POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EUGENICS
This little volume would sadly fail to convey its author's meaning if
dogmatism stood in the way of persuasion, or authority seemed to be
claimed for the tentative suggestions herein outlined. There is no
immediate danger that Eugenic principles will suddenly rush society
into extreme action. The probabilities are quite in the opposite
direction. We shall continue to see what has always been observed
by thinkers, namely, "Decency and custom starving truth, and blind
authority beating with his staff the child which might have led him."
Valuable experiments are delayed by prejudice, and Eugenists have
only too good ground for complaint that the scientific spirit is
thwarted by prejudiced opposition to new ideas. The very absence of
dogmatism which characterises the genuine thinker serves as the basis
of opposition in his experiments. Because he does not glibly guarantee
universal success like a patent-pill advertiser nothing whatever is
done to obtain a criterion of judging how far his reasonable proposals
can succeed. The failure of all other attempts to improve the race may
force upon the public the necessity of Eugenic experiments. As has been
said more than once, philanthropy has failed, politics has failed,
rescue work has failed, perhaps Eugenics may not fail, for it is based
on the impregnable rock of science, it proceeds on the sound lines of
prevention, it aims to start at the beginning of things, to build up a
new race if not of supermen at least of sound healthy human beings.
The lethal chamber is _not_ a Eugenic remedy. It is the last
heart-broken despairing cry of the old unscientific system. It is
the only final alternative to Eugenics. It means that man has failed.
It has neither sense, sentiment, nor science for its justification.
It substitutes murder for moral method. Eugenics on the other hand
starts out with the principle that there is nothing so sacred as life.
That the lethal chamber for the aged, diseased, infirm, and unfit is
barbarous and immoral, that it is utterly indefensible, and would be
absolutely ineffective if not ridiculously impracticable. There is
not much need to waste further consideration on a project from which
every healthy citizen naturally revolts. It has to be categorically
repudiated lest it should be mistakenly regarded as a Eugenic proposal.
Abortion and infanticide are equally condemned by Eugenists, although
on different grounds. Infanticide is murder. It destroys the life of an
actual human being. Infanticide, though doubtless less reprehensible in
degree than the lethal chamber idea, is in principle indistinguishable
therefrom. It is the antithesis to the idea of Eugenics. The state
which can contemplate child-murder without horror is far indeed
from being a humane State. Sensitiveness to suffering is a sign of
civilisation. Wherever we find a live human being, however hopeless
its condition may appear, universal experience has shown us that man's
advance from savagedom depends on his using all his resources to save
the final spark of life which remains. "While there's life there's
hope" is a maxim which is based on the greatest need of mankind.
Eugenics deplores waste of effort that this entails, but there can be
no doubt about its rightness or its justification by the universal
consensus of progressive races. Abortion may be condemned on religious
and moral grounds, but the overwhelming weight of medical opinion
against it is based on physiological reasons. No woman can be guilty
of this practice without the greatest risks of physical damage.
She jeopardises her life immediately and she generally deteriorates
her capacity for future usefulness. Eugenics will find a sphere of
usefulness in the spread of this piece of saving knowledge. Unmarried
mothers and mothers in all spheres of society are terribly ignorant
of the dangers of this common death-trap. The mere fact that the sale
and procuration of drugs and use of means for purposes of abortion are
criminal acts is not sufficient. The idea is prevalent that it is only
the police who have to be evaded. Our laws are not empiric, but their
reason is seldom apparent to those who are expected to obey them. A few
drugs, or a few pills--how easy it all seems--and how fatal. Eugenists
do not want the law altered, but they want the added deterrent of
reason. There may be a chance of evading the law, there is none of
evading the bodily injury which inevitably accompanies abortion.
I have already shown that Malthusian arguments do not appeal to
Eugenists. This is not to say that Malthusian methods are also
condemned. Malthusian prognostications have not been fulfilled, its
statistics have been superseded, and its conclusions modified by the
process of the suns. The world does not contain too many people, it
only contains too many of the wrong sort of people. Production has not
only kept pace with population, it has raced it. Intensive cultivation,
new treatments of the soil, scientific rotation of crops and scientific
agriculture rendering rotation unnecessary, new economic inducements
to cultivate hitherto waste lands, discoveries and inventions of
all kinds have taken away from Malthusianism the unduly pessimistic
philosophy with which it once tried to frighten the race. Malthusianism
will always be remembered with gratitude, however, for its practical
methods and for its refusing to confuse marriage with procreation. That
distinction still needs to be borne in mind because otherwise half
our Eugenic efforts will be wasted by directing ourselves to a problem
which does not exist. It is impossible to assail the proposition
that a moral married life is consistent with a prudential check on
increased population. This prudential check need not necessarily be
a material one. Even a Tolstoyan may be a married man. Abstinence in
due season in the case of normal adults is or may be Nature's plan for
increasing virility at other seasons. The most prolific parents may be
pardoned for resting occasionally from their protracted persistency of
race-production. Eugenists object to weakening virility by sacrificing
fitness for mere numbers, but it is in the essence of their demand
that the race shall, "increase and multiply and replenish the earth."
