The Problem of Over Population.
“Notwithstanding all that has been and will be accomplished by your
enterprising race,” said he, “there are some things about the earth
that they will never be able to control or improve. There are two in
particular of essential importance. One is the area of the earth’s
surface, which your race can never increase no matter what its
necessities may be; the other is the slow but very certain refrigeration
of the earth’s climate by which we may be sure that a time will be
reached in the long distant future when the habitable surface shall
gradually be reduced till at last no part of the earth’s surface will be
tolerable to any living creature. So in effect while the demand of the
race will be for more room it will constantly be required to put up with
less.”
“But,” said I, “isn’t that a good ways off? The extreme refrigeration
of the earth is a process involving millions of years according to our
scientists.”
“Yes, it will be a long time before any important reduction of area can
take place, but not long before the present room will become very much
cramped. Only a few moments ago we reckoned that by the year 2070 there
would be about two acres to each of the 12,000,000,000 of inhabitants,
on which to live and move and produce the means of subsistence. If the
race should then be doubling every thirty years, in 2100 there will be
but one acre for each; and if they keep on increasing in 2130 a half
acre; in 2160 a quarter; in 2190 an eighth, in 2220 a sixteenth; in
2250 a lot thirty-three by forty-one and one-fourth feet, which in 2280
is reduced to thirty-three by twenty feet 8 inches and this in 2292
four hundred years after the centennial of the discovery of America by
Columbus that was celebrated in your day at Chicago, will be reduced
to thirty-three by sixteen and one-half, or two rods by one. If the
population should get to be as numerous as that the entire earth would
be a city inhabited twelve times as densely as the city of Minneapolis
was in your day. This of course is the average. Some places are more
desirable than others and these would be more densely packed. Already at
the close of the twentieth century many of the pleasanter parts of the
earth have become uncomfortably populous, not from want of the means of
subsistence, but from want of room to carry on the business and pleasures
of life. And yet the growth of population may be said to be just fairly
commenced. It is obvious from what can already be seen that it will very
soon be necessary to place some artificial restriction on the increase
of population or else there will be such suffering among men as will of
itself operate to keep down the number of people by killing them off
faster and shortening the average duration of life. These questions are
already being seriously considered by the philosophers and wise men, and
many plans are being discussed.
“There are some pessimists who declare there is no remedy. They say it
was an egregious blunder on the part of society to attempt the banishment
of suffering. It was suffering that had in all ages kept down the
population, so that the world remained roomy enough to live in with some
comfort. They hold that suffering is a necessary concomitant of comfort
and we are bound to have it both before it, as a necessary antecedent
and after it, as a necessary consequent. It is the law of nature and it
is vain to try to evade it. By banishing war and want and disease, and
reducing the problem of life to an easy pleasant certainty, society, they
say, has caused herself to be invaded by fresh innumerable hordes of
human beings that step into the arena of life from the secret caves of
non-existence as if attracted by the feast of good things that she has
provided for herself. When the repressive hand of suffering is lifted a
little the human species breed and grow like rabbits until they feel its
hard pressure again.
“Nature, they affirm, is no sentimentalist. Her ways are all direct,
hard, cruel and brutal. She is extravagant and wasteful of effort and
parsimonious of results. She creates a thousand seeds of grain or grass
or tree, only one of which will become a grown plant and reproduce its
kind. She is even more prodigal with the spawn of fishes destroying
millions for one she brings to maturity. There is nothing to show that
she cares any more for the human race than for fishes. When men get too
numerous she destroys them as ruthlessly as if they were so many herring
or clams. They assert it is impossible to evade or even to improve upon
the methods of nature. They point to the teeming multitudes that have
swarmed upon the earth during the last century in such comparative
security and comfort as to invite a still greater inundation during the
century to come; and they declare it to be one of the characteristic
stratagems of nature, only restraining her grim and malicious humor in
order to make it the more tragic and appalling when she does give it
play. And they aver that it would be better even now to drop a large
part if not all of the artificial stimulations to the expansion of the
population that have by insensible degrees been grafted upon state
policy during the last century. Let every tub stand on its own bottom,
say they, let natural selection secure the survival of the fittest, and
let the unfit be quietly eliminated by whichever of the numerous methods
nature finds most applicable. In opposition to these are the optimists
who hold that the human race is nature’s pet. If she could be said to
plan anything or to have any preferences in favor of anything, it was
the human family. After making trial in succession of the Trilobite, the
Orthoceras, the Shark, the Megalosaurus, the Pterodactyl, the Mastodon
and others, she put them all down and brought forward man and placed
him over them all, and made him master of the earth. He was a frail
insignificant helpless creature without weight, power or dignity. Other
animals could beat him swimming, diving, flying, running, fighting.
