POVERTY AND PROPAGATION
IS POVERTY BENEFICIAL? EXTREME VIEWS, BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL—FALLACY OF
THE FORMER—OF THE LATTER—DANGER OF IGNORING THE HEREDITARY
FACTOR—SOCIAL CONDITIONS FAVORING HEREDITARY IMPROVEMENT—BENEFITS
OF MODERATE HARDSHIP—POSSIBILITY OF SCIENTIFIC SELECTION—THE MORAL
CHECK AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO POVERTY
We need to know how poverty is related to the survival of types because
it is regarding this, especially, that we are required to have a
definite policy. The hardships of the very poor are felt as a call to do
something; but when we ask what we should do the answer depends upon how
we look upon their condition in relation to social process. Is it a
means to the “survival of the fittest,” and, if so, does it work in such
a way that the fit are the desirable? Can it be abolished? Ought it to
be abolished? Is there any other way of accomplishing whatever selective
function it may now perform?
There are two extreme views regarding this matter, and all manner of
intermediate modifications and compromises. The biologist who sees life
only in terms of his specialty is apt to hold that the sufferings of the
poor are simply one form of the struggle for existence among biological
types, that this struggle is the method of evolution here as everywhere;
that it is salutary, though painful, and that any attempt to interfere
with it can do only harm; that, in short, the net result of philanthropy
is the preservation of inferior types of mankind. This is supported by
statistics which aim to show that shiftless, vicious, diseased, and
defective persons are enabled by charity to raise large families of
children.
The other extreme is common among those who are moved by first-hand
knowledge of the poor, and feel so strongly the inadequacy of the
biological view that they are eager to reject it altogether. Poverty,
they say, is the chronic disease of a certain part of society, in which
people are involved as they are in an epidemic. To have it indicates no
inherent weakness, no biological trait of any kind; it does not
discriminate and has, therefore, no selective value. Moreover, it does
not eliminate, as it must in order to promote evolution. Those who
contract it, whether of inferior types or not, do not cease to
propagate, but increase more than the well-to-do, passing on their
misery to their children. And, beyond this, poverty is propagated
socially by the vice, squalor, shiftlessness and inefficiency which are
inseparable from it, and spread from one family to another. The whole
condition is described as a running sore, which poisons all it touches,
and should be cured as a whole by remedial and antiseptic treatment. The
theory underlying this view is that the sources of poverty are
environmental, and that difference of biological type has so little to
do with it as to be negligible. Or, assuming that it does play some
part, it is best got at by first removing the social causes, after which
any inferior hereditary types there may be can be discerned and
eliminated.
Under this view philanthropy, or, more generally, deliberate control of
social conditions, is not “interference” but an essential part of the
evolutionary process. It never has been nor can be absent so long as man
is human and feels his solidarity with his fellows. It has no doubt done
harm when unwise, but the remedy for this is not an impossible and
illogical “letting alone,” but the endeavor to make it wiser. Indeed the
biological particularists tacitly admit this by carrying on an
educational campaign.
No one with any unbiased knowledge of the facts can accept the crudely
biological view. It is essentially an _a priori_ interpretation, drawn
by analogy from subhuman life. Selection by a merely brutal struggle
(which even among the animals is, in fact, modified by mutual aid) is
out of place, retrogressive, impossible on a large scale, in human
society; and a biology intelligent enough to grasp the implications of
the social process must reject it.
To such an intelligent biology the ground for combating poverty, disease
and vice by social means is that this is part of a campaign for securing
conditions which _on the whole_ make for the survival of higher types.
We may lose something by it, we may preserve some who might better die,
but the general outcome of our campaign, if rightly planned, is
biologically good.
Sound charity does not knowingly aid the propagation of persons of
inferior stock. It aims to distinguish them from those who are merely
suffering from bad environment, and to set them apart in institutions or
colonies, while the others are given a chance in a better environment.
In no other way but by close and sympathetic study can this distinction
be made, so that the intelligent social worker is the real social
biologist, those who ignore the social factor being doctrinaires.