The objection (which Eugenists share with the majority of the American
public) to anything remotely resembling infanticide must have some
definite proof of its sincerity. Eugenists denounce the New Decalogue
of current morality which says:
"Thou shalt not kill,--but needs not strive
Officiously to keep alive."
The Eugenist does not desire to detract from the responsibility of
parenthood, but rather to increase it. On the other hand whatever
steps may be taken against neglectful, vicious or unnatural parents,
the race interests demand that the child shall not suffer. A new
responsibility must be added to parentage--the parent of the race is
the State, which must be vigilant to protect the child from the faults
and follies of fathers who fail in their most essential duties. A child
should be guaranteed loving parents or failing these a never failing
foster-parent, in a paternal State.
In the recognition of its duties as Step-mother, the State will in
self-defence protect its maternal arms from the influx of undesirables.
The universal endowment of Motherhood may be a socialist dream
rather than a Eugenic practical proposal, but even the Eugenists'
demand for the State to act as step-mother involves an expenditure
which will probably amount to the cost of a national war. It is part
of our case that the money spent is an investment certain to pay big
dividends in the shape of increased national efficiency. It is in
any case inevitable. Public sentiment cannot tolerate this idiotic
waste of the noblest of all raw material. It will be not the least of
its advantages that the State will at length be directly interested,
financially and therefore most deeply, in stopping the supply of the
unfit--a bad investment at the best, requiring a maximum of trouble,
and a continuous source of damage. The sterilisation of the unfit has
become a regular experience in a number of States. It has outlived its
detractors wherever it has been practised. It remains necessary now
only to convert its objectors in other States, and to gradually extend
its beneficent operation and the sphere of its activities. Naturally it
begins with the habitual criminal. Of absolute success in the States
where it has been tried it will be far more effective when it is
applied in the more populous centres and when it becomes impossible for
the permanently criminal to escape its attention. Sterilisation as now
recommended and performed by our highest scientific authorities is in
no sense cruel, it is not even painful. It must not be confounded with
the mutilations of earlier centuries, it leaves the person operated
on possessed of every faculty for use and capacity for happiness, it
only takes away the power of reproduction. The first extension of
the plan has been to the certified hopeless idiot. These two classes
and the inmates of homes for incurable drunkards represent a very
easy definition of those who should be treated to this operation.
In the case of the criminal it will enable very great mercy to be
extended. Sterilisation will not be a mere added infliction of a
degrading punishment, it will substitute an awful warning for a long
imprisonment. Only those criminals will be sterilised whose chronic
criminality is proved after repeated convictions and form a study of
what facts are ascertainable as to their hereditary history. They
will leave the jail knowing that society regards them as unworthy to
be parents, or if they themselves are also too dangerous to be let at
large their close confinement will be rarely necessary.
The Eugenist does not propose to extend the operation of sterilisation
beyond the classes above mentioned. It does not, however, regard these
as exhausting the categories of undesirable procreators. Already
there are numerous suffering and semi-cured adults whose children
would inherit the diseases, weaknesses, and evil tendencies of their
ancestors. Tuberculosis, syphilis and St. Vitus's Dance sufferers
are specimens of this class. As Eugenics advances we may learn more
of the racial poisons, and a scientific black-list may be drawn up
of those hereditary taints which inflict most harm on the community.
Doctors should have to notify the authorities of these diseases
and the patient should be encouraged to frankness and helped to a
cure. In all such cases kind but firm warning must be given against
procreation. The failure to heed such warning should inevitably result
in imprisonment--a very short term will suffice, for with Eugenics
established as a rule of society, the State could afford to be patient.
The elimination of the unfit would make rapid strides, and the
offspring of tainted parents evading the law in one generation would be
less and less likely to escape in the next generation.