There was only one thing he could do tolerably well and that was to
climb a tree. That was his capital, his stock in trade as one might
say, for it developed his hands and quickened his senses. Nature took
this unprepossessing, unpromising creature, educated and developed him
in her stern school and by her untender methods, put brains into him,
civilized him and fitted him to control the world and finally to govern
himself. This last lesson he has not yet perfectly mastered, but he is
learning more of it every day. Progress, say they, never takes a back
track. The pessimistic theory that nature’s plan is to let every fellow
look out for himself and the devil take the hindmost, is no longer true.
The race has passed that place and the new ideal is; every fellow for
all the rest, and no one left behind. Until this is practically realized
they say the race will not have fulfilled its destiny, and retreat is
impossible. Moreover it is not necessary; for the new departure is after
all as natural as the old way, and is in fact only a continuation of it;
a turn in the road as it were; and it may quite as well be depended upon
to rectify all the difficulties of its own creation. If the principle of
mutual succor, sympathy and assistance leads to over population, the same
principle must furnish the remedy. The optimists admit the contention
of the pessimists that this trouble is looming up, and the philosophers
of all schools are beginning to feel serious. They are discussing such
figures as we had before us a few moments ago and endeavoring to fix the
date at which a halt will have to be called, and the means devised by
which it is to be accomplished. Some say the population is dense enough
now. Others point out that with the increased means of subsistence there
need not be anything uncomfortable in a population of 12,000,000,000
which they estimate will not be reached till 2070, or 70 years from the
present (A. D. 2000.) And they are hopeful enough to believe that by that
time, human wit will have discovered some way of controlling population
without violence to human happiness. All agree that if society is to be
maintained on the present scale it is high time to settle the manner in
which the great question of population is to be met and handled. It is
the most difficult question that has ever demanded human attention.
“In your day there was already beginning to be some discussion in regard
to stirpiculture and the scientific regulation of the family and rearing
of children. But it did not at that time reach a practical stage. No
scientific conclusions on the subject of marriage have yet been able to
displace sentiment and instinct. But soon, as I have already told you,
the rearing of the children was undertaken by the state and removed from
the caprice of sentiment and ignorance greatly to the advantage of the
children and of course the race. But the question of marriage remains
the same sentimental business it was in the days of Jacob. And with the
increasing independence of women it has become even more a question
of the feelings than it was in your day when women often married for
a home and men sometimes for money. As the problems of life, marriage
etc., have become questions of state, inviting and even requiring ample
and public discussion, the squeamishness and false modesty with which
they were approached in your day have entirely disappeared. The public
interest and the rights of the state in the question of the perpetuation
of the race are freely admitted and discussed. The public mind has been
gradually prepared for this by the gradual assumption by the state of the
care and education of the youth, and by its experience in the treatment
of criminals. Where the treatment of all the youth is uniform and some
after all, turn out to be criminals as they occasionally do, the cause is
looked for in their parentage. The state is in condition to keep track
of ill born children, and after leaving the schools they are still kept
under the eye and guiding advice and restraint if necessary of a special
department of the police service. In this way the criminally disposed are
known in advance, and much crime is no doubt prevented. The criminally
disposed are regarded and treated as mentally diseased.
“There has been much discussion pro and con of this mode of punishment,
or—as some prefer to express it—mode of treatment. But it is now
generally conceded that society is entirely justifiable in employing
this mode of defense, especially since capital punishment has been
abolished, and this is the maximum penalty that is corporally inflicted.
