WHO PREVENT.
_Desire for family limitation result of our social system._--_Desire and
practice not uniform through all classes._--_The best limit, the worst
do not._--_Early marriages and large families._--_N.Z. marriage rates.
Those who delay, and those who abstain from marriage._--_Good motives
mostly actuate._--_All limitation implies restraint._--_Birth-rates vary
inversely with prudence and self-control._--_The limited family usually
born in early married life when progeny is less likely to be well
developed._--_Our worst citizens most prolific._--_Effect of poverty on
fecundity._--_Effect of alcoholic intemperance._--_Effect of mental and
physical defects._--_Defectives propagate their kind._--_The
intermittent inhabitants of Asylums and Gaols constitute the greatest
danger to society._--_Character the resultant of two forces--motor
impulse and inhibition._--_Chief criminal characteristic is defective
inhibition._--_This defect is strongly hereditary._--_It expresses
itself in unrestrained fertility._
It has been sufficiently demonstrated in preceding chapters, that the
birth-rate has been, and is still rapidly declining. It has been sought
to prove that this decline is chiefly due to voluntary means taken by
married people to limit their families, and that the desire for this
limitation is the result of our social system.
The important question now arises. Is the desire uniform through all
classes of Society, and is the practice of prevention uniform through
all classes?
In other words, is the decline in the birth-rate due to prevention in
one class more than in another, and if so which?
Experience and statistics force us to the startling conclusion, that the
birth-rate is declining amongst the best classes of citizens, and
remains undisturbed amongst the worst.
Now the first-class responsible for the decline includes those who do
not marry, and those who marry late. The Michigan vital statistics for
1894 (p. 125) show that the mean number of children to each marriage at
the age of 15-19 years is 6.75, at the age of 20-25 years it is 5.32, a
difference of 1.44 in favour of delayed marriage for a period of five
years.
In New Zealand the marriage rate has gone up from 5.97 per thousand
persons living in 1888 to 7.67 in 1900.
This class includes clerks with an income of £100 and under,--a large
number with £150, and all misogynists with higher incomes.
It includes labourers with £75 a year and under, and many who receive
£100.
Their motives for avoiding marriage are mostly prudential.
Those who abstain from marriage for prudential reasons are as a rule
good citizens. They are workers who realise their responsibilities in
life, and shrink from undertaking duties which they feel they cannot
adequately perform. By far the largest class who practice prevention,
consists of those who marry, and have one or two children, and limit
their families to that number, for prudential, health, or selfish
reasons.
These too are as a rule good citizens, and there are two qualities that
so distinguish them. First, their prudence; they have no wish to burden
the State with the care or support of their children. Their fixed
determination is to support and educate them themselves, and they set
themselves to the work with thriftiness and forethought.
In order to do this, however, it is essential that the family is limited
to one, two, or three, as the case may be, and before it is too late,
preventive measures are resorted to.
The second quality that distinguishes them as good citizens is their
self-control. Every preventive measure in normal individuals implies a
certain amount of self-restraint, and in proportion as prudential
motives are strong is the self-imposed restraint easy and effective.
The existence of these two qualities, prudence and self-control, is a
very important factor in human character, and upon their presence and
prevalence in its units depend the progress and stability of society.
But the birth-rate varies in an inverse ratio with these qualities. In
those communities or sections of communities, where these qualities are
conspicuous, will the birth-rate be correspondingly low.
There is another class of people that has strong desires to keep free
from the cares and expense of a large family. These are, too, good
citizens and belong to good stock. They are those possessed of ambition
to rise socially, politically, or financially, and they are a numerous
body in New Zealand.
They are quite able to support and educate a fairly large family, but as
children are hindrances, and increase the anxieties, the
responsibilities and the expense, they must be limited to one or two.
There is still another class that consists of the purely selfish and
luxurious members of society, who find children a bother, who have to
sacrifice some of the pleasures of life in order to rear them.
Now all those who prevent have some rational ground for prevention, and
at least are possessed of sufficient self-control to give effect to
their wish. They include the best citizens and the best stock, and from
them would issue, if the reproductive faculty were unrestrained, the
best progeny.
One grave aspect of this limitation is that, as a rule, the family is
limited after the first one or two are born. The small families, say of
two, are born when the parents are both young, and carefully compiled
statistics prove that these are not the best offspring a couple can
produce. Those born first in wedlock, are shorter and not so well
developed as those born later in married life, when parents are more
matured.
If it is substantially true, that the decline in the birth-rate is due
to voluntary prevention, and that prevention implies prudence and
self-control, it is safe to conclude that those in whom these qualities
are absent or least conspicuous, will be the most prolific.