It may be that the State will be contented with the negative side of
Eugenics. It may be that it is the more important because we are
daily increasing the elements which if not checked will destroy our
civilisation. Negative Eugenics is as imperative a necessity as the
protection of our coasts from invasion or the destruction of potato
blight.
Positive Eugenics represents the attempt to encourage breeding from
every healthy stock. Its methods will vary with the views of society
from time to time. Its machinery will be by State-interference or by
private experimental enterprise according as socialist or individualist
ideals are current. I do not wish to commit Eugenists who are by no
means agreed on this point, but my personal view is that individual
experiments cannot possibly go far beyond public opinion, whereas, "the
State can do no wrong" if it endows, undertakes and is responsible
for experiments limited in extent but far reaching in principle, so
long as such experiments are based on scientific probabilities and
are supported by enlightened competent judges and do not outrage the
humane sentiment of the race. Drastic individual experiments, involving
however few people, will always be subject to interference at critical
moments by mobs, governments, vigilance societies, etc. It is not wise
to ignore this factor; it is not necessary even to deprecate it; nay,
it has its advantages. The omnipotence of the State rests not merely in
its power of arms; a State experiment, even though not initiated by the
people, can be stopped by the people. The electors' power ultimately to
interfere makes for tolerance.
While drastic experiments must be left to democracy acting through its
elected governors, there is ample scope for other features of positive
Eugenics. One of these is the endowment of worthy young couples too
poor otherwise to marry. The ideal of celibacy stands self-condemned.
Where successful it means race-suicide, where unsuccessful it means
hypocrisy and a thousand other horrors. What then can we think of the
fact that millions of dollars have been spent in endowing monasteries,
nunneries, brotherhoods and all the other ancient and modern forms of
celibate stultification of probably perfectly potential parents. Add
to these millions the other millions spent in endowing the worst and
least capable in prisons, asylums and in often demoralising charities.
Then bear in mind that the endowment of the healthy for Eugenic
purposes, for the regeneration of mankind, is absolutely unknown. A
millionaire who loves his kind could scarcely do better with his money
than the establishment, under proper supervision, of a fund which would
encourage human efficiency. There is no fame so lasting as the glory
which would attach to such a fund. It would be greater than a Nobel
name, its prizes would be more keenly competed for than for "Marathon"
or "America" cups. Its winners would become a new aristocracy, and
for the first time in the history of the world noble families would be
founded on a blending of ancestral and personal merit, aristocratic,
indeed, because the best become personally powerful, but absolutely
democratic in that neither class, caste nor creed are allowed to
count in the selection. From this aristocracy a new knighthood might
be formed. Degeneration would mean exclusion. Improvement would mean
increased honours. New standards of efficiency, mental, moral and
physical, would be evolved for the guidance of the race. An American
model of this kind would speedily find imitators abroad. The real
struggle for race supremacy would be concentrated on the Eugenic
groups. Competitions, challenges and contests between national
groups might eclipse in interest all the other exhibits in future
International Expositions.
The daily work of Eugenic education is independent of these short
cuts to the Eugenics millennium. The dissemination of ascertained
facts about heredity is urgently necessary. It may be news to many
that there are hundreds of institutions throughout our land where
accurate information has been carefully collected for many years.
The antecedents of inmates of prisons, asylums and "homes" have
been patiently scheduled, classified and studied. Only money and
public interest are wanted to make this vital information known.
Investigations of this kind need also to be made universal. It is
not enough that institutions should relieve the present sufferers.
They can only justify their existence by contributing to our desire
for the eradication of suffering. It should be made a condition of
public support that the most useful kind of inquiries should be
made, and be placed at the disposal of all who are interested. It is
useless throwing pages of undigested statistics at the public, this
is mere waste of effort. With the facts and figures in existence and
accessible, centres of scientific study such as a Eugenics laboratory
should be, will be able to present to the public the living issues
which those dead figures mean. It would, however, be contrary to
the spirit of Eugenics to confine attention to the sadder side of
statistics. It is of infinite importance that we should understand and
cultivate fitness, and therefore we want the systematic collection of
family histories relating to our noblest, best and worthiest. Here
State-interference is out of place. Voluntary work on the part of
enthusiastic Eugenists would soon succeed in obtaining information
of great value. Few families would refuse to impart through private
channels ancestral facts, particularly as the mere inquiry would
imply a compliment. The Chinese worship of ancestors would have a
modern scientific interpretation, in the honour which would be won by
the founders of fine families, a study of whose history would be an
inspiration and a help to the race.
