OTHER TRANSMISSIBLE DISEASES AND PAUPERISM
_When authorities prohibit marriage for the unfit, they have in mind the
probable fruits of such marriage. Women suffering from the diseases
mentioned in this chapter give birth to children mentally and physically
inferior, likely to sink into pauperism and certain to be in some way a
burden upon society. If physicians were free to instruct parents how to
prevent conception, the reproduction of their kind by defective and
diseased parents living outside of institutions would be eliminated as a
social problem._
INSANITY
_DR. S. ADOLPHUS KNOPF IN THE SURVEY FOR NOVEMBER, 1916_
That insanity, idiocy, epilepsy and alcoholic predisposition are often
transmitted from parent to child is now universally admitted and
corroborated by every-day experience and by an abundance of statistics.
Countless are the millions of dollars expended for the maintenance of
these mentally unfit. The state of New York alone spends $2,000,000
annually for the care of its insane. Whether sterilization of these
individuals would be the best remedy is a question still open for
discussion. The constitutionality of the procedure is doubted by some of
our legal authorities. Segregation is resorted to in the meantime with
more or less rigor according to state laws. Every year, however, many of
the individuals who had been committed to institutions for the treatment
of mental disorders are discharged as cured. They are allowed to
procreate their kind. Would it not be an economic saving if at least the
individuals whose intelligence has been restored were instructed in the
prevention of bringing into the world children who are most likely to be
mentally tainted and to become a burden to the community?
Of approximately every 500 persons in the United States in 1910, there
was one an inmate of an insane asylum.
The exact figures expressed in a recent report (Hill, Joseph A. Report
on the Insane in the United States, Bureau of the Census, Department of
Commerce) that in a typical community of 200,000 persons, equally
divided as to sex, 208 of the males and 200 of the females would be
found in the insane asylums. In the course of a year 72 males and 60
females would be admitted to the asylums.
In 1880 the total of inmates in insane asylums in the United States
included 20,695 males and 20,307 females. In 1910, thirty years later,
the number of male inmates had increased to 98,695 and the number of
female inmates to 80,096. The excess of men among admissions in 1910
indicated a still further increase in the proportion, namely, 128 males
to 100 females.
_BEING WELL-BORN. An Introduction to Eugenics. Michael F. Guyer, Prof.
Zoology, University of Wisconsin. Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis,
Ind. 1916._
The records of the inheritance of insanity, imbecility,
feeble-mindedness and other forms of nervous and mental defects are
truly startling. Active researches in this field have been in progress
now for several years, and as each new set of investigations comes in
the tale is always the same. It is questionable if there is a single
genuine case on record where a normal child has been born from a union
of two imbeciles. Yet the universal tendency is for defective to mate
with defective. Davenport gives a list of examples, beginning with such
a one as this: “A feeble-minded man of thirty-eight has a delicate wife
who in twenty years has borne him nineteen defective children.” Little
wonder, in the light of such facts as these, that the number of
degenerates is rapidly increasing in what are called civilized
countries. But it may be urged, these are exceptional cases, there is
surely no considerable number of mental defectives who are married. Let
us look at the available facts. In Great Britain in 1901, of 60,000
known feeble-minded, imbeciles and idiots, 19,000 were married, and in
the same year, of 117,000 lunatics, 47,000 were married; that is a sum
total of 66,000 mentally defective individuals were legally multiplying,
or had had the opportunity to multiply their kind, to say nothing of the
unmarried who were known to have produced children.
In the State of Wisconsin I note from the tenth Biennial Report of the
Board of Control that of 574 patients admitted to the Northern Hospital
for the Insane during the year from July 1st, 1908 to June 30th, 1909,
274 were married, and 29 others were known to have been married; this is
a total of 303 out of 574, considerably over half. At the Wisconsin
State Hospital for the Insane we find the conditions are no better, for
out of 499 admitted in the year of 1909–10, 208 were married and 65
others had at some time been married, or a total of 273 out of 499.
There is every reason to believe that conditions are approximately
similar in other states. P. 231–232.
One of the most disquieting facts in the situation in most states is
that many patients—an average of approximately 1,000 a year, in
Wisconsin for example—are on parole, subject to recall. This means that
although it is recognized that these patients are likely to have to be
returned to the asylum or hospital, little or no restraint in the
meantime is placed on their marital relations. P. 234.
_SOCIAL ASPECTS. Wm. E. Kellicott._
In the U. S. the census of 1880 reported 40,942 insane in hospitals, and
51,017 not in hospitals, a total of 91,959 known insane. In 1903 the
number in hospitals had increased to 150,151. The number not in
hospitals was not known and cannot be determined accurately, but it is
conservatively estimated as certainly not less than 30,000, and probably
it is far greater than this. But taking a total of 180,000 known insane
as a conservative figure, the ratio of known insane in the total
population was 225 per 100,000 in 1903, as compared with 183 per 100,000
in 1880. P. 33.
The latest census reports for the U. S. give data relative to the
dependents and defective in institutions. Insane and feeble-minded, at
least 100,000; paupers in institutions 80,000, ⅔ of whom have children
and are also physically and mentally deficient: prisoners 100,000;
juvenile delinquents 23,000 in institutions; the number cared for in
hospitals, dispensaries, homes of various kinds in the year 1904 was in
excess of 2,000,000. From these figures we get a rough total of nearly
3,000,000. The foregoing are representative data:—they are published by
the volume. It is always the same story—rapid increase of the unfit,
defective, insane, criminal, slow increase, even decrease, of the normal
and gifted stocks. It is with such conditions in mind that Whetham
writes: “This suppression of the best blood of the country is a new
disease in modern Europe; it is an old story in the history of nations,
and has been the prelude to the ruin of states and the decline and fall
of empires.” P. 35.
_EUGENICS RECORD BULLETIN. No. 5. A Study of Heredity of Insanity in
the Light of the Mendelian Theory. A. J. Rosanoff, M.D., and
Florence I. Orr, B.S. Reprinted from American Journal of Insanity.