The public mind having had before it the operation of this treatment as
a sort of object lesson is the more ready to listen to the proposition
that is now being discussed to use this same treatment for the defense
of society against herself. The question is one that must be approached
with the utmost consideration and tenderness as well as fairness and
justice applied after the most careful and expert selection and with
due regard to the character and physical and mental qualities that are
due to be expected from such conditions. It is natural selection they
say, artificially applied without the circumlocution and tedious delay
of nature’s ordinary methods. Left to herself, nature in the long run
provides for the survival of the fittest. We now propose say they to make
the same provision in the short run. We are now approaching one of those
crises in human affairs in which something has to be done, and if men
have not the wit to do it themselves, nature takes hold and performs it
in her hard way with small tenderness for anybody’s feelings or notions
of propriety. If we are competent, we will find some way out of this
difficulty without losing our civilization; if we are not, nature will
put us back in the primer of barbarism, to learn it all over again as
she has done a dozen times before. We have it in our power, and it is
our obvious duty to reduce the population, or to stop its increase, and
to do it in the very scientific manner that is at our disposal, by which
the best blood is selected for transmission and the poorest is quietly
eliminated without shock or pain to the individual or to society. Not
only can the best blood in general be made exclusive, but any particular
brand of best blood can be picked out to receive special encouragement.
We can preserve a class of talent invaluable to civilization that nature
could not be depended on to select for preservation in the hard struggle
for existence—the gentle, the unselfish, the intellectual worker and the
poet. Nor can she be depended on to eliminate the ruffianly, brutal,
criminal and selfish members whose room is better than their company.
Rather these are the very ones she would be likely to save.
“This is all in our hands, say they, and if we have the nerve to carry it
out, we can make the earth a perpetual paradise. All we have to do is to
disqualify in their infancy the stirps whose posterity we prefer not to
see.”
The Professor paused here and changed the profile to his ‘jokers’ or
middle pair of hands and proceeded to roll up the 20th century and expose
the 21st.
“I believe,” he resumed, “that we had better step forward another
century, take our stand at the year 2100 and survey the century
retrospectively, as we have done the 20th. It seems more natural to speak
of it in the past tense since we have become accustomed to that way.”
“All right,” I answered, “consider it done. I am already there.”
“Do you not remember,” he went on, “that a little while ago you expressed
a wish that it might have been your lot to live say 200 years later than
you did, so as to share and experience the glory your race would have
attained by that time? Well you are in effect now there, and while you
shall never experience it in your own person, you shall have a close
glimpse of it and be able to compare your anticipation with the reality.
“We are now celebrating January 1, 2100. As you look around, you see
very much that is unfamiliar and miss many things you used to see. Take
a map of the world and examine it. You will find only three general
governments on earth. First is the “Great Union of Free States”, which
you have heard of, but now comprising all America, the Pacific Islands,
Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, The West Indies, Ireland and
Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, New Guinea and the Philippines.
Thus you see the principal change in this government during the century
consists in the full annexation of all the South American States north of
Chili and Argentine, and the Annexation of England, Scotland and Wales
and the Scandinavian states. The language of this great empire is almost
exclusively English, which however, has been greatly corrupted, some
say, or enriched according to others, by the incorporation of a large
number of foreign words, mostly Spanish, due to the intimate relations
between the English speaking peoples and those who used the Spanish and
Portuguese. South America has been settled and cultivated and is the most
productive county on earth; a fairy land, a paradise. Nothing can compare
with it except some of the finest portions of the Sahara desert, which
has been developed by the French; and some of the East India Islands.
“Next is the Russo-Asiatic empire that comprises Russia in Europe and
all Asia except Arabia. It is styled the ‘Russasia.’ The government is
a limited monarchy, very much like that of Great Britain in your day.