The advocates of Eugenics are prepared for small beginnings but
they have enormous faith in its future. There is no desire and no
need to exaggerate the present tentative claims. To the many it is
still necessary to ask for the intellectual hospitality of impartial
consideration. Even to the convinced we only appeal for judicious
experiment. To the religious our work comes as a harmonious exercise of
the best with which the Eternal Will of the Universe has endowed us.
To the evolutionist Eugenics represents the study and expression of
Nature's plan. To the humane our work appeals as it assures mankind of
a curtailment of human suffering. We lay new laurels on graves of the
honoured dead and write new epitaphs glorifying the ancestors of the
worthy living. We reverence the cradle containing the hope of the race,
we think of past and present as the womb of the future.
APPENDIX A
_Maternity Maintenance, or State Subventions to Mothers_
MEDICAL ATTENDANCE
First and foremost comes the need for qualified medical and nursing
attendance on the mother and the newly born infant. At present many
mothers go almost unattended in their hour of need; many tens of
thousands more have attendance that comes too late, or is quite
inadequately qualified; hundreds of thousands of others fail to get the
nursing and home assistance that is required to prevent long-continued
suffering and ill-health to mothers and children alike. The local
health authorities ought to be required to provide within its area
qualified medical attendance, including all necessary nursing, for all
cases of child-birth of which it has received due notice. There is no
reason why this should not be done as a measure of public health, free
of charge to the patient, in the same way as vaccination is provided
for all who do not object to that operation; and on the same principle
that led to the gratuitous opening of the hospitals, to any person
suffering from particular diseases quite irrespective of his means.
What is, however, important is that the necessary medical attendance
and nursing shall _always_ be provided. If the community prefers to
recover the cost from such patients as can clearly afford to pay--say,
for instance, those having incomes above a prescribed amount--instead
of from everybody in the form of rates and taxes, this (as with the
payment for admission to an isolation hospital) may be an intermediate
stage. In one way or another, there must be no child-birth without
adequate attendance and help to the mother.
_Pure Milk_
At present many tens of thousands of infants perish simply from
inanition in the first few days or weeks after birth. In town and
country alike many hundreds of thousands of families find the greatest
difficulty, even when they can pay for it, in buying milk of reasonable
purity and freshness, or in getting it just when they require it, or
often indeed in getting it at all. The arguments in favour of the
municipalisation of the milk supply are overwhelming in strength. But
an even stronger case can be made out for the systematic provision
by the Local Health Authority, to every household in which a birth
has taken place, of the necessary quantity of pure, fresh milk, in
sealed bottles, delivered every day. Whatever else is left undone, the
necessary modicum of pure milk, whether taken by the mother or prepared
for the child, might at any rate be supplied as the birth-right of
every new-born citizen.
_Maternity Pensions._
The next step must be the establishment of a system of maternity
pensions free, universal, and non-contributory. If they be not
universal, they will come as of favour, and be open to the objections
rightly urged against all doles, public or private. A contributory
scheme could only exist as part of a universal sick fund. If the
contributions were optional the poorest mothers would get no pension
at all. If they were compulsory on a fixed scale, the scheme would
still further impoverish those it is intended to benefit. If the
contributions were on a sliding scale, the pension would be smallest
just where it is most necessary. To work out a pension scheme on the
basis of compensation for loss of the mother's earnings would at once
involve a sliding scale such as is in force in Germany and Austria,
which would be unfair in the working, and benefit the poorest least.
Moreover, the theory is fallacious, inasmuch as it views the woman as
a worker and not as a mother. Let the pension be regarded rather as the
recompense due to the woman for a social service, second to none that
can be rendered. The time will come when the community will set a far
higher value on that service than it does at present. But at present
the main point is to tide the mother over a time of crisis as best we
may.
How long should the pension last? The average duration of a maternity
case inside a hospital appears to be a fortnight. The normal period
during which upper class mothers keep their beds is three weeks, but
for some time after leaving bed, the mother is incapable of any active
work without harm to herself. Many internal diseases and nervous
complaints as well as a good deal of the drinking among women, have
their origin in getting about too soon. For some weeks at least,
whether the mother nurses her baby or not, she requires much more than
ordinary rest and nourishment. These considerations apply also, though
in a less degree, to the period preceding confinement.
Under the law of Great Britain, the period of enforced cessation from
factory work is four weeks. The same period is prescribed in Holland
and Belgium. In Switzerland the period is eight weeks.
