable before sundown. The peculiarity of this stable, it will be recalled, was that, as fast as the refuse was swept out at the door an even greater quantity poured in through the windows so that the sweeper, just in proportion to his zeal, became more and more encumbered with his burden.
A Questionable Form of Charity.—Though we smile at the childishness of this legend, are we not as a civilized people attempting through our charities a feat parallel to that of this unfortunate youth? We foster and favor our social wastage with the inevitable result that it runs riot under our sheltering hand and deluges us with an ever accumulating flood of its like. For are we not constantly building more asylums, sanitaria and prisons, to preserve more unfit, to produce more defectives, to require still greater numbers of asylums, sanitaria and prisons, to preserve more unfit, and so on in unending progression?
At nearly every period of history there have beencertain individuals who have seen the necessity of a state eliminating its supply of defectives.
Past Protests.—For instance, we find the importance of this strongly urged by Plato. After pointing out the fact that the shepherd, in order to maintain the standard of his flocks, bred only from the best individuals, as did likewise the huntsman with his dogs and horses, and the fancier with his various pets, Plato went on to show the danger to the state of allowing the constantly increasing body of defectives and degenerates to multiply their kind. Repeated expression of the same idea has occurred from time to time during the succeeding centuries.
Little heed was paid to these remonstrances, however, with the result that is known to us all. To-day, “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome” is still sung by the poet, but the original nations themselves have long since passed into the night.
An Increasing Flood of Defectives.—Strive to ignore the unpleasant facts as we may, we have to admit that the same problem of what the human harvest shall be is with us in grave form to-day. The alarming phase of the situation, however, lies in the fact that we are facing an ever increasing flood of social wastage.
Butwhythis increase of defectives? It can not be attributed to oppression, to grinding poverty, or to decline in attention to our sick and needy, for never was prosperity greater, never were charities more flourishing, never such activity in the search for palliatives and cures. The simple fact is that we are breeding our defectives. The human harvest like the grainharvest is based fundamentally on heritage. And to get a better crop of human beings, we must, as with other crops, weed out bad strains.
To whatever source of information we turn the facts are essentially the same. Abroad we find that in England, for example, the ratio of defectives to normals more than doubled between 1764 and 1896. At home, from the investigation of Davenport and Weeks we learn that in the state of New Jersey the number of epileptics doubles every thirty years. And other investigators estimate that the fecundity of mental defectives in general is about twice as great as that of the average of our population. In a recent report of the New York State Board of Charities we read, “There are about thirty thousand feeble-minded persons in the state of New York, of whom four thousand are intermittently sequestered while twenty-six thousand who are a menace to society are at liberty and may produce the unfit.” And a passage from the last Massachusetts report reads as follows: “We have been obliged to refuse a very large number of applicants for the admission of feeble-minded women—many of whom have given birth to one or more children. The prolific progeny of these women almost without exception are public charges from the date of their birth.”
How fertile defective types may be is shown by a passage in one of Doctor Wilmarth’s papers which runs as follows: “One feeble-minded woman, now removed from this state, had by different men eighteen children in nineteen years, she alleges.” In a letter Doctor Wilmarth tells me that the birth of the twenty-thirdchild of this woman has just been announced! In one English workhouse Potts reports sixteen feeble-minded women who have produced one hundred sixteen mentally defective children, and Branthwaite ninety-two female habitual drunkards who have had eight hundred fifty babies. If we include the two million individuals cared for annually in various institutional homes, hospitals and dispensaries as dependents, the estimated total of insane, feeble-minded, epileptic, deaf and dumb, criminals, juvenile delinquents, paupers and other dependents in the United States in 1910 was approximately three million, or one in every thirty of our population! With the higher fertility of certain of these classes and with only a small percentage under custodial care where will it all end? Is it not time for us to waken from our lethargy and stem this tide of national deterioration?
Natural Elimination of Defectives Done Away With.—With our improved methods of sanitation and care of the sick, the pauper and the defective, these classes have been freed from the stress of an environment that under natural conditions would have resulted in their premature death and consequent infertility. Or in the terminology of the biologist, we have done away with the factor ofnatural selection, the factor which in state of nature keeps all races purged of the unfit, the ill-adapted. With this restraining, and purifying influence removed, however, the weakling, the defective, may arrive at maturity and commingle his blood with that of the strong, with the inevitable result that the general vigor of the progeny from generation to generation is sapped andprogressively undermined. Thus we are confronted by the stubborn fact that through present humanitarian methods we are driving the race toward decadence.