But those in whom these qualities are absent or least conspicuous are
our worst citizens, and, therefore, our worst citizens are the most
prolific. Observation and statistics lead to the same conclusion.
Amongst the very poor in crowded localities, the passion for marriage
early asserts itself.
Its natural enemies are prudence and a consciousness of responsibility,
and these suggest restraint. But prudence and restraint are not the
common attributes of the very poor. Poverty makes people reckless, they
live from hour to hour as the lower animals do. They satisfy their
desires as they arise, whether it be the desire for food or the desire
of sex.
The very poor includes amongst its numbers, the drunkard, the criminal,
the professional pauper, and the physically and mentally defective.
The drunkard is not distinguished by his prudence, nor by his
self-restraint. In fact the alcohol which he imbibes paralyses what
self-control he has, and excites through an increased circulation in his
lower brain-centres an unnatural sexual desire. What hope is there of
the drunkard curtailing his family by self-restraint?
Dr. Billings says, (Forum, June 1893) "So far as we have data with
regard to the use of intoxicating liquors, fertility seems greatest in
those countries and amongst those classes where they are most freely
used."
Neither is the criminal blessed with the important attributes of
prudence and self-control. They are conspicuous by their absence in him.
In all defectives, in epileptics, idiots, the physical deformed, the
insane, and the criminal, the prudence and self-restraint necessary to
the limitation of families is either partially or entirely absent.
To the poor in crowded localities, with limited room-space and
insanitary surroundings, effective self-restraint is more difficult than
in any other class of society.
In all defectives the sexual instinct is as strong, if not stronger,
than in the normal, and they have not that interest in life, and regard
for the future that suggest restraint, nor have they the power to
practise it though prudence were to guide them.
The higher checks to population, as they exist among the better classes
of people, do not obtain amongst the defectives taken as a class.
Vice and misery are more active checks amongst the very poor, and
abortion is practised to a very considerable extent, but the appalling
fact remains, that the birth-rate of the unfit goes on undisturbed,
while the introduction of higher checks amongst the normal classes has
led to a marked decline, more marked than at first sight appears. The
worst feature of the problem, however, is not so much the disproportion
in the numbers born to the normal and the abnormal respectively, but the
fact that the defectives propagate their kind.
The defectives, whose existence and whose liberty constitute the
greatest danger to the State, are the intermittent inhabitants of our
lunatic asylums, prisons, and reformatories.
There is one defect common to all these, and that is defective
inhibition.
All human activity is the result of two forces, motor impulses tending
to action, and inhibition tending to inertia.
The lower animals have strong motor impulses constantly exploding and
expressing themselves in great activity, offensive, defensive,
self-preservative, and procreative, being restrained only by the
inhibitive forces of their conditions and environment.
Children have strong motor impulses, which are at first little
controlled. Inhibition is a late development and is largely a result of
education.
If the motor impulses remain strong, or become stronger in the presence
of development with exercise, while inhibition remains weak, we have a
criminal.
Inhibition is the function performed by the highest and last-formed
brain-cells. These brain cells may be undeveloped either from want of
exercise, that is, education, or from hereditary weakness, or, having
been developed may have undergone degeneration, under the influence of
alcohol, or from hereditary or acquired disease.
Motor impulses, as the springs of action, are common to all animals. In
the lower animals inhibition is external, and never internal or
subjective. In man it may be internal or external.
It is internal or subjective in those whose higher brain centres are
well developed and normal. Their auto-inhibition is such that all their
motor impulses are controlled and directed in the best interests of
society.
It is external only in those whose higher brain centres are either
undeveloped or diseased. These constitute the criminal classes. Their
motor impulses are unrestrained. They offer a low or reduced resistance
to temptation.
Weak or absent resistance in the face of a normal motor impulse whose
expression injuriously affects another, is crime, and a criminal is one
whose power of resistance to motor impulses has been reduced by disease,
hereditary or acquired, or is absent through arrested development.
A confirmed criminal is one in whom the frequent recurrence of an
unrestrained impulse injurious to others has induced habit.
Auto-inhibition is defective or absent, and society must in her own
interest provide external restraint, and this we call law.
Criminals are, therefore, mental defectives, and may be defined for
sociological purposes as those in whom legal punishment for the second
time, for the same offence, has failed to act as a deterrent.
M. Boies, in "Prisoners and Paupers," says that conviction for the third
time for an offence, is proof of hereditary criminal taint.
The existence of motor impulses in the human animal is normal. They vary
in strength and force. We cannot eradicate, we can only control them.
They may become less assertive under the constant control of a highly
cultivated inhibition, but it is only in this way that they can be
affected at all. They may be controlled, either by the individual
himself or by the State. Our reformatories are peopled by young persons
whose distinguishing characteristic is that inhibition is undeveloped or
defective. This defect may be due to want of education, but it is more
often hereditary.