Vol. XXVIII ... 1911. Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y._
In the report of the year ending September 30th, 1909, the New York
State Commission in Lunacy gives the number of insane patients in state
hospitals and private institutions as 31,540, or one to 276 in the
general population. This figure does not include the inmates of
institutions for the feeble-minded and for epileptics, it does not
include the neuropathic subjects who find their way into prisons,
reformatories, almshouses, dispensaries, hospitals for incurables,
general hospitals, neurological clinics, etc., and above all, it does
not include the many neuropathic subjects whose infirmities are latent,
or of such nature as not to incapacitate them for ordinary occupations
and life at large. P. 245.
_EUGENICS RECORD OFFICE. Bulletin No. 10 A. Report of the Committee to
study and to report on the best practical means to cut off the
defective germ-plasm in the American population. The scope of the
Committee’s work. By Harry H. Laughlin, Secretary to the
Committee. Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y. 1914._
According to the last census, 1910, .914% of the total population, or
841,244 persons, were inmates of institutions in the anti-social and the
unfortunate classes in the U. S. Besides these persons who have been
committed to institutions, there are many others of equally unworthy
personality and hereditary qualities, who have, through the caprice of
circumstances never been committed to institutions. In so far as the
defective traits of the members of these varieties are inborn, they are
to be cut off only by cutting off the inheritance lines of the strains
that produce them. This is the natural outcome of an awakened social
conscience, which is in keeping, not only with humanitarianism, but with
law and order and national efficiency. Society must look upon germ-plasm
as belonging to Society, and not solely to the individual who carries
it. Humanitarianism demands that every individual born be given every
opportunity for decent and effective life that our civilization can
offer. Racial instinct demands that defectives shall not continue their
unworthy traits to menace Society. There appears to be no compatibility
between the two ideals and demands. P. 15–16.
_J. H. KELLOGG, LLD., M.D., Superintendent of Battle Creek Sanitarium,
Battle Creek, Mich._
A careful study of the returns of the Registrar General of England,
according to Dr. Tredgold, an eminent English authority shows that out
of every 1,000 children born to-day, as many infants die from “innate
defects of constitution” as 50 years ago, and this notwithstanding that
the total death rate of infants has been diminished nearly ⅓. The
increase of insanity, is cited by Dr. Tredgold, as another evidence of
race degeneracy. While the increase of the population of England and
Wales in 52 years has been 85.8%, the increase of the certified insane
has been 262.2%. At present there is one insane person to 275 of the
normal population of England and Wales. Tredgold shows that mental
unsoundness, lunacy, idiocy, imbecility and feeble-mindedness may be
traced to hereditary influence in 90% of the cases. Mr. David Heron and
others have shown that while there has been a marked decline in the
birth rate in the population in general, the diminution is almost
entirely confined to the healthy and thrifty class. In a section of
population numbering a million and a quarter persons, thrifty and
healthy artisans, the decline in the birth rate in 24 years, 1889—1904
was over 52%, or three times that in England and Wales as a whole. Study
of a large number of families of the working class of incompetent and
parasitic character found that the average number of children to the
family was 7.4, while in thrifty and competent working families, the
number was 3.7. In other words, the incompetent and defective classes
are multiplying much more rapidly than are the competent and efficient.
P. 440.
_THE INCREASE OF INSANITY. James T. Searcy, A.B., M.D., LLD.,
Superintendent Alabama Hospitals for Insane. First National
Conference on Race Betterment. January, 1914._
The population of the State of Alabama, according to the census during
the ten years which the census includes, insanity increased 16%; the
admissions into the insane hospitals increased 45%. These are appalling
figures, and we can parallel them all over the U. S., not like them
exactly in each state, for they differ. The general population of the U.
S. increased 18%, and that of the insane hospitals increased 28% during
the years of the census. P. 167.
EPILEPSY
_THE PRACTICE OF OBSTETRICS. Joseph De Lee, M.D._
Epilepsy may practically be regarded as an in-hereditary affection, and
children of one subject to this disorder are almost sure to be
epileptic. Under no circumstances should parents who are both epileptics
bring children into the world.
_THE PRACTICE OF OBSTETRICS. In Original Contributions by American
Authors. Edited by Reuben Peterson, A.B., M.D., Prof. of
Obstetrics and Gynecology in the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, Mich.; Obstetrician and Gynecologist-in-Chief to the
University of Michigan Hospital. Lea Bros. & Co., Phil. and New
York. 1907. Chapter XIX._
Marriage should always be discouraged on account of the marked tendency
of epilepsy to be transmitted to the offspring. In all grave cases,
marriage, or new impregnation, should be prohibited. P. 363. (Hugo
Ehrenfest, M.D.)
ALCOHOLISM
_PARENTHOOD AND RACE CULTURE. An Outline of Eugenics. C. W. Saleeby,
M.D., Ch.B., F.Z.S., F.R.S., Edinburgh; Fellow of the Obstetrical
Society of Edinburgh; Member of Council of the Eugenics Education
Society; of the Psychological Society, and of the National League
for Physical Education and Improvement; Member of the Royal
Institution and of the Society for the Study of Inebriety, etc.,
etc. Cassell & Co., Ltd., London, N. Y., Toronto and Melbourne.
1909._
A foremost authority, Dr. F. W. Mott, has independently reached the same
conclusion as Dr. Branthwaite, that the chronic inebriate comes as a
rule of an inherently tainted stock. Dr. Mott, however, reminds us that
if alcohol is a weed killer, preventing the perpetuation of poor types,
it is probably even more effective as a weed producer. Professor David
Ferrier, the great pioneer of brain localisation, in reference to these
people speaks of the “risk of propagation of a race of drunkards and
imbeciles.” Dr. J. C. Dunlop, Inspector under the Inebriates Act,
Scotland, states that his experience leads him to precisely the same
conclusion as that of Dr. Branthwaite. Dr. A. R. Urquhart, an Asylum
authority, affirms that chronic inebriety is largely an affair of habit,
is a symptom of mental defect, disorder, or disease. Dr. Fleck, another
authority, says, “It is my strong conviction that a large percentage of
our mentally defective children, including idiots, imbeciles and
epileptics, are the descendants of drunkards. Mr. McAdam Eccles, the
distinguished surgeon agrees; so does Dr. Langdon Down, physician to the
National Association for the Welfare of the Feeble-minded; so does Mr.