Why Not Prevent Our Social Maladies?—Now there is no reasonable person, I think, who will not admit that the motives underlying our modern altruistic practises are the noblest fruitage of our slow upward struggle from the brute to man. As humane beings, we can not cast aside these principles and return to the painful and pitiless method of nature which would leave the sick and the defective alone to perish miserably; the sacrifice would be too great.
Is there then no escape from this dilemma? To this query the modern student of heredity answers yes; let us but add more wisdom to our charity and the enigma is solved. We need no sacrifice of pity but rather an expansion of it. Let us but extend our vision from immediate suffering to the prospective suffering of the countless unborn descendants of our present unfit and ask ourselves the question, why should they be born? Why not prevent our social maladies instead of waiting to cure them? This is the province of eugenics.
Eugenics Defined.—The term Eugenics was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton in his book entitledInquiries Into Human Faculties, and we may therefore look to him for a satisfactory definition. He says, “Eugenics is the study of the agencies under social control, that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally.” And again, “I take Eugenics veryseriously, feeling that its principles ought to become one of the dominant motives in a civilized nation, much as if they were one of its religious tenets.... Man is gifted with pity and other kindly feelings, but he also has the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I conceive it to fall well within his province to replace natural selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective. This is precisely the aim of Eugenics. Its first object is to check the birth-rate of the unfit instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the fit, by early marriages and the healthful rearing of their children.”
Improved Environment Alone Will Not Cure Racial Degeneracy.—While many an enthusiastic humanitarian is laboring under the assumption that if we can improve external conditions human deficiencies will disappear, the student of heredity realizes that this is in large part a delusion unless we can secure an accompanying improvement in intrinsic qualities of the human species itself through the suitable mating of individuals. Just as the intelligent farmer to-day demands selected seed as well as good soil and proper cultivation, so one with the facts of heredity at hand would, as he views social problems, urge the fundamental importance of having selected stock with which to start. No shifts or shapings of environment will ever enable men to “gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles.”
Heredity and Environment.—To wrangle over the question of which is the more important, heredity or environment, is about as idle a proceeding as to argue which is the more important, the stomach or something to put in the stomach. Man would soon come to grief without either. So, too, the question of human development is not one of heredity alone nor of environment alone; both are necessary and must work hand in hand. Dormant capacities must have proper environment to call them forth, but on the other hand no kind of environment can evoke responses if some degree of aptitude is not present.
Professor Thorndike undertook experiments with groups of school children of high and of low initial ability respectively to determine whether equal opportunity or equal special training would produce an equalizing effect in easily alterable traits such as rapidity in addition and the like. Without exception he found that at the end of such experiments, although both groups had improved, the superior individuals were farther ahead than ever, that equality of opportunity and training had widened rather than narrowed the gap between the two classes. Others who have made special studies on the causes of individual differences have come to the same conclusion; namely, that individuals differ widely by original nature and that similarity in conditions of nurture and training will not avail in deleting these differences.
Galton and others, from extensive studies based on English sources, have shown that notable achievements have run in certain families to a degree that isinexplicable on the basis of opportunity alone; it can be fully accounted for only by attributing much to superior inborn capacity. Doctor Woods has shown much the same thing for certain families in America. Schuster and Elderton have proved that there is a high degree of similarity in scholastic standing between fathers and sons in Oxford. Professor Pearson’s measurements of mental characters in brothers and sisters while at school show a high degree of innate resemblance in many cases and certain cases of decided contrast. Where contrasts exist in certain families they remain unreduced in spite of the similarity of environment, thus proving that environment is less operative in the final intellectual establishment of such individuals than are their inborn aptitudes. Even in twins, as both Galton and Thorndike have shown, there is no tendency for similar education, home life and the like to render those originally different any more similar with advancing years.
Professor Karl Pearson has done more perhaps than any other individual toward attempting actually to measure the relative strength of heredity and environment. Numerous statistical measurements lead him to conclude that it is a conservative estimate to regard heredity as at least five or ten times as important as environment in the development of the individual. A vigorous defense by him of this position will be found inBiometrikafor April, 1914.