Two things only can be done for them. This faculty of inhibition can be
trained by education, or external restraint can be provided by law.
But the distinguishing characteristic of all defectives, within or
without our public institutions, is defective inhibition,--they are
unable to control the spontaneous impulses that continually arise, and
which may indeed be normal.
Impulses may be abnormal from hereditary predisposition, as _e.g._ the
impulse to drink, but only through strengthening inhibition can these
impulses be controlled,--their existence must be accepted.
But whether the defect is an abnormal impulse, or a normal impulse
abnormally strong, or an abnormally weak or defective inhibition, the
condition is hereditary, and such defectives propagate their kind.
It has been shown that they are more fertile than any other classes
because of the very defect that makes them a danger to society.
The defective restraint that allows them to commit offences against
person and property, also allows their procreative impulse unrestrained
activity.
Defectives, therefore, are not only fertile, but they propagate their
kind, and a few examples will serve to show to some extent the
fertility, and to an enormous extent the hereditary tendencies, of the
unfit.
CASE NO. 1, p. 49.
J. E----'s FAMILY.
M M F
----------+---------------------------+----------------+--------------
| | |
A suicide, Aet. 56 Died of cancer of | Died in a fit,
Married. No issue stomach, Aet. 66 | Aet. 54
|
----+---------+----------+----------+-----------+------+----+--------+
| | | | | | |
M M F F F M M
Died of Died of Died of Died of Died of Healthy, |
cancer of convulsions consumption consumption, consumption, has |
stomach, at | | Aet 16 seven |
Aet. 58 13 weeks | | children |
| | | |
Left five Married several Married several M
children years. years. Epiletic, twice
No issue No issue insane, testes in
abdomen. Married.
No children
CASE NO. 2, p. 108.
K. S----'s FAMILY.
M F
-----------------------+-------------------------
Epileptic | Had sister insane
|
----+------------+---------+--+------------+--------------+------
| | | | |
M F M F F
Epileptic. Epileptic Idiot, Sane as yet. Insane. Suicidal,
Dead. No and insane. impotent Nine children, incurable
issue Dead. No some imbecile No issue
issue
CASE No. 3, p. 125.
Father, a drunkard
|
Son
|
A drunkard, disgustingly | on his wedding day.
|
----+----------+----------+----------+--+-------+-----------+--------+
| | | | | | |
Died of Died of Idiot of Suicidal. Peculiar Repeatedly |
convulsions convulsions 22 years A dement and insane |
of age irritable |
Nervous and
depressed
CASE No. 4, p. 137.
M
Died | mad
|
M__________M_____|_________M__________M
| | | |
Imbecile Irritable Died of brain disease
______________________|___________________________________
| | | | | | | | | |
F. Imbecile Epileptic Epileptic 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
All seven died in convulsions
CASE No. 5, p. 137.
F. a suicide
|_______________________________F____________________F
M Insane
|
Insane
______________|________________________________________
| | |
Excitable Dull Epileptic
Imbecile
CASE No. 6, p. 166.
M________________F
Mute | Normal
___________|__________
M| |F
Mute. No issue Normal__________________M
| Normal
_________________________|______________________
F F M |F
Mute Mute Normal Normal
|
M
Mute
CASE No. 7, p. 231.
J.G. A----'s FAMILY HISTORY.
PATERNAL SIDE. MATERNAL SIDE.
F /
i | Grandfather, a drunkard Grandmother, "odd"
r | Grandmother, normal Grandfather, normal
s |
G t \
e
n S / Uncle, a drunkard Uncle, epileptic
e e | Uncle, a drunkard Uncle, rheumatic, totally
r c | crippled and his daughter also
a o | Uncle, an epileptic Uncle, rheumatic
t n | Aunt, rheumatic
i d \ Father, excitable & irritable Mother, died in asylum
o
n T / Daughter, has had rheumatism and has had heart disease
s h | Son, now insane
i | Son, died a few days old of convulsions
r | Son, now a chronic maniac in an asylum
d | Daughter, suicidal, melancholic; died in an asylum. No issue.
\ Family now extinct.
* * * * *
CASE No. 8, p. 303.
S. M----'s FAMILY.
M F
-----------------------------------------
Asthmatic | Somewhat weak-minded
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1 23456 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
| | | | | | | | |
Healthy Died in Drowned Epilepsy Healthy Idiot Died in Healthy |
infancy infancy |
in in Scrofulous
convulsions convulsions
_The above diagrammatic histories of eight families are taken from Dr.
Strahan's "Marriage and Disease."_