The Russians in Europe and Siberia are represented by a parliament,
which is the supreme legislative authority for the entire empire. The
Asiatic States are governed by governors appointed by the emperor at
St. Petersburg and most of them have local legislatures that regulate
their local affairs. All China and parts of India, Persia and Tartary,
and Afghanistan are divided into convenient sized states possessing this
local autonomy. All of this territory is being developed by the combined
enterprise of the Russians and the Chinese, the latter scarcely second to
the former. Mongolia and Mantchooria have been supplied with railroads
and settled by both Chinese and Russians. The Chinese have also migrated
in great numbers into Tartary and settled up what used to be the western
end of the Chinese empire. They have even settled in great numbers in
Russia and in western Asia. A great change came over the Chinese after
their war with Japan in 1894-5. They perceived that they were beaten by
western methods, and they suddenly conceived a respect for the ways of
the foreign devils as extreme as their contempt for them had been before.
They had always been on good terms with the Russians while they disliked
the English, French and Americans. Having determined to adopt western
ways, they selected the Russians for their instructors and welcomed
their capital and enterprise in the introduction of railways, opening
mines, improving their water ways, introducing western machinery and
manufactures. When the Russians in order to protect their interests
began a military occupation of the country, they were not opposed, but
rather welcomed by the progressive party. The Chinese were not a military
people, and were really in need of a coalition that would enable them
to resist the aggressions of the nations of western Europe, and the
Japanese. The remodeling of Chinese institutions under the tutelage of
the Russians advanced rapidly. Probably the most radical and important
innovation was the introduction of the Russian alphabet and the phonetic
spelling of the Chinese language by its use. This enabled the Chinese
youth to learn their own language much more easily, and it led directly
to the study of the Russian which became very necessary to a large
extent, on account of the intimate intercourse between the two people,
and on account of the new ideas, processes and things, the names of
which were Russian without Chinese equivalents. This finally led to the
universal use of Russian by the educated Chinese.
“After the formal annexation of China, the Russian became the official
language, and the Chinese language has gradually fallen into disuse and
is now almost extinct. The Chinese say of their ancient tongue and the
bug marks and turkey tracks that constituted its written expression, “we
were little children when we used that language.”
“The Russian has also to a great extent superseded the Tartar, Turkish,
Persian and other tongues current in Central Asia. In doing this,
however, it has become considerably corrupted itself.
“The third great empire comprises all the territory not included in the
other two, and embraces all of Continental Europe except Russia and
the Scandinavian States, and all of Africa except that part south of
the 10th parallel of S. Lat. and Arabia. It is called the Euro-Afric
Confederacy. Tremendous activity has been displayed by the Europeans in
the settlement and improvement of Africa during the past two centuries.
The whole continent has been gridironed with railroads, all of it has
been civilized and the most unpromising part—the Sahara desert has been
made a vast garden.
“The French have been most active in the northern part, the Italians in
the eastern part, the Portuguese and Germans in the central portions,
the English in the southern. The Congo and German States being open to
free trade, they came to be frequented by merchants from all Europe and
these were soon followed by permanent settlers. After a time these people
became tired of being governed from Europe, and set up for themselves,
declaring themselves independent, much as the United States did in
1776. But in this case there was no opposition for the principle of
free intercourse and unrestricted trade having been firmly established,
the mother countries did not care to superintend the internal affairs
of the young states, and readily consented to their independence. But
this independence proved to be the forerunner of a more extensive union
namely the Euro-Afric Confederacy. It was the last to be formed of the
three great empires that now cover the world. The states comprising
it are mostly republics. But a few in middle Africa, Guinea and the
Sondan, are limited monarchies. The native races of Africa are rapidly
being displaced by the Europeans and will totally disappear in a few
generations as the North American Indians did in your day. A large
migration of Negroes took place from the United States to Africa during
the 20th century, but they did not thrive, and the race is vastly reduced
both in Africa and America.”
“That is strange,” said I, “for in my day the negroes were very numerous
in the southern states—a majority in some places—and the question how
they were to be disposed of constituted one of the questions of state of
that period.”