Thos. Holmes, the Secretary of the Howard Association.”
_MARRIAGE AND GENETICS. Laws of Human Breeding and Applied Eugenics.
Chas. A. L. Reed, M.D., F.C.S.; Fellow of the College of Surgeons
of America; Member and former president of the American Medical
Association; Professor in the University of Cincinnati. The Galton
Press, Cincinnati, Ohio._
The present demand for alcohol is generally the demand of the system for
something with which to make up for some persistent defect. In other
words, alcoholism is the sign and index of some form of degeneration.
Thus the degeneracy that finds expression in alcoholism in one
generation may be manifested in the next in the form of epilepsy,
feeble-mindedness, insanity, immorality, or criminality. Unfortunately,
alcoholism does not seem to lessen the fecundity of its victims. The
quality of their progeny is, however, progressively lowered. It is due
to the combined influence of transmitted degeneracy and the pernicious
effect of environment. As a genetic factor, alcoholism, considered in
its immediate relation to the marriage state may be summarised as
follows:—
1—The chronic alcoholist generally develops lowered sexual efficiency.
2—General failure of sexual power, associated with strong desire,
generally manifested by alcoholics, often results in sexual promiscuity,
associated with perversion.
3—Progressive alcoholism destroys the normal psychic type and thus
breaks up family ties.
4—Lowered general efficiency of alcoholics tends to pauperism and crime.
5—Lowered general resistance of alcoholics makes them the easier prey of
infections and shortens their expectancy of life.
6—Alcoholism is a germinal defect, the degeneracy underlying which is
transmitted in some form to 100% of the progeny of two alcoholic
parents.
Marriage with or between degenerates of the alcoholic type is advised
against and should be prohibited by law. P. 125–126.
Pauline Tarnowsky in _Etudes Anthrope metriques sur le Prostitutees_
1887 gives figures derived from measurements of fifty prostitutes in
Petrograd in which she found four-fifths of her cases were offspring of
alcoholic parents while one fifth were the last survivors of very large
families.
_THE PRACTICE OF OBSTETRICS. In Original Contributions by American
Authors. Edited by Reuben Peterson, M.D._
A chronic state of intoxication may be found in patients (Mothers) with
such bad habits as alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, etc., and in
sufferers of trade poisoning, plumbism, nicotism of workers in tobacco
factories, etc. Most of these diseases are characterized by a tendency
to abortion and a high infantile mortality and morbidity. P. 368.
It is generally admitted that the effect of chronic alcoholism upon
pregnancy is most harmful. On account of the frequency with which
drunkards are afflicted with venereal diseases, especially syphilis, it
is almost impossible to obtain reliable statistics and exact figures,
but the fact has been established that chronic alcoholism predisposes
the woman to abortion, and that the children of dipsomaniac parents show
a strikingly large percentage of malformations and mental abnormalities,
especially imbecility and epilepsy. P. 370 (Hugo Ehrenfest, M.D.)
_THE PATHOLOGY OF THE FETUS. Aldred Scott Warthin, M.D. (The Practice
of Obstetrics, in original Contributions by American Authors, Ed.
by Reuben Peterson, M.D.)_
Of the antenatal treatment of fetal diseases we at present know little
or nothing, but there can be no doubt that a wonderful field is here
offered to the medicine of the future. According to our present
knowledge such germinal and fetal therapeutics must be chiefly in the
line of prevention. We are already in a position to apply some knowledge
toward this end. The effects upon the fetus of intoxications, such as
plumbism, alcoholism, etc., may be avoided. The production of syphilitic
offspring may be restricted, and our knowledge of the later effects upon
the fetus of certain diseases, or pathologic states of one or both
parents may be utilized toward the bringing into existence of progeny
under such conditions as to escape such evils. Our knowledge of
heredity, of morbid conditions and predispositions should also be
brought to bear upon the question of marriage and fitness to produce
healthy children. Moral, as well as physical considerations should here
be gravely weighed. The health of parents, the hygiene of pregnancy
throughout its entire course, etc., are important factors in the
improvement of the race, to which the coming civilization and the new
medicine must give increasing attention. P. 535.
_THE SEXUAL LIFE OF WOMAN IN ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL, BIOLOGICAL AND
HYGIENIC ASPECTS. E. Heinrich Kisch. Rebman Co., New York._
A woman with a tendency to alcoholism should under no circumstances be
allowed to marry. In the cases, fortunately rare, in which the drink
craving exists in women, marriage is even more undesirable than it is in
the case of men similarly afflicted, for the female drunkard is in a
position in which she can mishandle and neglect her children throughout
the entire day. P. 258.
_RASSENVERBESSERUNG. Translated from the Dutch of Dr. J. Rutgers.
Second Edition. Dresden, 1911._
Pelman examined 709 of the 834 descendants of an alcoholic vagrant,
named Ada Inke, who died in 1740. Among these were found 106
illegitimate children, 142 were vagrant beggars, 64 were charity
dependents, 181 prostitutes, 96 were tried for various offenses, among
these 7 were for murder. These descendants during 75 years cost the
State 5,000,000 marks. P. 97.