Moreover, except as we bring about good social conditions we have no
standard to tell what stocks _are_ socially desirable. Who are the “fit”
whom we wish to preserve? Fitness implies some general situation by
which it is tested, and the kind we want is fitness for the higher
social order we are trying to build up, for the wise, just, prosperous,
and spiritually progressing state. The only way to test for this is to
create as high a social order as we can, and give each competing type a
chance to function in it. To wipe out vast numbers by some crude process
on the assumption that it eliminates the “unfit” will not do, or will do
only so long as we are unable to substitute some better mode of
selection.
If all of our babies were subjected to the conditions that babies are
subjected to in Terra del Fuego, most of them, I suppose, would die of
exposure, and a very rapid “natural selection” would take place; but
there is no reason to suppose that, for civilized purposes, the
surviving type would be at all improved. The power to endure extreme
cold is only a small merit in modern life. In the same way, of two
children living in an infected tenement the one who dies may be of a
socially more desirable type than the one who lives. The facts collected
by Mr. Havelock Ellis and others regarding the feeble childhood of men
of genius show how easily, under such a test, the better types might
perish.
The extreme biological view involves the absurdity of requiring that we
tolerate indefinitely a bad state of society in order to produce a stock
that is fit for a good one. Evidently the true way is to endeavor to
better the society and the stock at the same time, expecting each to
react favorably upon the other.
I cannot, however, assent to the other extreme view, namely, that
poverty has nothing to do with hereditary degeneracy and cannot in any
manner or degree work against it. My impression is that destructive
conditions, like misery, disease, and vice, though their action is
largely indiscriminate, nevertheless attack degenerate stocks with
special virulence, and have some tendency to diminish them relatively to
those that are sounder. The process is crude and wasteful, needing to be
replaced by a better one, but it probably has had, and still has, an
important part in the evolution of the race.
Say what you will of environmental factors in success or failure, there
is no reasonable doubt that differences of natural capacity also enter.
Under like conditions one individual, because of inherent energy and
intelligence, may emerge from misery, while another, lacking these
traits, remains in it. And it is quite possible that the same traits may
lead the former on to a successful and well-ordered life, including the
raising of a normal family, while the latter remains unprolific.
It is not true, so far as I can judge from antecedent probability, or
from the evidence, that those who fall below the misery line have, as a
class, as large a natural increase as those who rise somewhat above it.
A steady young man who can earn good wages, a competent housewifely
girl, are types favored in marriage, and likely to rear families. And
those who “do well” are also less devitalized by exhaustion,
discouragement, and dissipation. They make good their place in the
intermediate class, have more children and bring a larger proportion of
them to maturity than they would if they had failed. The small families
of the rich have led many to overlook the fact that among less
prosperous people success and fecundity are in some degree connected. I
know the common impression regarding the large families of the shiftless
and degenerate and admit that they are often abnormally large. I think,
however, the impression is on the whole exaggerated, perhaps because of
our feeling that such families ought to have no children at all.
A standard work dealing with poverty in America remarks that “the
families of paupers or semi-paupers usually average smaller than those
of the population as a whole, partly because the number among classes
degenerate enough to be dependent is not so large as ordinarily
supposed, partly because of a high infant mortality, and partly because
the families of these classes tend to disintegrate rapidly.”[59]
Admitting what exceptions you please, I have little doubt that this will
hold true on the whole.
Of dissipation we may say much the same as of economic failure; heredity
is certainly a factor in it, however subordinate to environment, and the
dissipated are, without doubt, a comparatively unprolific class. Vice,
alcoholism, and irregularity of all kinds tend to diminish fecundity.
The sterility due to venereal disease alone is enormous, though not
confined, unfortunately, to the licentious themselves, but extending to
their wives and children, and to whomever else they may contaminate.
Alcoholism leads to sexual vice, and also lowers intelligence and
vitality. It is true that drunkards often have large families, but for
one such case you will find perhaps four of those who have formed no
stable marriage relation. It is a mere truism to say that, as a rule,
dissipation means a kind of life inconsistent with the raising of a
normal family.
I think, then, we ought not, in dealing with poverty, to ignore the
possibility that inferiority of hereditary type may be a factor in it.