These laws, though of great value, are often cruel in the working, as
they deprive the woman of wages without compensation just at the time
she needs money most. The result is they are often evaded. Germany
and Austria have recognised this. In Germany women are forbidden to
work for six weeks after confinement. But the insurance law of Germany
provides women with free medical attendance, midwife and medicine,
and in addition with an allowance not exceeding seventy-five per
cent of her customary wage for the six weeks. There is further a
provision that pregnant women unable to work should be allowed the same
amount for not more than six weeks previous to confinement. A similar
insurance system exists in Austria and Hungary. In some parts of
Germany, the municipality still goes further. In Cologne, the working
mother is given a daily grant to stay at home and suckle her child,
and visitors see that this condition is fulfilled. The Cologne system
has been adopted by some municipalities in France. In Leipsic, every
illegitimate child becomes a ward of the municipality, which puts it
out to nurse with certified persons who must produce it for inspection
on demand.
These provisions enable the government of Germany to enforce the
law against the employment of women in the last period of pregnancy
without hardship to them. The compensation given to German mothers is
already felt to be insufficient, but there is a difficulty in making
it more generous arising from the fact that the system is a scheme
of insurance; the benefits cannot be increased without a rise in the
contribution. In a free pension scheme, this difficulty will not occur.
A small beginning might be made by way of experiment to familiarise the
public with the advantage of caring for maternity, with a knowledge
that its scope could be extended indefinitely without dislocation of
the scheme. But the period like the amount must be substantial even at
first. If the pension is to have any permanent value it should extend
over a period of at least eight weeks: about two weeks before and six
weeks after the date on which the birth is expected to take place.
The above is a brief resumé of the essential features of the British
Fabian Society's scheme for the Endowment of Motherhood. In "Fabian
Tract No. 149" (from which these extracts are made) $2.50 per week is
suggested as a reasonable maternity allowance.
APPENDIX B.
_Sterilisation of the Unfit._
The State Legislatures of California, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Indiana
and Connecticut have already passed measures to secure this object. On
February 10th, 1907, Indiana passed the following act:--
* * * * *
"An Act entitled an Act to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals,
idiots, imbeciles, and rapists--providing, that superintendents or
boards of managers of institutions where such persons are confined
shall have the authority, and are empowered to appoint a committee
of experts, consisting of two physicians, to examine into the mental
condition of such inmates.
"Whereas heredity plays an important part in the transmission of
crime, idiocy, and imbecility, therefore, be it enacted by the General
Assembly of the State of Indiana, that on and after the passage of
this act, it shall be compulsory for each and every institution in the
State entrusted with the care of confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists,
and imbeciles, to appoint upon its staff, in addition to the regular
institution physician, two skilled surgeons of recognised ability,
whose duty it shall be, in conjunction with the chief physician of
the institution, to examine the mental and physical condition of such
inmates as are recommended by the institutional physician and board of
managers.
"If in the judgment of this committee procreation is inadvisable and
there is no probability of improvement of the mental condition of the
inmate, it shall be lawful for the surgeons to perform such operation
for the prevention of procreation as shall be decided safest and most
effective. But this operation shall not be performed except in cases
that have been pronounced unimprovable."
* * * * *
In August, 1909, the Connecticut State Legislature enacted the
following:--
"An Act concerning operations for the prevention of Procreation.--Be
it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General
Assembly convened:
"Section 1.--The directors of the State prisons and the
superintendents of State Hospitals for the insane at Middletown
and Norwich are hereby authorised and directed to appoint for each
of said institutions, respectively, two skilled surgeons, who, in
conjunction with the physician or surgeon in charge at each of said
institutions, shall examine such persons as are reported to them by
the warden, superintendent, or the physician or surgeon in charge, to
be persons by whom procreation would be inadvisable.
"Such board shall examine the physical and mental condition of such
persons, and their record and family history so far as the same
can be ascertained, and if in the judgment of the majority of said
board, procreation by any such person would produce children with an
inherited tendency to crime, insanity, feeble-mindedness, idiocy,
or imbecility, and there is no probability that the condition of
any such person so examined will improve to such an extent as to
render procreation by such person advisable, or, if the physical or
mental condition of any such person will be substantially improved
thereby then the said board shall appoint one of its members to
perform the operation of vasectomy or oöphorectomy, as the case may
be, upon such person. Such operation shall be performed in a safe
and humane manner, and the board making such examination, and the
surgeon performing such operation, shall receive from the State such
compensation, for services rendered, as the warden of the State
prison or the superintendent of either of such hospitals shall deem
reasonable.