August Forel, who for years was the psychiatrist at the head of a large
insane asylum at Zurich, Switzerland, has this to say about the effects
of narcotic poisons and alcohol in particular: “The offspring tainted
with alcoholic blastophthoria suffer various bodily and physical
anomalies, among which are dwarfism, rickets, a predisposition to
tuberculosis and epilepsy, moral idiocy in general, a predisposition to
crime and mental diseases, sexual perversions, loss of suckling in
women, and many other misfortunes. But what is of much greater
importance is the fact that acute and chronic alcoholic intoxication
deteriorates the germinal protoplasm of the procreators.”
_MICHAEL F. GUYER, Ph.D., Professor of Zoology, University of
Wisconsin in “Being Well Born.”_
In an investigation on the effects of parental alcoholism on the
offspring, Sullivan (Journal of Mental Science, Vol. 45, 1899) gives
some important figures. To avoid other complications he chose female
drunkards in whom no other degenerative features were evident. He found
that among these the percentage of abortions, still-births and deaths of
infants before their third year was 55.8% as against 23.9% in sober
mothers. In answer to the objection that this high percentage may be due
merely to neglect, and not to impairment of the fetus by alcoholism, he
points out the fact, based on the history of the successive births, that
there was a progressive increase in the death-rate of offspring in
proportion to the length of time the mother had been an inebriate. P.
169.
_A TEXT BOOK OF OBSTETRICS. Barton Cooke Hirst, M.D., Professor of
Obstetrics in the University of Penn.; Gynecologist to the Howard,
the Orthopaedic and the Phil. Hospitals, etc. 7th Edition. W. B.
Saunders Co., Phil, and London, 1912._
The effect of chronic diseases of the mother upon the fetus. Women
affected with tuberculosis, cancer, or chronic malarial poisons may give
birth to a succession of dead children. P. 353.
Fetal mortality exceeds that of any other period of life. For every four
or five labors there is one abortion, and if to this number is added
still-births the proportion of fetal deaths to living births is larger.
P. 332.
_THE DISEASES OF SOCIETY AND DEGENERACY. G. F. Lydston, M.D._
That a multiplicity of children in poverty-stricken families often
impels to abortion, is evident. The necessary evils of our prohibitive
laws and ethics bearing upon illegitimacy, are obvious; viz:
First, and worst, is infanticide, committed usually before, but only too
often after birth. In the latter category I would place abandoned
children who die of exposure or starvation, and the bulk of mortalities
in foundling asylums and for baby farms. The social ostracism placed
upon the mother is a prime factor in this child’s murder. Condemnation
and shame are hers if she allows nature to take its course, and the
penalty of infanticide stares her in the face if she interferes with the
conception. A rarely anomalous state of affairs this.
Second—The brand of infamy placed upon the unborn child, from which only
its murder can save it.
Third—The prostitution or suicide of the woman who is found out.
Branded with ignominy from the moment of conception, a burden to
society, and a still greater burden to its parent, or parents from the
moment of its birth, with no systematic endeavor on the part of society
to prevent its growing up a criminal, a drunkard, a pauper, a
prostitute, or a physical wreck, what wonder that many a poor woman’s
fingers become too tightly entwined around her offspring’s neck. If her
motive for the act were always as altruistic as its consequences, so far
as the child’s welfare is concerned, there are some clear-minded
thinkers in the world who could not be brought to judge her harshly. P.
371.
The rights of the unborn will one day be considered. Until they are so
considered, and practical efforts made to secure them, we cannot hope
for much improvement in the prevention of degeneracy. P. 559.
_AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISEASES OF CHILDREN, November 1914. Vol. 8, pp.
327–335. Question of Hereditary syphilis as a social problem._
Of all deaths of infants in St. Louis in 1913, 1,070 were illegitimate.
Of all deaths in infants due to syphilis 1,550 were illegitimate.
_AUGUST FOREL. The Sexual Question. A Scientific, Psychological,
Hygienic and Sociological Study. Translated by C. F. Marshall,
M.D., F.R.C.S., Late Assistant Surgeon to the Hospital for
Diseases of the Skin. London._
The stigma of shame which has branded all illegitimate maternity
unfortunately justifies the many cases of abortion, and even
infanticide. Things ought to change in this respect, and in the future
no pregnancy ought to be a source of shame for any healthy woman
whatever, nor furnish the least motive for dissimulation. P. 411.
_THE SMALL FAMILY SYSTEM. C. V. Drysdale, D.Sc._
ILLEGITIMACY.—As far as statistics are concerned, the most valuable
evidence is that relating to illegitimacy. The Registrar General’s
Reports contain a useful amount of information upon this point, and give
us the number of illegitimate births per thousand unmarried women within
the fertile period, between the ages of 15 and 45. This illegitimacy
rate for England and Wales is represented in Fig. 13, and it is
noticeable that the fall since the year 1876 has been extremely rapid,
much more so in fact than that of the fall in the general birth-rate or
in the fertility rate of the married women. While the general birth-rate
has fallen from 36.3 to 25.6 (or by 26.5 per cent.), the illegitimate
birth-rate has fallen from 14.6 to 7.9 per thousand unmarried women (or
by nearly 50 per cent.). This is most striking and satisfactory. An
extreme instance is given in the county of Radnorshire, which in 1870–2
had a fertility rate of 308.6 births per 1,000 married women, which sank
to 188.7 in 1909, or by 39 per cent. In the same interval the
illegitimate birth-rate fell from 41.8 per 1,000 unmarried women to 7.2,
or by no less than 83 per cent. In Holland a drop of the legitimate
fertility from 347 to 315 per 1,000 coincided with a fall of the
illegitimate fertility from 9.7 to 6.8 per 1,000, _i.e._, at a much
greater rate. It is true that France, with its low and decreasing
fertility rate (from 196 to 158 per 1,000 between 1881 and 1901), has
had a comparatively high and increasing illegitimacy rate (from 17.6 to
19.1 per 1,000); and that Ireland, with a somewhat high and slightly
increasing fertility (from 283 to 289 per 1,000), has the lowest and a
falling illegitimacy rate (from 4.4 to 3.8 per 1,000). But this has been
heavily outweighed by Austria with an equally high and steady fertility
(from 281 to 284 per 1,000) with the highest illegitimacy rate known
(43.4 to 40.1 per 1,000), while Germany comes second with an
illegitimacy rate of 27.4 per 1,000 in 1901. Though it cannot be said,
therefore, that the lowest birth-rate produces the lowest illegitimacy
rate, it most certainly cannot be said that family limitation has had
any evil effect in increasing legitimacy. The bulk of the evidence is
quite decidedly the other way. In the case of the most notable
exception—that of France—we have the authority of Dr. Bertillon for
saying that the greatest decency and lowest illegitimacy are found where
the birth-rate is lowest. We may also quote from our own Registrar
General, who said in his Annual Report for 1909:—
“Except in the cases of the German Empire, Sweden, France,
Belgium, and the Australian Commonwealth, the falls shown in
illegitimate fertility in Table LXXXIV are greater than the
corresponding falls in legitimate fertility.”
