THE CHILD AND ITS HERITAGE
The previous chapter suggests that unless due regard is given to
heredity an increased population will merely aggravate the existing
social problems. It is necessary also to emphasise the importance
of watching our death statistics as well as our birth returns.
Obviously a nation with a low percentage of births compared with its
population may be increasing the latter much more largely as well as
more healthily than a nation with a much larger percentage of births.
The pulse of each hand must be felt. Infant mortality is as easily
ascertainable and is of at least equal importance. Infant efficiency
is unfortunately less easily ascertainable statistically. Subject to
these qualifications the Eugenics school welcomes Mr. Roosevelt's
protests against Race Suicide, and gladly identifies itself with any
religious, political or social effort to bring to our citizens a sense
of what we owe to the commonwealth. It is not a matter to be dismissed
with a speech or a magazine article when we see almost every career
in the world glorified, and parentage alone sneered at. Believers in
Eugenics regard with a horror based on a certainty of evil consequence
when they contemplate a State in which the noble task of motherhood is
left to the poor while the rich evade their duties. It is stupid as
well as abominable to reproach heroic but uninstructed mothers of the
less wealthy classes. Year after year they think they are fulfilling
their destined purpose in life by adding to their families a burden
difficult to bear. In the long run, after Nature has exercised a cruel
elimination, this burden of the individual becomes the glory of the
race, the very bloom and blossom of the future. Neither can reproach be
given to the parents in the slums. Nature here seems to be prodigal
indeed. The children come, only the doctors know the terrible tale
of them. To the registrar they are but a name, to the statistician a
number, but to the City and the State they mean cemeteries, hospitals,
prisons, asylums, as well as barracks. But I am not dealing here with
the whole problem of poverty. Eugenics aims at breeding the fittest
from the fittest and it sees
"How many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear."
Even in the most unpromising surroundings one sees noble sparks of life
not to be quenched by poverty or any other vital enemy. The Christ
continues to be born in a stable.
It is when we reach the exclusive circles of the rich that we see how
the race is decaying. Children are at a discount. Parentage is coming
to be considered a waste of time. A man cannot spare his wife from
social functions. Dressmakers agree that the coming of a child destroys
symmetry and prevents fashionable tight-lacing. Besides there are
other pastimes to consider. Neither the State nor the individual will
make the public believe that the production of healthy children is as
important as baseball, horse-racing or stamp collecting. Millions of
dollars are spent on securing the best breeds of horses. Seven thousand
dollars recently was the price of a single four-cent stamp. Dogs, in
the highest circles, have luxuries of food, clothing and housing which
the servants who feed them never possessed. Dog-cemeteries exist where
more money is spent on the tombstone of a dead dog than would keep a
live human family for a year. "Foxes have holes, the birds of the air
have nests" but the children of the poor starve and the rich prefer the
pastime of the moment to the permanent interests of the race.
Degeneracy is not a disease by specific intention, it is an attribute
to our social neglect, it is the result of our inattention to vital
issues, it is a sign that we are no longer keenly anxious to elevate
the race. Race improvement requires, under modern conditions of life,
eternal vigilance and deliberate aim. The prolific character of the
degenerate type has often been remarked. It finds expression in the
homely proverb "Ill weeds grow apace." But the "growth" is in the
undesirable direction--they do not grow better. If it were not for the
wasteful cruelty of it all one would see some gleam of satisfaction
in the admitted fact that many of these breeds of degenerates are
almost as short-lived as they are prolific. The handsome villain of
contemporary romance, healthy in physique and mentally alert is a
misleading picture entirely at variance with fact. The degenerate child
is neither beautiful, robust nor mentally sound. While the number of
children per family is four on the average, Dr. Tredgold tells us
that the average of births in a degenerate family is over seven, in
addition to the still-born who in the case of the degenerates amount
to about fifteen per cent of the children born. Almost every prison in
the civilised world bears record to the direct injury inflicted on the
community by the degenerate class. The feeble-minded alone amount to an
appreciable percentage of the ordinary population of our prisons, and,
if to these are added other victims of hereditary degeneracy, there
will be left only what may be described as the "Criminals by accident."
I am not claiming too much for the science when I say that Eugenics is
capable of revolutionising these terrible conditions. The hereditary
nature of the taint of criminality is proved by the history and bodily
characteristics of its unhappy victims. Eugenists as such have no
special remedy for the present day criminality. Their work is to point
to the breeding of the criminal and to urge the importance of stopping
his multiplication. As soon as society begins to take steps towards
cutting off the supply of the degenerate there will be no object in
perpetuating cruel punishments whose only object was deterrence.