“True,” he replied, “but up to that time there had been no very severe
competition for the means of living. But it became more and more
difficult from that time on to make a living, and wherever there is
strong competition between men, the strong positive, vigorous and hard,
are sure to crowd the softer and weaker out, and take the prize they are
struggling for. In your day the negroes were generally content, in fact
were compelled to be content, with such humble employments as the whites
did not care to engage in because there was enough of a more ambitious
sort to employ them. But when the whites found it necessary to compete
with the negroes for the work they had before monopolized, they easily
beat them. The defeat of men in the struggle for life affects them in
two ways; it discourages, worries and exhausts them mentally; and it
destroys their vigor through want and starvation, physically. The latter
of these effects tells at once in shortening the existence of the
present generation, and both of them tell on the general force and vigor,
the deterioration of which is seen in the reduced numbers and virility
of the succeeding generations. Wild animals newly domesticated, fail to
breed through mental strain and worry. The same is true of savages when
the mental burdens of civilization are too suddenly laid upon them, and
the same principle holds in civil life when from any cause the burden of
life becomes too heavy—as, to the poor man when he struggles against odds
for bread for his family, and to the rich when he struggles doubtfully
for the superfluities required by fashion. The negro race is not extinct
by any means even in the United States, but its extinction is only a
question of comparatively short time easily estimated from the advance in
that direction already made.”
“But it seems to me,” said I, “that there can no longer be such a
desperate struggle for existence since the means of livelihood are within
the reach of all, and the exertion required has been so much lessened by
the state’s care of the young etc.”
“The means of mere existence,” he said, “are, in most of the states of
the “Great Union,” within the reach of all, and no one need go hungry or
naked. If he is able to work, the state will give him employment if no
one else will, and if he is not able he will be cared for anyhow. But
the style in which a man lives depends altogether on his ambition and
ability. If his ability is equal to his ambition, he obtains what he
wants and is happy and contented; unless, as often happens his ambition
grows by what it feeds on and excites him to fresh exertions by a new
allurement after every success. And so the wearing struggle may go on
forever. People are mimics and none of them more so than the negroes. In
imitating a stronger race they give out and gradually succumb. While they
were slaves they were free from this competition, and rapidly increased.
The African tribes were also free from it. But both have now been exposed
to it for six generations and it has told on them heavily.”
“It would appear then that competition and selection go on under the
present conditions of life almost as much as ever, for the law must apply
to the weaker whites as well as to the negroes.”
“So it does, and always must, as long as men are competent to
discriminate between the costly and the cheap, and continue to prefer the
former, to the latter.”
“The reason for such preference,” I infer, “must be that more enjoyment
of life is found in the possession of the more costly things. Is that
your view?”
“It does not follow at all,” he replied. “Costly things give a fictitious
enjoyment in anticipation while they are being pursued, but after they
are obtained they give no more enjoyment than if they had been cheap.
The possession of many things that have cost great worry and exertion
frequently leads to nothing more than a perception of their vanity, and
the uncovering of a new perspective of something bright and equally
illusory beyond. From time immemorial your philosophers have sounded
the praises of contentment. Contentment is nothing more nor less than
happiness, and it is little to the purpose to ask a man to be happy
unless the suggestion is backed up by the conditions of his environment.
When people have absolutely nothing better to look forward to, they can
almost always settle down to a comparative degree of contentment with
what they have. But with an environment constantly showing chances of
preferment, wealth, distinction, etc., and examples of the attainment
of these things by others, contentment is constantly being unsettled
and happiness always deferred to the future. A guest taking his dinner
‘out’ will reserve part of his appetite for the unseen, but commonly
expected, desert of pudding and pie, but if he is informed that he “sees
his dinner” before him, he will make himself quite satisfied without the
desert.
“The fact is, the absolute contentment or happiness that your poets dream
for you, and your priests sell to you in their heavens and nirvanas, is
absolute satisfaction with whatever is. It can only come to an instinct
in perfect harmony with its environment. People can never be perfectly
happy except in a finished unchangeable state of existence. They may
approach it under conditions in which change is very slow and slight.”
“Is our race likely to attain it or anything like it on earth?”