So far as the evidence of illegitimacy is concerned, therefore, it may
be taken as definitely established that the adoption of family
restriction has not led to greater laxity among the unmarried. But it
would, of course, be quite unjustifiable to claim that this evidence is
final. It may not mean that there is less lax conduct but only that
there are fewer results of lax conduct. It is perfectly open for the
orthodox moralist to claim that the greater knowledge of preventive
methods has permitted an increase of laxity with a reduction of the
ordinary effects. This must remain a matter of conjecture. When we find,
however, that not only has illegitimacy decreased, but also deaths from
abortion and from the diseases ordinarily associated with irregularity,
there seems no justification whatever for the contention that chastity
has been relaxed. It must not be forgotten in this connection that the
encouragement to early marriage afforded by the possibility of avoiding
the economic burden of a too early or too large family affords the most
likely of all methods for removing the temptations to unchastity and for
conquering the hitherto untractable “social evil.” Although the average
age of marriage in this country has been rising somewhat lately
(probably on account of the increasing cost of living), it is
interesting to note that it is lower and fairly steadily decreasing in
France. For first marriages the average age at marriage of French men
has fallen from 28.6 in 1856 to 27.88 in 1896–1900, and of French women
from 24.25 to 23.5 in the same period. This cannot be regarded as
otherwise than a very good sign.
(NOTE: It is noteworthy in this connection that the French marriage laws
are so strict that many thousands of couples live out of wedlock in
preference to complying with them.)
PAUPERISM
We need not dwell upon this question, as the amount of pauperism depends
upon a large variety of circumstances. But it is satisfactory to note
that pauperism in England and Wales, _i.e._, the number of persons
relieved annually per thousand of the population, has fairly steadily
fallen from 34.5 in 1875 to 26.4 in 1910, or by 23.5 per cent. during
the period of the declining birth-rate. This is so far reassuring, in
that it indicates that the easier circumstances engendered by smaller
families do not lead to idleness, as is frequently contended. The
industry and saving habits of the French peasantry are world-renowned,
and it is worthy of note that France is almost the only country in which
the real wages of the working classes have been _increasing_ of late
years, while they have dropped 15 per cent. in this country, and nearly
25 per cent. in prolific Germany.
_THE REPORT OF THE POOR LAW COMMISSION. By Sir Edward Bradbrook, C.B.
Eugenics Review, Vol. 1, April 1909. Eugenics Education Society,
London._
The Commissioners throw a strong light upon the ineffectiveness of
existing measures when they show that the great and growing expenditure
upon education and upon the public health has had no result in reducing
pauperism, which is on the contrary of late years deplorably increasing,
and that the advance in the rate of wages, and the diminution in the
cost of living have been equally ineffectual.
In the words of the Commissioners, children who are brought up in such
conditions, surrounded by disease and immorality and drunkenness are
almost doomed to pauperism. If relief be given it should be used to
check the creation of another generation of paupers. Much that is very
instructive is contained in the report on the subject of children who
come by one means or another to be under the control of the Guardians of
the Poor, and important suggestions are made for reforms in the manner
and training of such children. This, however, we need not discuss, as
the spread of eugenic principles would tend to reduce their number until
the time should come when the children dependent on public care should
be few and exceptional. In their discussion of the causes of pauperism,
the Commissioners quote a statement from a relief officer of Leeds, that
one of the most important causes is early marriage of persons dependent
upon casual labor. Large families are the rule. Unless we can cut off
some of the sources from which that stream is being fed, the attempt to
do more constructive work, whether by public assistance or by voluntary
charity will continue to be swamped by hopeless cases—men and women
ruined by bad habits or disease from infancy who propagate their own
misery and hand on another generation of hopeless cases to the future. A
great evil justifies strong measures to remedy it. This is true eugenic
doctrine. P. 47–50.
_THE METHODS OF RACE REGENERATION. C. W. Saleeby, M.D., CH.B., F.Z.S.,
F.R.S., Edinburgh; Fellow of the Obstetrical Society of Edinburgh;
Member of Council of the Eugenic Education Society, of the
Psychological Society, and of the National League for Physical
Education and Improvement; Member of the Royal Institution and of
the Society for the Study of Inebriety, etc., etc. New Tracts for
the Times. Cassell & Co., Ltd., London, New York, Toronto and
Melbourne. 1911._
At the National Conference on the Prevention of Destitution, held in
London at Whitsuntide, 1911, we gathered together in the section dealing
with this subject a number of papers by authoritative writers, whose
knowledge of the problem is first-hand, and the following is an extract
from the paper, the Eugenic Summary and Demand, in which I endeavored to
express the substance of the evidence. The mentally defective and
diseased, existing in it and as part of it, injure the community in the
following ways:
1—They contribute largely to the ranks of chronic alcoholism and
inebriety, with all their consequences.
2—They contribute largely to the illegitimate birth rate, that is to
say, to the production of children for whose nurture, quite apart from
the question of their natural defect, adequate and satisfactory
provision is not, or indeed cannot be made.