Alcoholism may be treated as a separate phase of this great question
or it may be regarded as but a manifestation of feeble-mindedness. In
either case it can be shown that the children of degenerates are those
most often prone to the drink evil. It is not a fact that a drunkard's
children necessarily grow up drunkards. This assertion which is
sometimes met with in Temperance literature is based on a misconception
of what heredity is and a misunderstanding of what alcoholism is.
Alcoholism tends to eliminate the alcoholic. The children of the
drunkard may not be drunkards but they may exhibit weaknesses,
cravings for destructive media or absence of self-control which at
length terminate their generation. There is only one final cure for
national intemperance and that is a more humane imitation of Nature's
own plan. Nature seems cruel in its work because its effectiveness is
not hindered by moral or humane considerations. Man cannot and must
not imitate Nature's ruthlessness even if the process of elimination
becomes a slower one. We can imitate Nature's methodical incisiveness
without following Nature's murderous indifference. In some directions
we may even accelerate Nature's processes, not by increasing the pains
and penalties which she inflicts on a gradually disappearing progeny,
but by narrowing the circle of the victims; by declining to longer
tolerate the procreation of a hopeless generation.
I do not deny that temperance and similar effort at moral suasion
form a valuable buttress against the worst phenomena of alcoholism.
It serves the same purpose of help that bread does to the starving
destitute, it does not solve the problem but it is a necessary work all
the same, a valuable adjunct to a radical cure, and only objectionable
if it stands in the way of prevention which is better than cure.
There is a heritage for children worse, perhaps, than criminality,
feeble-mindedness or a tendency to alcoholic excess. I refer to
venereal diseases. Painful or otherwise the subject must be discussed
in this connection sooner or later. Like alcoholism, this disease
contributes to its own elimination, its victims do not survive
many generations. It is impossible to obtain statistics reasonably
complete of the depredations wrought by these diseases. Professor
Fournier regards them as social danger (1) By the individual damage
inflicted, (2) The damage inflicted on the family, (3) The hereditary
consequences, especially the infant mortality which is terrible, (4)
The race deterioration and depopulation entailed. Public opinion is
ripe for Eugenic treatment of this subject for one good reason, namely
that every other remedy has either failed after trial or is in the
nature of things incapable of adequate enforcement. State regulation
of vice, with its corollary, State examination of women, is nowadays
opposed by medical authorities because of the illusory security from
infection which it implies, and is bitterly resented by all reformers
as an intolerable tyranny applicable only to a single sex.
If I have emphasised the evils which are the heritage of so large a
number of our children, it must never be forgotten that great as is the
proportion of the unfit, we have not yet reached the stage when there
are more unfit than fit. The heritage of evil represents the need for
Eugenics in its negative aspect. We are perfectly well aware of the
characteristics which we desire to eliminate, and this is of very great
importance, not only because of the active harm which a decadent type
represents in our civilisation, but there is the further consideration
that ninety-nine per cent of the reformative effort of our legislative
and social crusades, and of the philanthropic side of our religious
life, is concentrated on this appalling problem. The release of much
of this effort would tend towards enlightening the nation in other
directions. It is not at all wonderful that we should recognise our
national agreement about the types we would gladly eliminate while we
disagree very widely about the types we would most value. This arises
largely from the fact that our attention for many years has been
riveted on "the submerged tenth," on "degeneracy" on "the criminal
classes" and on the various other descriptions of the undesirable.
What a little share in our organised study of man has the best type
had. We have fed the unfit and left the healthy unheeded. Actually
while we have been discussing the problem of improvement we have seen
the destruction and disappearance through war, disease and poverty
of representatives of types which stood in no need of improvement but
only of perpetuating. But in the main if we do not agree as to the most
desirable heritage a child should have there is very much common ground
between us all. We believe that every child has the right to a good
constitution. We regard as a misfortune every obstacle which renders
healthy parents unwilling or unable to add their contribution to the
welfare of the State by increasing the number of happy children growing
into efficient men and women. Why wonder at the anti-social elements
to be found in every city? What claim has the State on its children
when the State has neglected the duty of a parent. To be a citizen is
too great an honor to bestow on the hopeless children of degenerate
parents. These children's heritage is sorrow, the nation's remorse is
unavailing, Nemesis overtakes the neglectful State.