“Things on earth to-day look far more unsettled than ever before, and
yet they are getting into a shape that promises peace and permanence in
the not very distant future. When the earth gets as full of people as
it will hold and they learn how to live by moderate exertion and above
the fear of failure and want, the millennium will have come to the extent
that it can come.”
“Well from what you said a while ago, I suppose the world must already be
as full of people as it ought to be, and if everything is in equilibrium,
the millennium ought to have already dawned. But you have not told me
whether this equilibrium has been made secure and stable. For evidently
if means have not been found to keep the population uniform and steady at
its maximum limit of comfort, even a perfect equilibrium would soon be
disturbed by its increase and the millennium set back again.
“You told me the stirpiculturists in the 20th century proposed to
accomplish the two objects of restricting the race and at the same time
improving it, by select limitation. How did the plan succeed?”
“It did not succeed at all,” he replied. “The population increased
more rapidly than before. A state of society something like a corrupt
and clandestine polygamy supervened. The tone of society instead of
being elevated was distinctively lowered. Thus both of the objects they
so hopefully set out to accomplish, disastrously failed. When it was
definitely given up by the progressive party that they were defeated
and obliged to confess they were on the wrong track there was a fearful
revulsion and upheaval of society, as there always is when opinion is
forced to fly from one extreme to another. Many persons felt they had
been wronged—treated as criminals when they were only unfortunates.
“The danger from this class was now imminent, and they had the sympathy
of many in the better walks of life. But the time soon rolled round
that drove people to think of nothing but themselves. But this was one
of those deliberate movements that nature seems to delight in dealing
out to us. She dangles it over us like the sword of Damocles. There
was time to think; before the thread snapped, if there was only the
wit. It was a time of common danger, and there was no inclination nor
profit in recriminations between the parties. In the presence of an
appalling calamity they were both awed. They no longer contended with
each other, they were both at their wits ends, and in fright they rushed
into each others presence to consult not to fight; and trembled alike at
the disaster that overwhelmed them both; like tigers slinking into the
presence of their human enemies when threatened by a common danger; as an
earthquake.
“All admitted, the disappointment and failure were complete.”
“It seems to me that might have been foreseen,” said I,—“what did they do
next?”
“They were in a great quandary, and did not know what to do, many wild
propositions were offered and discussed. The pessimists although as
largely interested as anybody in the success of any plan aiming at the
public welfare, were really pleased at the failure of this, because it
fulfilled their evil predictions. They now said there was nothing to
be done but to return to the ancient plan of nature in which every one
looked after himself and his children.
“If one failed, it was nature’s sign that he was not wanted, and he
had no business to have children. But the optimists declared it to be
impossible to return to the barbarous conditions that prevailed in
ancient times among savages. Nature, said they, has evolved civilization
and altruism, and these are therefore as natural as barbarism. But nature
preserves a certain congruity of relationship between things, that we
cannot easily set aside, and so if we are going backward in regard to
the care of our young we shall lose the advantages that we have gained
in the improved quality of the citizens, we have made out of them. For
if we throw all the responsibility on the parents, while we cannot
depend on a reduction in the number of the children, we may be sure of
a deterioration in their bringing up and education. If we go back to
barbarism we must take all that barbarism imposes. The human race they
said was born to luck. Whenever it got into a tight place, some lucky
turn of fortune’s wheel always supplied its need and brought it out
of its troubles, and they avowed their faith that something would yet
turn up to tide the race over the present crisis. In the midst of these
discussions, a great discovery was made or accidentally stumbled upon
that gave confirmation to this hopeful philosophy, and relieved the fears
of those philosophers who were in the habit of taking the destiny of the
race very much to heart and who felt more or less responsibility for
its future. That was a discovery of nature’s secret of the determination
of sex. It enabled people to control the sex of their children, a
power that had been ardently wished for ever since the days of Adam
and scientifically sought after, at least as far back as the time of
Aristotle. They thought that in this “option of sex,” as they styled it,
they at last possessed the infinitely important power of the control of
population. They had seen before this, that no restriction could succeed,
not founded on the support of all. All discussion in this direction was
brought to a sudden termination, by this timely discovery. All felt as if
the great problem was solved in the most acceptable manner, not only in
accordance with refined sentiment, but with the pressing requirements of
society, because this vital condition that so intimately concerns us all
is taken up by the state and administered for the benefit of the whole
race.