If people who cannot support a family actually have children, I would
wish these to have as good a chance as any; but so far as possible I
would prevent such people from having children. I favor reforms aimed at
reducing the infant death-rate, but think they should be accompanied by
other reforms aimed at reducing the birth-rate among those who are
unable to maintain the social standards.
Let me suggest an actual problem. It is well known that the birth-rate
of the Negroes in the South is very high, so high that if it were not
largely offset by a very high infant death-rate, the colored people
would soon overwhelm the whites. Apparently, then, if social reforms
were rapidly introduced lowering the death-rate of colored children to
that of the whites, without other reforms tending to lower their
birth-rate, this overwhelming would actually take place. I ask, then,
whether, from the white standpoint at least, this one-sided reform would
not be worse than none, and whether we might not make a similar mistake
by pushing improvements in the care and feeding of infants without at
the same time pushing eugenic measures aimed at raising the standard of
heredity in the infants born.
No doubt the shifting conditions of our society may bring it to pass
that large numbers are living below the social standards from reasons
quite apart from natural incapacity. This is evidently the case with
immigrants coming from countries of lower standards and often undergoing
here exceptional economic and moral pressure. The presumption is that
any social inferiority they may exhibit is due to environmental rather
than hereditary causes. I suppose the fact that most social workers in
America deal largely or wholly with immigrants has much to do with the
prevalence among them of the view that the hereditary causes of poverty
are unimportant. The greater stress put upon the latter in England may
be connected with the different character of English poverty.
The social conditions best for the maintenance of the biological type
are neither very harsh nor very easy. We need a real struggle to supply
a test of what can make good in life, but the conditions of this
struggle should ameliorate with social progress. Any test should conform
to the normal conditions of the system for which the test is made; and
any social struggle that is on a lower plane is not a good test.
I have heard it asserted that the best types are those that can survive
under the worst conditions; but this is patently false. The test of
extreme physical hardship in infancy would probably tend to eliminate
the higher intellectual capacities. The best types are simply those
capable of the best function, and the more nearly we can make good
function on a high social level the test of survival the better.
Hardly anything gives rise to more confusion than discussing the
“struggle for existence” without a clear understanding of the relativity
of all struggle to conditions and standards. When you say, “The struggle
for existence is a good thing,” the thoughtless infer that the harsher
it is the better. On the other hand, when you say, “The struggle for
existence (under misery conditions) is degrading,” the thoughtless of
another bias conclude that it ought to be abolished and life made
comfortable to all, regardless of achievement. We need a struggle, with
standards to arouse exertion and to shut out incompetence; and these
standards should be the highest in social requirement, and their
enforcement the most humane that we are able to establish. I take it
that we are trying to pass from low standards and brutal or haphazard
means of enforcement to a higher condition in both respects.
We need to distinguish rather sharply between moderate hardship and a
really degrading poverty, or, if you please, between poverty and
misery,[60] between a state in which social standards _can_ be
maintained and one in which they inevitably break down. The latter means
general retrogression, and is accompanied by conditions, such as
ignorance, disease and vice, which are destructive of biological
standards as well as social. The former permits that real but not brutal
struggle for existence which is a part of the life of every people and
essential as a guarantee against degeneration.
Is it not true that moderate economic hardship acts as a frontier, a
fighting-line, where fundamental standards, both biological and social,
are maintained, and hardy and humane types of men are developed? There
are kinds and degrees of difficulty, sufficient to be exacting but not
enough to be destructive, that test and sift and reinvigorate the people
who pass through them.
The case of the present immigrant to America is not so different from
that of the pioneer as we are apt to think. He also comes from a crowded
place to a place of opportunity, and strives by a bold venture to better
his condition and enlarge the boundaries of life. Some succeed and some
fail; accident, we must admit, plays a great part. Many of the attendant
conditions are unfair and demoralizing—as was the case with the
pioneers. Nevertheless, the general outcome, even as things go now (and
we may hope to make them go much better), is the fostering of vigorous
types. The history of those who have been in this country for two or
three generations makes this fairly evident.