3—They contribute largely to the ranks of prostitution.
4—They thus contribute largely to the propagation of the venereal
diseases, with all their consequences to the present and the future.
5—They are responsible for much crime, major and minor.
6—Both directly, as chronically inefficient, and indirectly, in the ways
here cited, they contribute to the number of the destitute, constituting
the majority of the naturally, as distinguished from the nurturally
unemployable.
7—They contribute largely as parents, married or unmarried, to parental
neglect and cruelty to children which is probably more injurious to the
adult life of the next generation, than most, or any of us realize.
8—They contribute largely to the ranks of the wastrel and the hooligan.
In such ways, and to such a degree these persons injure the community.
But it is particularly to be noted that therein the community also
injures them. The fact is obvious to all of us here. The injury wrought
by the present relations between the community and these unfortunate
persons is mutual, they injure it and it injures them. And not until we
recall the words of Burke, in the light of modern genetics, shall we
realize the full measure of this injury, for as that great thinker said,
a community is “a partnership, not only between those who are living,
but between those who are living and those who are dead, and those who
are to be born.” To the foregoing indictment of the present state of
things, and remembering that whatever is inherent is transmissible, I
therefore add:
9—They become parents and thus contribute incalculably to the
maintenance of these evils after we are dead, but not after we are
responsible. P. 49–50.
But it does not suffice to pursue positive methods, the encouragement of
parenthood on the part of the worthy, and negative methods, the
discouragement of parenthood on the part of the unworthy, if there be
any agencies in the world which are forever turning worthy stocks into
unworthy stocks. If there be such racial poisons, plainly we must stand
between healthy stocks and their influence. By the term racial poisons I
mean to indicate those agents, whatever they may be which, in greater or
less degree, injurious to individuals as individuals, prejudices their
subsequent parenthood. The racial poisons are very various, they include
substances inorganic, such as lead, organic, such as alcohol, and
organized, such as the living causes of certain forms of disease.
Circulating in the parental blood, they reach and injure the racial
tissues, or germ-plasm. P. 56.
_WOMEN AND LABOR. New York Evening World, May 8, 1917._
With American industry preparing to put women into the places of male
workers called to the war, it is a rather surprising thing to learn that
there already are 7,438,686 women in the United States who earn their
own living. Of these no less than one-fourth are married. Here are the
figures: Single, 4,401,000; married, 1,890,626; widowed or divorced,
1,147,060.
In 1900 only 4,833,630 women left their homes to work, showing an
increase of approximately one-half since then.
In 1890 the married formed 14.3 per cent. of all women sixteen years of
age and over engaged in gainful occupations. By 1900 this proportion had
increased to 15.9 per cent. From 1900 to 1910 it jumped to the
unprecedented proportion of 25.4 per cent. While there were important
variations, the great increase was not confined to any one occupation or
group of occupations, nor to any one State or group of States. In every
occupation examined the married formed a larger proportion of all women
sixteen years of age and over in 1910 than in 1900.
The proportions were exceptionally high in the South and Arizona—50.8
per cent. in South Carolina, 46.8 per cent. in Georgia, 46.7 per cent.
in Florida, 47.4 per cent. in Alabama, 54.2 per cent. in Mississippi,
45.6 per cent. in Arkansas, 40.7 per cent. in Arizona. In contrast, the
proportion was only 15.8 per cent. in Connecticut, 15.1 per cent. in
Pennsylvania, 13.1 per cent. in Wisconsin, 11.9 per cent. in Minnesota,
and 15.7 per cent. in Iowa.
The unusually large proportion of married women engaged outside their
homes in the South is explained by the number of negroes living in that
section of the country. The total of white women working for a living in
the same States is perhaps smaller than in any other part of the United
States.
Even more significant than the great increase in the proportion which
the married form of all women sixteen years of age and over engaged in
gainful occupations is the marked increase in the proportion of all
women so employed.
Statistics show that in 1890 just 4.6 per cent. of married women went to
work. The figures had expanded to 5.6 per cent. ten years later, and in
1910 had reached 10.7 per cent.
It may be safely assumed that in the years which have elapsed between
then and now the increase has more than kept pace with earlier figures.
And it is equally certain that once men have been replaced by women
under war conditions neither they nor employers will be inclined to
restore ante-bellum conditions. The problem is one to give economists
grave concern.
CHILD LABOR
_MARY ALDEN HOPKINS, Harper’s Weekly, 1915._
“Too many children is as great a danger to family life as too few
children,” said Mr. Owen Lovejoy, General Secretary of the National
Child Labor Committee. A secretary of this Committee, working for the
abolition of child labor, the improvement of the compulsory education
laws, and the raising of the standards of education in backward states,
Mr. Lovejoy has first knowledge of the condition of children in every
state in the Union.