“In your day you doubtless remember that generally boys were in greater
request and more welcome by parents than girls. And there continued to
be such a feeling until quite lately—for no very good reason, except
the habit of heredity—since men could hardly be said to have had any
advantage over women for the last 100 years. At any rate this prejudice
assisted the state in the policy it adopted of reducing the proportion
of females, and within two generations the census showed a reduction
of fifty per cent in the number of females while the _total population
remained the same without increase_. This result was peculiarly
gratifying to the political economists and philosophers, for as they
declared the state had now complete control of the population and could
on a tolerably short notice increase or diminish it as the comfort of the
race might demand.”
I interrupted the Professor here to express with some pardonable
enthusiasm my congratulations that this vital question had been so
successfully and thoroughly met. I said I always had confidence in my
race and now more than ever. I felt proud of the honor of being an humble
member of it; and more to the same effect; to which he listened with some
impatience and then proceeded.
“There were some results that were not anticipated, that followed
from the practical operation of the “option of sex.” One was the very
rapid elevation, almost deification of women. As there was now but one
woman to three men her value and importance rose in the inverse ratio;
and it became the habit to say that women were worth three times as
much as men. They were in fact worth a good deal more than that, for
they soon perceived that they held the key of power and the destiny
of the race and were able to construct the conditions of life to suit
their own whims and caprices. They became in fact the ruling sex. They
demanded for themselves and easily obtained all the easy and profitable
positions in business and official life, and remanded men to those least
desirable. The wholesome civil service principles that had become pretty
well settled in the law, thought, and practice of the country were now
habitually evaded or openly set aside in favor of the sex. Nothing they
asked for was denied them and hardly anything was good enough for them.
In your day the women in America were extravagantly petted and coddled,
but the attention and reverence they received then was nothing compared
with the adulation and servility that has of late been rendered to them.
Such a condition of things could not fail to encourage tyranny and
arrogance, and to create them where they had not been before. Sentiment
and favoritism became the controlling forces and business principles were
ignored.
“There were three candidates for every woman’s hand, two of whom were
bound to be disappointed, and so one-half the population—two-thirds of
the masculine part—were doomed to a life of single misery. They did not
accept the situation with fortitude or resignation. There was no end to
quarreling and personal antagonisms and violence between rivals, and
there arose what there had not been for several generations, and that was
a “dangerous class.” It became unsafe for married people of either sex
to appear on the streets unguarded. The “social evil” that in your day
was so sore a question had long since under the conditions of universal
matrimony, died out, and had practically ceased for a century and a
half, now came again into existence in a more virulent form than ever.
All classes felt the relaxation of the former restraints, and immorality
became frightfully prevalent. Divorce which had become almost obsolete,
now came to be an every day occurrence, not often, however, upon the
complaint of the comparatively helpless husband, but upon that of the
fickle wife who had succumbed to the superior attractions of a newer
affinity. Divorce was now practically in the hands of the wife, and
she dismissed her husband when he failed to please her, or when a more
eligible mate presented himself. All women of course were not like that,
but they all had the power to be, and a frightfully large proportion of
them were.”
“The wise men of our race,” said I, “especially those of ancient times
have generally regarded women as being not merely inferior to men
physically and mentally, but as being essentially depraved and incapable
of being good except under the stimulation and wise and pious discipline
and example of men. Does the state of society you have described to me
bear out this opinion? It seems that the women have broken loose from the
wholesome restraints that were imposed on them in the former constitution
of society in which men were supreme; and like a runaway team they are
about to smash the wagon and dash out their own brains.”