We need to watch this fighting-line and take care of the wounded—see to
it, that is, that those who fall into misery are given a chance to
recover, if they are capable of it, and at any rate are not allowed to
extend their condition to whole neighborhoods and form infectious misery
environments. Unless we can abolish the struggle altogether, which seems
neither possible nor desirable, I do not see how we can expect to avoid
sporadic misery as a by-product of it; but what we _can_ do is so to
standardize the conditions of the struggle and the care of those who
fail as to prevent the growth of a self-perpetuating misery class.
Scientific _a priori_ tests of fitness to propagate, such as may be
developed by the aid of family records or medical and psychological
examinations, will probably be found of increasing value in eliminating
the definitely degenerate by segregation or sterilization. It is not
probable, however, that they can ever meet the more general need of a
competitive standard of biological competence.
There are two fundamental and possibly permanent reasons why we cannot
select our hereditary types artificially: first, because we are not
likely to agree as to just what types are desirable, and, second,
because if we did agree there is no practicable method of ascertaining
the individuals belonging to these types and controlling their
propagation.
Selective breeding is a comparatively simple matter with domestic
animals, where what we seek is a definite and easily ascertained trait
like length or fineness of wool in sheep, weight in hogs or beef-cattle,
speed or strength in horses, laying capacity in fowls, and so on. But in
the case of man we do not know just what we want, and probably never
shall. We should not dare to set up a standard of physical vigor, for
fear of excluding psychical powers of more value; and the social and
moral traits which we might desire to increase do not manifest
themselves with certainty until rather late in life.
Moreover, it is clear that the desirable thing in human life is not one
good type but many, a diversity of types corresponding to multifarious
and unforeseeable functions. It is most unlikely that we shall ever
assume to define these types in advance.
These difficulties seem so insuperable that it is hardly necessary to go
on and show that, owing to the great share which environment has in
producing desirable types of character, it is difficult to see how we
could be sure what individuals lacked the requisite hereditary capacity.
Galton’s view that success is a fair test has little following, and no
other test is at hand. I conclude, then, that the sphere of a scientific
eugenics, which shall deliberately select some types for propagation and
reject others, should probably not extend much beyond the suppression of
clearly marked kinds of degeneracy.
It would seem that we must rely for our standards mainly upon the actual
test of social struggle, acting either through economic misery or
through some kind of moral pressure, in the nature of custom or public
opinion, which shall discourage from raising families those who do not
“make good,” and require a greater fecundity from those who do.
In the past we have made use, unconsciously, of misery, which was
rendered the more unjust and indiscriminate by the fact that those
subject to it were held in a lower class, having little real opportunity
to show their fitness for a higher condition. We seek to do away with
this, not only because of the injustice and indiscrimination, but also
because degradation impairs the whole state of society. At the same time
we must admit the possibility that we may make a bad situation worse by
abolishing the only selective agent we have.
Our chief reliance, apparently, must be upon substituting custom and
social pressure for misery in restricting the propagation of those who
cannot maintain their families at a normal standard of living.
Experience seems to show that the voluntary check easily comes into
operation along with the growth of intelligence and social ambition—so
easily that it is already carried to excess by the well-to-do in most
countries, and in at least one country—France—by the bulk of the people.
It appears not at all Utopian to think that this mild and indirect check
may in time not only take the place of destructive misery, but prove
more effective as a method of selection.
Meanwhile we have a difficult problem in that class of people who are
poor stock, but not so definitely degenerate that it is practicable to
interfere and prevent their propagation. Almost every village has such a
problem in the irresponsible procreation of families whom the community
knows to be incompetent. I have received trustworthy accounts of many
such from students.
It will appear to some that the whole plan of improvement breaks down at
this point through the inadequacy of social pressure to limit natural
increase. But we have come a long way since Malthus, and in a general
view of the situation it appears probable, though not demonstrable, that
social pressure will more and more meet the problem. A reasonable view
of irresponsible procreation is that it is confined chiefly to those
families which, through neglect, have not learned to feel the cogency of
higher standards of life, and that the best way to deal with it is to
make those standards universal. To fall back upon misery and vice for
elimination would probably, by increasing irresponsibility, make matters
worse rather than better. In other words, while the plan of dealing with
the whole situation by opportunity, standards, and moral control is not
free from difficulties, it is more promising, even at its weakest point,
than a policy of neglect.
_PART V_
GROUP CONFLICT