“How many are too many?” he was asked. “I should say any more than the
mother can look after and the father earn a living for. There are always
too many children in a family if they have to go to work before they get
their growth and schooling. It may be that some day the state will help
support the children, but under present conditions, as soon as there are
too many children for the father to feed, some of them go to work in the
mine or factory or store or mill near by. In doing this they not only
injure their tender growing bodies, but indirectly they drag down the
father’s wage. They go to work to help the family, but they really
injure it. The wage tends to become an individual wage, the father
receiving only enough for his personal maintenance, the mother working
both at home and outside, and the children supporting themselves as soon
as they can toddle into the cotton fields or hang onto the back of a
delivery wagon. Thus the home is dissolved into constituent parts and
the burden of the struggle for existence is laid on each. The more that
children work, the lower the father’s wages become; the lower the
father’s wages become, the more the children must work. So we evolve the
vicious circle. The home becomes a mere rendezvous for the nightly
gathering of bodies numb with weariness and minds drunk with sleep. No
fine spiritual relation can exist between parents and children where the
children are an economic asset to the parents. There are people who
approve this state of affairs, but no one can who really cares for the
welfare of children. We fight this condition with Child Labor Laws. If
the children stay out of industry, the fathers have more work and make
more money in the end. But one of the strongest factors against getting
laws passed or enforced after they are passed, is the families’
immediate need of the children’s pitiful earnings. If there were fewer
children in these families, it would be possible to keep them in school
and leave the mines and factories to the fathers. There is another
aspect to the matter. Not only do these unfortunate children drag down
the physique and mentality of the race, but they keep many children of
more thoughtful parents from being born at all. Just as long as there
are many families that are too large, there will be other families that
are too small. Yet these small families are potentially the best
families of all. Serious-minded laboring people whose trades are being
captured by child laborers are reluctant to bring offspring into a world
which cannot promise a life of the simplest comforts in reward for hard
labor. Here is the real danger of that race suicide so vigorously
condemned by Ex-President Roosevelt and others; for while the man of
virtue and strength is deterred from propagating his kind because of the
jeopardy in which his children would stand, the vicious and the
ignorant, the physically unfit and the discouraged are not deterred by
any such consideration, but, regardless of consequences, continue to
propagate their kind and swell the proportion of those who will be from
birth to death a heavy liability against society. We regard the
family—one father, one mother, a group of children to be fed, clothed,
and educated during the years that precede maturity—as the fundamental
institution of our civilization and the glory, thus far, of all social
evolution. One of the causes out of which the family grew has direct
bearing upon this matter—that to which Professor Fisk called attention
as his chief contribution to the evolutionary theory—the prolonged
period of infancy. The evolutionary trend has been to prolong infancy
and adolescence, and thus to launch upon society better individuals.
This is impossible where the older children in a family are crowded out
of the home into the workshop.”
The Child Labor Bulletin, November, 1912, contains special articles on
the child workers in New York tenement houses. Record after record shows
a two-child income supporting a six-child family.
In connection with Mr. Lovejoy’s statement that a high birth rate
encourages child labor, it is significant to find from the Galton
Laboratories of the University of London, the statement that drastic
child labor laws directly lower the birth rate. In “The Report on the
English Birth Rate,” from the Eugenics Laboratory, Memoir XIX, Part 1,
England, North of the Humber, Ethel M. Elderton, after touching on the
influence of the raised standard of decency and comfort, lays the
responsibility of the change chiefly upon the lessened economic value of
the child to its parents.
Miss Elderton says, “Between 1871 and 1901 the number of children
employed largely diminished. Neo-Malthusianism spread and the child
ceased largely to be born, because it was no longer an economic asset.
The Compulsory Education Act of 1876, the Factories and Workshops Act of
1878, and the Bradlaugh-Besant Trial of 1877 (concerning the lawfulness
of publishing pamphlets on contraception) are not unrelated movements;
they are connected with the lowered economic value of the child, and
with the corresponding desire to do without it.” The relation which Miss
Elderton traced between the higher ideals of protection to childhood and
the lowered birth rate is the more interesting because she is deeply,
passionately alarmed at England’s falling birth rate.
Mr. Lovejoy does not regard the falling birth rate as a wholly
undesirable phenomenon. He says: “Children should be born when the
parents are in good health, at intervals that will allow the mother to
recover her strength, and only as many should be born as the parents can
care for. There is no deeper sorrow than to know that a child has died
for causes that might have been prevented if the parents had had more
wisdom and foresight. The ideals of care and education which we have for
our own children should be our ideals for all children. I shall not
consider it a calamity if the birth rate falls to a point where every
child is so precious to the nation that not one will be allowed to work
in a factory or workshop or mine or store under the age of sixteen, and
up to that time every one will have proper food and clothes and
education. Our race-suicide danger is a danger, nor of quantity, but of
quality.”
_LATEST OFFICIAL FIGURES ON CHILD LABOR. From United States Census of
Occupations, 1910. New York State._
Age 10 to 13 14 to 15
years years
Manufacturing and mechanical 518 18,502
Extraction of Minerals 3 47
Agriculture 1,566 5,034
All other occupations 2,765 36,659
Total in all gainful occupations New York State 4,852 60,242
Total in all gainful occupations United States of 895,976 1,094,249
America
Total child laborers in the United States of 1,990,225
America
_WAGES AND THE COST OF LIVING. Together with its relation to
Prevention of Conception. Compiled by C. V. Drysdale, D.Sc._
Apart from the special problems of experts, the great economic question
of the day is that of the remuneration of labor and its relation to the
cost of living. In Parliament and the press the questions of a minimum
or living wage and of the purchasing power of existing wages are
continually debated; and it is perfectly evident from the tone of these
debates that we are confronted with a most serious difficulty, for which
none of the political parties or economic authorities has any
satisfactory solution. The recognition of this difficulty is due not to
the fact that any new phenomena are present, or that the workers are
worse off than at many periods in the past; but to the fact that the
compilation of more accurate and official statistics during recent years
has brought to light facts which were formerly only surmised, and has
made two important conclusions practically indisputable. These are as
follows:
A. That the wages of a large fraction of the working classes are
insufficient, even when most skilfully employed, for the adequate
support of a normal family.
B. That during the last ten or fifteen years of social legislation and
of strenuous effort on the part of the working classes and social
reformers, the purchasing power of average wages has declined instead of
increasing, and this decline shows no definite sign of being arrested.
In order to improve the efficiency of production, it is important that
the efficiency of the race should be improved. Hence the reduction of
births should be especially encouraged among the poor and those
suffering from physical or mental defect or disease, who, it may be
noted, should have the strongest personal motives for voluntary
restriction.
The restriction of births in proportion to economic or physiological
deficiency would steadily improve economic conditions in the following
ways:
(a) It would immediately reduce the burden upon the poor with their
existing wages.
(b) It would immediately check increased demand, and therefore a further
rise in price of food.
(c) It would reduce the burden of charity and taxation.
(d) It would permit the workers to be better nourished and educated.