“No,” he replied, “the state of affairs I have described does not at all
confirm the opinion of the old blockheads you call your wise men. If they
had been really wise they would have known that both women and men are
created, formed, moulded and finished by their environment. Now woman
constitutes a part of the environment of man and man constitutes a part,
but in old times he constituted a relatively much larger part of the
environment of woman. So it might be said, that if man was better than
woman, it was because her influence on him was better or at least less
harmful than his influence on her.
“But the fact is that under equal conditions the influence that each
exerts on the other is equal, and they are mutually benefitted. The
nearest to a golden age your race has ever come was during the one
hundred years from the middle of the 20th to the middle of the 21st
century, and that is the period of the most complete equality of the
sexes in all respects—numbers, liberty, similarity of occupations and
equal duties and responsibilities, and the total ignoring and rejection
of the notion of any difference of ‘spheres’ for the activities of the
two. The reciprocal and essentially exclusive functions involved are
peculiar to each, but these do not essentially, and at the present, do
not really interfere in any of the active employments people choose to
engage in.”
“Nursing the children is essentially the woman’s business is it not?” I
inquired.
“Not at all,” he answered. “Mammary glands belong to the male as well as
the female.”
“Functionless ones,” said I.
“Only functionless,” he replied, “because they are not used. In your
day there were occasional cases of well developed male mammae and
professional male wet nurses, now they are common and it is doubtful if
there are as many female as male nurses. There are and always were women
who could not nurse their children, and these are more numerous now than
ever. It is simply because there are other things they prefer to do, and
so the accommodating function suppresses itself just as it did in the
male because he for ages suppressed its use. So you see that even in
nursing and rearing the children there is no exclusive female “sphere”
any more than a male “sphere.” In the golden age I have just spoken of
there was greater harmony and happiness than ever before, one of the
essential conditions of which was the almost perfect equality of the
sexes. But the termination of this golden age and the beginning of the
social anarchy that commenced about the middle of the 21st century was
traceable chiefly to the disparity in numbers between the sexes brought
about by the operation of the “Option of Sex.” If we are to charge it
to the corrupt influence of one sex on the other it was the corrupt
assault of the unavoidably unmarried of the male sex on the institution
of wedlock. If the women were willful arrogant and naughty, it was only
because there were men about them in the proportion of three to one—for
which they were not to blame—nor the men either, but the limited capacity
of this globe, and nobody was to blame for that. Thus whatever they are
or do in either sex is traceable to their environment.”
“Well,” said I, “since there has been such a failure, I am glad after all
that my day was ended long before these evil times came. But what is to
become of the race now! Will they discover a way to hold their own?”
“There never was,” said he, “a lack of wise doctors amongst men who were
always ready with a sure cure for the ills that beset the race. Some
of them now proposed as a remedy for the social maladies a plan of life
that was not new nor original, but which differed as far as possible
from the hereditary notions of the western nations. This was nothing
less than polyandry or the plurality of husbands. They said, let every
woman have three husbands and harmony and peace will be restored, and
vice be deprived of excuse. They said this was no experiment, but had
been practiced successfully amongst some of the eastern nations from time
immemorial. They referred to the case of the Ladaks, a highly civilized,
steady and religious people of the Buddhist faith, who inhabit the lofty
and circumscribed valley at the head waters of the Indus. The place
will support only so many people. If too many were born they could not
emigrate to a lower country on account of the oppression of the heavier
air. For a converse reason no immigrants ever attempt to settle there.
But the population is kept uniform and steady by the simple plan of
giving each wife three husbands. This has been successful for a thousand
years on a small scale and there seemed no reason why it would not work
on a large scale. But this scheme was promptly and emphatically rejected
by the women of influence and authority, the moment it was proposed. They
asserted there was no civilized relationship except Monogamy. That alone
brought equality of the sexes and equality alone stood between the race
and barbarism.
“It was true that polyandry was already practiced surreptitiously to a
certain extent in America, but it was the disreputable exception and they
did not propose to make it the honorable rule. They denounced the plan
as being scarcely one remove from the “social evil” itself. Polygamy,
they said, is natural, made so by immemorial usage. The race was brought
up on that and is built with reference to it. But polyandry, No! nothing
in nature so repulsive and revolting. That settled it.”