Inter-Racial Marriage.—Some of the dangers of racial deterioration which threaten us because of our laxity regarding immigration have already been indicated. It is high time that we give this wholequestion the most serious consideration of which we are capable. From the rate at which immigrants are increasing it is obvious that our very life-blood is at stake. For our own protection we must face the question of what types or races should be ruled out. Aside from the dangers which lie in the defective or unsuccessful types already discussed in Chapter IX, many students of heredity feel that there is great hazard in the mongrelizing of distinctly unrelated races no matter how superior the original strains may be. Unfortunately there is a great lack of reliable data on this point. The mulatto of our own country, the Eurasians in India and the mixed races of South America are, according to the testimony of many observers, eloquent arguments against such hybridization. Agassiz remarked on this point as follows:
“Let any one who doubts the evil of the mixture of races and who is inclined from mistaken philanthropy to break down all barriers between them come to Brazil. He can not deny the deterioration consequent upon the amalgamation of races, more wide-spread here than in any other country in the world, and which is rapidly effacing the best qualities of the white man, the Indian, and the negro, leaving a mongrel nondescript type deficient in physical and mental energy.”
“Let any one who doubts the evil of the mixture of races and who is inclined from mistaken philanthropy to break down all barriers between them come to Brazil. He can not deny the deterioration consequent upon the amalgamation of races, more wide-spread here than in any other country in the world, and which is rapidly effacing the best qualities of the white man, the Indian, and the negro, leaving a mongrel nondescript type deficient in physical and mental energy.”
Of the American mulatto one not infrequently meets with the assertion that he is on the average inferior mentally, morally and physically to either the white or the negro race. Thus Doctor J. B. Taylor[17]statesthat, “It is demonstrated by well-attested facts that these hybrids of black and white are vastly more susceptible to certain infections; their moral as well as physical stamina is lower than that of either original race.” Others would deny that conclusive evidence to this effect exists. However, it is certain that under existing social conditions in our own country only the most worthless and vicious of the white race will tend in any considerable numbers to mate with the negro and the result can not but mean deterioration on the whole for either race.
There is certainly not one iota of evidence that the crossing of any two widely different human races will yield superior offspring in any respect and there are many indications that such intermixture lowers the average of the population. Our evidence derived from plant and animal breeding is also against pronounced crosses. The inferiority of the mongrel is universally recognized. No sane farmer, for example, would seek to improve his Jerseys or his Herefords by crossing one with the other. It is true that in pure breeds of plants and animals we sometimes venture on a cross to introduce some new desirable character but we follow up such mixture by a rigid selection in which is eliminated all but the rare individuals having the desired characteristics, and we continue this elimination generation after generation to fix our characters again. It is obvious that no such selection as this would be possible among the progeny of human crosses.
It clearly becomes our duty then to determine as accurately as possible the degree of non-relationship between races it is inadvisable to transcend ininter-racial marriages. We are certainly taking great risks in accepting in any considerable numbers those races we can not assimilate to advantage into our own stock.
War.—The deteriorating effect of war on national physique and vigor has been so frequently cited by eugenists[18]and is so obvious as scarcely to require further comment. It should be pointed out, however, that where, as is the case at present in Great Britain, armies are assembled from volunteers, instead of by conscription, there is the greatest danger from the eugenic standpoint, since not only physical but moral qualities are involved. For it is the brave, the generous, the individual with a high sense of duty who goes forward to the slaughter leaving the cowardly, the selfish or the indifferent to father the race. With the awful deadliness of modern warfare upon exhibition before our very eyes to-day, the extreme seriousness of such selective action must be evident to every thoughtful person.
Human Conservation.—We talk much in recent years ofconservation; but what are our forests and frontiers, our minerals and our waterways, compared with our national health and life-blood? No farmer would think of setting aside a diseased or physically defectiveanimalfor breeding purposes, yet the same man together with the majority of mankind is wholly oblivious to similar faults when it comes to the mating of human beings. But is it not as important to look to fitness in man as in Poland China hogs or Holstein cows? Certainly the various strains are asmarked and breed as true in the human family as in our live stock. Why face complacently in our own families what we would not tolerate in our piggery?
