THE Eugenic Revolution might fairly be said to have begun with the
ignominious weddings of Messrs. Reginald Willett, James Carrick, De Lancy
Smith, and Alphonso W. Green.
Its crisis culminated in the Long Acre riots. But the great suffragette
revolution was now coming to its abrupt and predestined end; the
reaction, already long overdue, gathered force with incredible rapidity
and exploded from Yonkers to Coney Island, in a furious
counter-revolution. The revolt of the Unfit was on at last.
Mobs of maddened spinsters paraded the streets of the five boroughs
demanding spouses. Maidens of uncertain age and attractions who, in the
hysterical enthusiasm of the eugenic revolution, had offered themselves
the pleasures of martyrdom by vowing celibacy and by standing aside
while physically perfect sister suffragettes pounced upon and married all
flawless specimens of the opposite sex, now began to demand for
themselves the leavings among the mature, thin-shanked, and bald-headed.
In vain their beautiful comrades attempted to explain the eugenistic
principles--to point out that the very essence of the entire cult lay in
non-reproduction by the physically unfit, and in the ultimate extinction
of the thin, bald, and meagre among the human race.
But thousands and thousands of the love-maddened rose up and denounced
the Beauty Trust, demanded a return to the former conditions of fair
competition in the open shop of matrimony.
They were timidly encouraged by thousands of middle-aged gentlemen who
denied that either excessive meagreness or baldness was hereditary; they
even dared to assert that the suffragette revolution had been a mistake,
and pointed out that only an average of one in every hundred women had
taken the trouble to exercise her privilege at the polls in the recent
election, and that ninety per cent. of those who voted marked their
ballots wrong or forgot to mark them at all, or else invalidated them by
writing suggestions to the candidates on the backs of the ballots.
A week of terrible confusion ensued, and, in the very midst of it, news
came from London that Miss Pondora Bottomly, who, after throwing bricks
all day through the back windows of Windsor Castle, had been arrested by
a very thin Scotch policeman, had suddenly seized the policeman and
married him in spite of his terrified cries.
A shout of protest arose from every human man in the civilised world; a
groan of dismay burst from every human woman. It was the beginning of the
end; the old order of things was already in sight; men, long hidden,
reappeared in public places; wives shyly began to respond to the cautious
"good-mornings" of their long ignored husbands, the wealthy and socially
desirable but otherwise unattractive plucked up spirits; florists,
caterers, modistes, ministers came out of seclusion and began to prowl
around the débris of their ruined professions with a view to starting
out again in business; and here and there the forgotten art of flirting
was furtively resurrected and resumed in the awaking metropolis.
"Perfection," said America's greatest orator on the floor of the Senate,
"is endurable only because unattainable. The only things on earth that
make this world interesting are its sporting chances, its misfortunes,
and its mutts!"
And within a month after the delivery of this classic the American nation
had resumed its normal, haphazard aspect. The revolution, the riots on
Fifth Avenue and Long Acre, the bachelors' St. Bartholomew were all
forgotten; Tammany Hall and the Republican State Organization yawned,
stretched, rubbed their eyes, awoke, and sat up licking their hungry
chops; the gentlemen in charge of the Bureau of Special Privileges opened
the long-locked drawers of that piece of furniture, and looked over the
ledgers; trusts, monopolies, systems came out of their cyclone cellars;
turf associations dredged the dump-docks for charters, whither a feminine
municipal administration had consigned them; all-night cafés,
dance-halls, gambling houses reopened, and the electric lights sparkled
once more on painted cheeks and tinted lips.
The good old days of yore were returning fast on the heels of the retreat
of woman; capital shook hands with privilege; the prices of staples
soared; joints, dives, and hospitals were fast filling up; jails and
prisons and asylums looked forward to full houses. It was the same old
world again--the same dear old interesting, exciting, grafting,
murdering, diseased planet, spinning along through space--just as far as
usual from other worlds and probably so arranged in order that other
worlds might not suffer from its aroma.
And over it its special, man-designed god was expected to keep watch and
deal out hell or paradise as the man-made regulations which governed the
deity and his abode required.
So once again the golden days of yore began; congregations worshipped in
Fifth Avenue churches and children starved on Avenue A; splendid
hospitals were erected, palatial villas were built in the country; and
department stores paid Mamie and Maud seven dollars a week--but competed
in vain, sometimes, with smiling and considerate individuals who offered
them more, including enough to eat.
The world's god was back in his heaven; the world would, therefore, go
very well; and woman, at last, was returning to her own sphere to mind
her own business--and a gifted husband, especially created as her
physical and mental lord and master by a deity universally regarded as
masculine in sex.
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