"Section 2.--Except as authorised by this act, every person who shall
perform, encourage, assist in or otherwise promote the performance
of either of the operations described in Section 1 of this Act, for
the purpose of destroying the power to procreate the human species:
or any person who shall knowingly permit either of such operations
to be performed upon such person--unless the same be a medical
necessity--shall be fined not more than one thousand dollars, or
imprisoned in the State prison not more than five years, or both."
In California, in 1909, the legislature passed a statute which provides
that whenever in the opinion of the medical superintendent of any State
hospital, or the superintendent of the California Home for the Care and
Training of Feeble-minded Children, or of the resident physician in
any State prison, it would be conducive to the benefit of the physical,
mental or moral condition of any inmate of such home, hospital or
state prison, to be asexualised, then such superintendent or resident
physician shall call into consultation the General Superintendent
of State Hospitals and the Secretary of the State Board of Health,
and they shall jointly examine into all the particulars of the case,
and if, in their opinion, or in the opinion of any two of them,
asexualisation will be beneficial to such inmate, patient, or convict,
they may perform the same.
* * * * *
The British Commissioners in Lunacy in their 63rd Report to the Lord
Chancellor, 1909, briefly reviewing the Report of the Royal Commission
on the care and Control of the Feeble-minded, say:
* * * * *
"The Royal Commission devoted much attention to the causation of
mental defect, and arrived at the conclusion that feeble-mindedness is
largely inherited; that prevention of mentally defective persons from
becoming parents would tend to diminish the numbers of such persons
in the population; and that, consequently, there are the strongest
grounds for placing mental defectives of each sex in institutions where
they will be detained and kept under effectual supervision as long
as may be necessary. Public opinion would not, the Royal Commission
think, sanction legislation directed to the prevention of hereditary
transmission of mental defect by surgical or other artificial measures,
and they regard restrictions on the marriage of persons of unsound mind
as inadvisable, in view of the fact that this form of mental disability
is often of a limited or temporary character. As respects, however,
congenital and incurable forms of mental defect, no such considerations
apply, and the only remedy is to place persons so suffering under such
restrictions as to make procreation impossible. The Royal Commission
were evidently much impressed by the evidence they received, which we
can from our own experience amply corroborate, of the large number of
weak-minded women and girls to be found in the work-houses throughout
the country, who go there to be delivered of illegitimate children,
and they invite your Lordship and the Secretary of State for the Home
Department to consider whether the existing law provides adequate
protection for mentally defective persons against sexual crime and
immorality....
Sterilisation of men can be effectively achieved by simple vasectomy or
section of the vas deferens, and of women by the almost equally simple
and harmless method of ligature of the Fallopian tubes (Kehrer's method
as advocated by Kisch). It would appear that both these operations may
be effected by skilled hands in a few minutes with a minimum of pain
and inconvenience, and they possess the immense advantage that the
sexual glands are preserved, and no organ removed from the body.[1]
(1) It is probable, also, that the method of sterilisation by X-rays
may some day acquire practical importance. In this case there is no
operation at all, though the effects do not last for more than a few
years. This might be an advantage in some cases. See _British Medical
Journal_, August 13th, 1904; ib. March 11th, 1905; ib. July 6th, 1907;
ib. August 21st, 1909."
[Footnote: 1] (Havelock Ellis in the "Eugenics Review," London, Eng.)
According to Dr. Havelock Ellis Swiss alienists are unanimously in
favour of the sterilisation of the mentally degenerate classes and hold
that this matter should be regulated by law. Switzerland is the first
European State which has adopted sterilisation as an alternative to the
"indeterminate sentence" in the case of confirmed abnormalities and
prisoners convicted of serious sexual offences against children. At
Wil in Berne, two women and two men were incarcerated in the cantonal
asylum. All were defectives but not strictly speaking insane. Children
had already been born in each case. To prevent further procreative
degeneracy sterilisation was suggested and agreed to by the four
persons who welcomed the operation as an alternative to detention. The
result has justified the experiment. According to the _Eugenics Review_
there has actually been a marked change in the characters of the
individuals and there is certainly no danger of their weaknesses being
reproduced at the expense of the coming generation.
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber Notes
There is a quotation which begins on page 133 but there is no endquote
in the text. It is assumed that the quotation ends on page 136 after
the date August 21, 1909.