The same author, Charles Darwin, in the same book, writes as follows:
“Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his
horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to
his own marriage he rarely, or never takes any such care. He is impelled
by nearly the same motives as the lower animals, when they are left to
their own free choice, though he is in so far superior to them that he
highly values mental charms and virtues. On the other hand he is
strongly attracted by mere wealth or rank. Yet he might, by selection,
do something not only for the bodily constitution and frame of his
offspring, but for their intellectual and moral qualities. Both sexes
ought to refrain from marriage if they are in any marked degree inferior
in body or mind; but such hopes are Utopian and will never be even
partially realized until the laws of inheritance are thoroughly known.
Everyone does good service who aids toward this end. When the principles
of breeding and inheritance are better understood, we shall not hear
ignorant members of our legislature rejecting with scorn a plan for
ascertaining whether or not consanguineous marriages are injurious to
man.”
Though the above was written thirty-five years ago, little real progress
has been made in eugenics. It is true we have laws against miscegenation
and against certain consanguineous marriages; some States have passed
and other States have attempted to pass, laws making certificates of
health necessary before marriage licenses can be issued; if we mistake
not, in some States the habitual criminal is unsexed, and in many States
this question has been discussed, but ignorance in regard to the laws of
heredity is still the rule and not the exception.
Wealth and social position, rather than health and intellectuality,
determine as many marriages today as when Darwin wrote, and America’s
highest legislative body has not yet repealed the law against the
dissemination of knowledge of means to prevent conception. Yet too many
children in poor families not only means dire poverty and unhappiness
instead of comfort and happiness, but oftentimes desertion, divorce,
forced immorality or crime. It is just as necessary to be able to limit
the number of children so that each will at least get a good start in
life as it is to bring healthy children into the world, since healthy
children can not remain healthy and develop as well under unfavorable as
under favorable conditions.
Did the law affect rich and poor alike it would not be so pernicious,
but such is not the case, since the largest families in this country are
found among the poor and ignorant, the very ones who can least afford to
have many dependents. Without being so intended, it is class
legislation. The healthy, well nourished and well educated class
escapes, the poor, ill-nourished, and ignorant class bears the burden
until this burden is shifted on society in the form of beggar,
defective, imbecile or criminal.
If all the members of Congress made a tour of the tenement districts of
New York or other large cities, saw the overworked fathers and overbred
mothers, the ragged, ill-nourished and oftentimes diseased children,
inquired into the total earnings of the family and the necessary
expenses, ate of their bread and breathed their air, if our congressmen
did this, then the fate of the law as it now stands would be sealed. But
our congressmen are not going to make any such tour, they are not even
going to inform themselves by study of the actual conditions, but will
do something far easier by voting an appropriation for the study of hog
cholera, the foot and mouth disease of cattle, the Texas cattle tick or
some other measure of more apparent benefit to the people—and the
congressman. To vote on appropriations like the above can not weaken the
legislator, to vote to repeal the present law might lose him a large
following in some communities. Yet the repeal of the present law in
regard to preventives is the first step in eugenics, and without the
repeal the best efforts of the best men and women will accomplish but
little.—_W. T. B._