(e) It would permit the children to be better educated and technically
trained.
(f) In course of time it would reduce the number of workers competing
and further raise wages.
(g) The evils of overcrowding, with its serious hygienic and moral
dangers, would be rapidly diminished, and the housing problem made
easier of solution. A three bedroom house only provides decency for a
family not exceeding four children.
(h) It would give better opportunities for thrift among the workers and
for their emancipation from the position of “wage slaves.” It would then
give them an opportunity of co-operating and owning their own
instruments of production.
In support of these statements it may be recalled that in Prof. Thorold
Rogers’s Six Centuries of Work and Wages a striking example is given of
the continued rise of wages after the Black Death of 1349, despite all
efforts of Parliament to fix them.
“It is certain that the immediate consequence of the plague was a dearth
of labor, an excessive enhancement of wages, and a serious difficulty in
collecting the harvests of those landowners who depended on a supply of
hired labor for the purpose of getting in their crops.... The plague, in
short, had almost emancipated the surviving serfs.
“I shall point out below what were the actual effects of this great and
sudden scarcity of labor. At present I merely continue the narrative.
Parliament was broken up when the plague was raging. The King, however,
issued a proclamation, which he addressed to William, the Primate, and
circulated among the sheriffs of the different counties, in which he
directed all officials that no higher than customary wages should be
paid, under the penalties of amercement. The King’s mandate, however,
was universally disobeyed, for the farmers were compelled to leave their
crops ungathered or to comply with the demands of the laborers. When the
King found that his proclamation was unavailing, he laid, we are told,
heavy penalties on abbots, priors, barons, crown tenants, and those who
held lands under mesne lords, if they paid more than customary rates.
But the laborers remained masters of the situation. Many were said to
have been thrown into prison for disobedience; many, to avoid punishment
or restraint, fled into forests, where they were occasionally captured.
The captives were fined, and obliged to disavow under oath that they
would take higher than customary wages for the future. But the
expedients were vain; labor remained scarce and wages, according to all
previous experience, excessive.”
Mr. Thorold Rogers tells us of all the expedients employed by
Parliament, in the Statute of Laborers, in order to check the rise of
wages, and how they broke down and were evaded by the employers
themselves. “The rise in agricultural labor is, all kinds of men’s work
being taken together, about 50 per cent., of women’s work fully 100 per
cent.” Artisans fare equally well. And, despite the rise in price of
manufactured articles consequent upon this rise of wages, “there was no
corresponding rise in the price of provisions.... The free laborer, and,
for the matter of that, the serf, was in his way still better off.
Everything he needed was as cheap as ever, and his labor was daily
rising in value.”
It would, of course, be absurd to apply the lesson of one period of
history to another, without consideration of the changed circumstances.
But it is equally absurd to pass over such a vivid object lesson as the
above without giving it due consideration, especially when it has a
sound theoretical basis. Prof. Thorold Rogers was not a disciple of the
Malthusian school, and he takes Mill and others to task for the
importance they ascribed to the population difficulty. Yet he tells us
that the reign of prosperity lasted for some time after the reduction of
population by the Black Death, and that a rapid growth of population
followed. This is quite in accordance with the doctrine of Malthus, and
justifies our belief that, if this increase had been prudentially
restricted, prosperity would have been permanently maintained.
A modern illustration of the same principle appears to be given in New
Zealand, where the practice of family restriction seems to be almost
universal. In the _Standard_ of June 20th, 1912, appeared a note
commenting upon the great and increasing prosperity of New Zealand; and
it contains the following significant passage:—
“The wages paid to employees and the output of the printing
establishments in the country have pretty nearly doubled in the same ten
years, rising respectively from £284,605 to £490,246 and £704,285 to
£1,377,926. A curious point in connection with the grain mills is that
while there were fewer establishments and fewer hands employed in 1910
than in the previous years—although wages are higher—yet the value of
the output has almost doubled, being £1,248,001 as against £682,884.”
Some mention should be made of the question of emigration. Strange as it
may seem, emigration does not, as a rule, greatly mitigate the
population difficulty (though it may have done so to a certain extent in
Ireland), and it may even enhance it. The reason for this apparent
paradox is not far to seek, and it serves to explain a good many common
fallacies as regards the population question. Human beings are not all
of equal producing power. Each child born into the world is an immediate
consumer, and he remains a consumer without being a producer until his
education and training are completed. After that time he becomes a
producer, and, if of average talents, he may _for a certain period_
produce enough to support himself and perhaps a wife. It is at the
beginning of the effective period that emigration so frequently takes
place, so that the old country is burdened with all the consumption of
immature children, without any possible return. Emigration can only be a
remedy for over-population when it is emigration of non-producers, i.e.,
children, aged people, tramps, paupers, or lunatics; and it need hardly
be said that these are not the types which emigrate, or who are wanted
by the colonies. It is quite possible for an already greatly
over-populated country to be in great need of further accessions of
ready trained workers; but until someone discovers how our children may
be born at this stage of development it is absolutely absurd to say that
such a country is “calling out for population,” in the sense of needing
a higher birth-rate. The fact that Ontario, in Canada, has experienced
an increase of its death-rate following on an increase of its birth-rate
is a vivid illustration of this absurdity.
It is interesting to note, as a confirmation of this theory, that
considerable changes in the rate of emigration appear to have had very
little influence upon the death-rate. It may be, however, that
emigration increases in times of dearth, and thus tends to prevent
increased mortality.
_NEO-MALTHUSIANISM AND EUGENICS. C. V. Drysdale, D.Sc._
The last few years has been a period of continual persecution of the
Neo-Malthusians whenever they try to instruct the poorer classes, and
more stringent laws are being framed against them in many countries.
I am glad to say that a recent attempt on the part of the dominant
agrarian party in Hungary in this direction has been foiled by a
judgment of the Hungarian Medical Senate, which has strongly reported
against any attempt to check the practice of family limitation, in the
interests of the quality of the race.