From the expenditure of comparatively small sums in studying the inheritance of various qualities in wheat, corn and other grain, improvements based on the laws of genetics have been secured which are enormously increasing our agricultural output and thereby adding to our national wealth. But if it costs relatively little to discover and conserve millions of dollars’ worth of hereditary qualities in our plants and animals, what are we to think of ourselves, an intelligent people who, knowing that “every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit,” still go on placidly permitting the production of defectives and delinquents? Can we continue to drink the sluggish blood of the pauper and the imbecile into our veins and hope to escape unscathed?
We are all familiar with the fate of Babylon, Assyria, Persia, Egypt and Rome. Why not America? Certainly we have no pledge of special immunity from Divine Powers. If so, what then is the meaning of our 366 hospitals for insane which cost us annually $21,000,000; our 63 institutions for feeble-minded costing us over $5,000,000; our 1,300 prisons maintained at a cost of more than $13,000,000; our 1,500 hospitals whose annual maintenance requires at least $30,000,000; our 115 schools or homes for deaf and dumb; our 2,500 almshouses with an annual expense account of $20,000,000 and our 1,200 refuge homes costing annually several millions of dollars more? To say that we spend annually over $100,000,000 on thecustody of insane, feeble-minded, paupers, epileptics, deaf, blind and other charges is expressing the situation very conservatively.
Kindness in the Long Run.—There is no one I think who will not admit that the sympathy and charity of the human heart are its noblest virtues. But we must face the problem of what is kindness in the long run. Havelock Ellis well says, “The superficially sympathetic man flings a coin to the beggar; the more deeply sympathetic man builds an almshouse for him so that he need no longer beg; but perhaps the most radically sympathetic of all is the man who arranges that the beggar shall not be born.”
What shall we do?
The Problem Has Two Phases.—For an intelligent consideration of the problem one must recognize at the outset that it has two distinct phases; namely, (1) a selective union of the fittest, or in other words, a conscious attempt to breed a superior race; and (2) the elimination of the obviously unfit by preventing their reproduction, with the purpose of purifying the present race. It is evident at a glance that these are two essentially distinct problems although the practise of either method could result in racial improvement. The first is sometimes spoken of aspositiveorconstructive eugenics, the second asnegativeorrestrictive eugenics.
Constructive Eugenics Must Be Based on Education.—As to the first phase, direct selection for superiority, the campaign must, in the very nature of things, be one of education. With the necessary knowledge of the facts in mind, the awakeningconscience of the individual together with an enlightened public opinion will form the safest guide. Increasing popular comprehension of the inevitable nature of human inheritance must engender a sense of responsibility as to the positive eugenic fitness of a contemplated marriage. The growth of this sentiment will doubtless be slow, and properly so, for as yet we have but half-lights on what are the most desirable types of humanity. No one can say what the highest type of man should be, but almost any one can readily pick out types which certainly shouldnotbe.
Inferior Increasing More Rapidly Than Superior Stocks.—Modern eugenists, although realizing that the constructive phase is of great importance, are making no attempt to map out any fixed mode of procedure for it beyond pointing out the desirability of larger families among the better classes. The need for individuals of superior physical, mental and moral qualities to multiply is so obvious as scarcely to require comment. Yet the fact is that judging from all appearances these are the very ones who have the lowest birth-rate. Eugenics is mainly concerned with the relative rates of increase of the various classes, not with mere fertility in itself. And the actual increase must be measured in terms of the extent to which birth-rate exceeds death-rate. If a high birth-rate is accompanied by a high death-rate then it is not especially significant in increasing a given class as a whole. All available evidence points to the fact that to-day the lower strata of society are far outbreeding the middle and higher, with an almost negligible difference in death-rate, and just in the measure that these lowerstrata are innately inferior just in that degree must the race deteriorate. The seriousness of the whole situation as it exists to-day hinges, therefore, on the extent to which the lower strata are inferior to those above them.
An Unselected Population May Contain Much Valuable Material.—In evaluating these lower strata a matter of very great importance is whether the population is a selected or an unselected one. If the population has been long resident in a given region and has had fairly good opportunity for education then we will find in the lower reaches a larger percentage of sedimentation made up of the worthless and inferior stocks. If, however, a continual fomentation and geographical shifting of the population is in progress as in parts of America, or if adequate educational opportunities are lacking, as in some parts of Russia, the poor and less well-to-do classes may contain, no one can tell how much, relatively valuable stock.
Forel remarks on this point as follows: