Transcriber Note
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
"Make no more giants, God
But elevate the race."
Browning.
RACE IMPROVEMENT
OR
EUGENICS
_A Little Book on a Great Subject_
BY
La Reine Helen Baker
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1912
Copyright, 1912
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
_Published, September, 1912_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Introductory 1
II Heredity, Environment 13
III The Child, Its Heritage 28
IV Marriage 40
V Possibilities of Race Improvement 55
VI Education, Eugenics 69
VII Eugenics, The Modern Feminist Movement 86
VIII Positive, Negative Eugenics 101
Appendices
A. State Endowment of Motherhood 120
B. Sterilisation in U. S. A. 128
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The aim of this little volume is to interest the American public in an
important and neglected subject. The writer has her own views on art,
politics, religion and other topics which divide mankind, she does
not intrude those opinions here, although conscious that "to see life
steadily and see it whole" much more is wanted than a single branch of
study, however vital. It is not possible, however, to remain silent
and, at least passively, acquiescent when the interests of the race are
in danger of neglect. Need for apology is not considered when great
and influential journals, magazines and volumes dissipate their powers
on all the feeble foolings of the hour. There are many honourable
exceptions. There are organs of opinion in nearly all directions of
intellectual speculation, education and philosophy and there are of
course necessary volumes of information on cooking, travel, dress and
amusement. Every material interest except the basic material interest
of our human existence is represented in our periodical press. An
expedition to the pole, a prodigious attempt to attract the attention
of Martian observers whose very existence is denied by more than half
our scientists, or a commission to inquire into the relative merits of
various manurial nitrates, for these time and money, private enterprise
and state aid are readily forthcoming. Professorial chairs are easily
financed for lectures on every necessary and unnecessary subject other
than that of direct race improvement. Churches, universities and other
institutions have been endowed for the sake of schisms which have no
direct bearing on any human need.
I deny that people do not care what becomes of the race. There never
has been a time in the history of the world when parents would not
rather have a healthy progeny than an unhealthy. The nation would
always prefer to be able to boast of improvement instead of blushing
for its deteriorating citizenship. As long as Mothers love their own
young and as long as the average man sympathises with undeserved
suffering there will be perpetual possibilities for rousing interest in
the most promising of all sciences, Eugenics.
Eugenics is a word invented by Francis Galton to cover the philosophy,
collection of facts, the science, whatever we can call it, which
regards race improvement as a desirable and practicable process.
Stirpiculture is an older word for a similar idea. New descriptive or
misleading phrases will be invented from time to time, sometimes by
friends, sometimes by enemies of the movement. It may be well from
the first to clear away some misinterpretations. Accusations against
new ideas commonly take the form of attempting to show that the new
and possibly good idea is irretrievably committed to some other idea,
generally an older and discredited one. It is the universal rule,
particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries, to regard sex-relationships as
so sacrosanct that merely to mention them is to outrage modesty and
shock morality. Fortunately or otherwise we have had to overcome this
silly secretiveness. The horrible white-slave traffic, the loathsome
increase of venereal diseases, the frequent revelations such as the
Thaw case forced on the public, the necessity for protecting children
from outrage--all these and other things have made not only possible
but obviously desirable that decency, wisdom and humanity should make
their voice heard. The time has come when we will not tolerate the
daily scandal of having our newspapers polluted with details of sexual
abnormalities while we are refused the opportunity of educating the
people in the direction of purity, health, and efficiency in the
sexual relation. Eugenics is concerned primarily and materially with
the normal sex relationship, which in modern civilised lands means the
ordinary legal monogamic marriage. It is perfectly true that there
have been pioneer reformers, to whom the world owes much who have
linked their ideals of race improvement to an advocacy of freer sex
relationships. Modern eugenists have no such divided council. They
aim at encouraging the best births and discouraging the worst, and
all details of their propaganda must be subordinate to this great
aspiration. Seeing then that through monogamic marriage the Anglo-Saxon
race must overwhelmingly flow now and in all the sighted future, we
resolutely direct our attention to this institution as we find it.
On the lines of which the race has approved we shall proceed for our
reforms. The United States great in a thousand ways, although often the
despair of the reformer, offers the most promising field of the whole
world in the direction of Eugenics. Comprising within her catholic
embrace many varieties of monogamic marriage she possesses contrasts,
comparisons, examples and warnings, which will be of infinite use in
the Eugenist's laboratory. Well may we be content to show from these
differences how on the present basis of marriage a nobler race may be
reared. It is of course only one aspect of marriage that interests
Eugenists, but as according to the teaching of most Churches and the
theory of most governments the origin, basis and reason of marriage is
procreation, it will be seen that race improvement does not look on the
least important side of marriage. In other words it is in its public
and universal relations that marriage will be regarded by Eugenists. In
comparatively socialised States like ours where education and a hundred
other concerns of every child are the constant care of representative
institutions it would be retrogression if we did not now begin to
consider the child as having from its birth a public interest. Seeing
the advance being made in our understanding of some of the laws of
heredity it must not be considered wonderful that this public interest
in the future citizen should begin even before birth. For this purpose
it is not at all necessary, I hold it to be eminently undesirable, that
the State or any outside authority should attempt the ridiculous task
of organising who shall marry and mate, or dictate by law or force
the conditions of marriages which satisfy the contracting parties.
But this laisser faire doctrine obviously has no applicability to the
much more disputable proposition that the State has no right to deal
with the source of its future responsibilities, the root by which may
arrive human wrecks for which the State must provide in the days to
come. This brings me to a further protest. It has been suggested that
Eugenists are anarchists, tearing up the roots of government, blindly
striking at civilised institutions, putting a bomb to the foundations
of Church, State, and Family. Let it be said here and now in such
clear phrase as may be that Eugenics is the antithesis of anarchy.
It means order. Eugenics opposes chaos in the interests of the race.
It is the most profoundly patriotic proposition ever laid before the
people of these United States. Its conception is for the national
good. American Eugenists will never rest until our race becomes the
fittest on earth. Other nations shall teach us if they can, we will
better their instruction. Monarchical old world peoples, restrained by
traditions, tied down by red tape, drugged by the dread of progress,
may justify their own inertia, we cannot sink with them. We are leaders
and pioneers. In the United States respect is still accorded to those
who have new truths to teach for the benefit of the race. If "national
efficiency" has to some extent failed in its appeal, if the answer
has been an admission of unaccomplished desires, the reason must be
ascribed to the limited scope of the inquiry. The nation has to take
itself seriously in hand. We need to get beyond the citizen of to-day,
we have to consider the citizen of to-morrow.
As to religion, I appeal both to those who love God and to those who
love their fellow-man. It is futile at this time of day to quote
against the living race the dictates of a dead age. It is monstrous
also to slander the noble men and women who are at present engaged in
the secular activities of our Churches by pretending to believe that
they are not most keenly anxious to aid in any uplifting work for the
regeneration of the world. Every institution which is teaching, feeding
or otherwise helping children is a nucleus for Eugenic enterprise.
The neglect of Eugenics in the last generation has clogged the wheels
of progress in this generation. We cannot and must not forget the
victims of our national neglect, but we can do greatest honour to
our philanthropists and workers for the general uplift by seriously
endeavouring to eliminate from the coming generation the hopelessly
unfit and by encouraging the multiplication of the efficient.
There is no immorality in our proposals, as a glance at these pages
will abundantly prove. The Family of the future is going to be sweeter,
purer and nobler. It may even be more numerous, for while Eugenists
resolutely set themselves to discourage the national burdening by
debt, danger and decay which inevitably follow in the footsteps of
a deteriorating race, we have nevertheless no opinions whatever as
to whether a numerically large or small family is best. Race suicide
is no worse than race murder. We cannot imagine a nobler sight than
an enormous and increasing race of the vitally fit. A temporary
and deliberate discouragement of certain unwelcome elements may be
momentarily embarrassing, but this is only half the story. Our ports
of entry are firmly closed in the face of undesirable aliens, not for
the purpose of reducing our population, far from it. Our stability,
our greatness, our very existence depend on the success with which we
have attracted to our shores those immigrants whose children to-day
are our boast and pride. Eugenics, it cannot be too often said, is no
mere phase of Malthusianism. It is not _a_ population question it is
_the_ population question. It dismisses Malthus as a spent force, as a
prophet whose message was only half delivered, as a Jeremiah who would
have deprived the world of its saviours as well as of its betrayers.
Of Malthus it may truly be said that in forbidding those who would
"wade through slaughter to a throne" he "shut the gates of mercy on
mankind." No philosophy to-day can meet the needs of to-day if it
indiscriminately decreases both. Both methods are evil. We must weigh
as well as count. The Sphinx of civilisation sits waiting our answer to
her riddle. We have mingled the seeds of evil with the seeds of good.
Mere mechanical multiplication only accentuates the evil because weeds
are always of quicker growth than the flower plants which they deprive
of their due share of light and air. Patient division of the seeds,
careful sorting, subtracting as far as possible the contaminating
elements, and giving all the needful attention to the sturdy but
perverse, encouraging those seeds which in various ways will one day
grow into perfect trees so as to show flower; to bear fruit, give
shade, make timber or in any other way serve the multifarious needs of
the nation.