ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE EUGENICS MOVEMENT
"Eugenics," wrote Francis Galton, who founded the science and coined the
name, "is the study of agencies under social control that may improve or
impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or
mentally." The definition is universally accepted, but by its use of the
word "study" it defines a pure science, and the present book is
concerned rather with the application of such a science. Accepting
Galton's definition, we shall for our purposes slightly extend it by
saying that applied eugenics embraces all such measures, in use or
prospect either individually or collectively, as may improve or impair
the racial qualities of future generations of man, either physically or
mentally, whether or not this was the avowed purpose.
It is one of the newest of sciences. It was practically forced into
existence by logical necessity. It is certainly here to stay, and it
demands the right to speak, in many cases to cast the deciding vote, on
some of the most important questions that confront society.
The science of eugenics is the natural result of the spread and
acceptance of organic evolution, following the publication of Darwin's
work on _The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection_, in 1859.
It took a generation for his ideas to win the day; but then they
revolutionized the intellectual life of the civilized world. Man came to
realize that the course of nature is regular; that the observed
sequences of events can be described in formulas which are called
natural laws; he learned that he could achieve great results in plant
and animal breeding by working in harmony with these laws. Then the
question logically arose, "Is not man himself subject to these same
laws? Can he not use his knowledge of them to improve his own species,
as he has been more or less consciously improving the plants and animals
that were of most value to him, for many centuries?"
The evolutionist answered both these questions affirmatively. However
great may be the superiority of his mind, man is first of all an animal,
subject to the natural laws that govern other animals. He can learn to
comply with these laws; he can, therefore, take an active share in
furthering the process of evolution toward a higher life.
That, briefly, is the scope of the science of eugenics, as its founder,
Sir Francis Galton, conceived it. "Now that this new animal, man, finds
himself somehow in existence, endowed with a little power and
intelligence," Galton wrote 30 years ago, "he ought, I submit, to awake
to a fuller knowledge of his relatively great position, and begin to
assume a deliberate part in furthering the great work of evolution. He
may infer the course it is bound to pursue, from his observation of that
which it has already followed, and he might devote his modicum of power,
intelligence and kindly feeling to render its future progress less slow
and painful. Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half
consciously, and for his own personal advantages, but he has not yet
risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so,
deliberately and systematically."
But, it may well be asked, how does this sudden need for eugenics arise,
when the world has gone along without it for hundreds of millions of
years in the past, and the human race has made the great ascent from an
ape-like condition in spite of the fact that such a science as eugenics
was never dreamed of?
For answer recall that natural selection, which is mainly responsible
for bringing man to his present situation, has worked chiefly through a
differential death-rate. The less fit die: the more fit survive. In the
earlier stages of society, man interfered little with natural selection.
But during the last century the increase of the philanthropic spirit and
the progress of medicine have done a great deal to interfere with the
selective process. In some ways, selection in the human race has almost
ceased; in many ways it is actually reversed, that is, it results in the
survival of the inferior rather than the superior. In the olden days the
criminal was summarily executed, the weakly child died soon after birth
through lack of proper care and medical attention, the insane were dealt
with so violently that if they were not killed by the treatment they
were at least left hopelessly "incurable" and had little chance of
becoming parents. Harsh measures, all of these, but they kept the
germ-plasm of the race reasonably purified.
To-day, how is it? The inefficients, the wastrels, the physical, mental,
and moral cripples are carefully preserved at public expense. The
criminal is turned out on parole after a few years, to become the father
of a family. The insane is discharged as "cured," again to take up the
duties of citizenship. The feeble-minded child is painfully "educated,"
often at the expense of his normal brother or sister. In short, the
undesirables of the race, with whom the bloody hand of natural selection
would have made short work early in life, are now nursed along to old
age.
Of course, one would not have it otherwise with respect to the
prolongation of life. To expose deformed children as the Spartans did
would outrage our moral sentiments; to chloroform the incurable is a
proposition that almost every one condemns.
But this philanthropic spirit, this zealous regard for the interests of
the unfortunate, which is rightly considered one of the highest
manifestations of Christian civilization, has in many cases benefited
the few at the expense of the many. The present generation, in making
its own life comfortable, is leaving a staggering bill to be paid by
posterity.
It is at this point that eugenics comes in and demands that a
distinction be made between the interests of the individual and the
interests of the race. It does not yield to any one in its solicitude
for the individual unfortunate; but it says, "His happiness in life does
not need to include leaving a family of children, inheritors of his
defects, who if they were able to think might curse him for begetting
them and curse society for allowing them to be born." And looking at the
other side of the problem, eugenics says to the young man and young
woman, "You should enjoy the greatest happiness that love can bring to
a life. But something more is expected of you than a selfish,
short-sighted indifference to all except yourselves in the world. When
you understand the relation of the individual to the race, you will find
your greatest happiness only in a marriage which will result in a family
of worthy children. You are temporarily a custodian of the inheritance
of the whole past; it is far more disgraceful for you to squander or
ruin this heritage, or to regard it as intended solely for your
individual, selfish gratification, than it would be for you to dissipate
a fortune in money which you had received, or to betray any trust which
had been confided to you by one of your fellow men."
Such is the teaching of eugenics. It is not wholly new. The early Greeks
gave much thought to it, and with the insight which characterized them,
they rightly put the emphasis on the constructive side; they sought to
breed better men and women, not merely to accomplish a work of hygiene,
to lessen taxes, and reduce suffering, by reducing the number of
unfortunates among them. As early as the first half of the sixth century
B. C. the Greek poet Theognis of Megara wrote: "We look for rams and
asses and stallions of good stock, and one believes that good will come
from good; yet a good man minds not to wed an evil daughter of an evil
sire, if he but give her much wealth.... Wealth confounds our stock.
Marvel not that the stock of our folk is tarnished, for the good is
mingling with the base." A century later eugenics was discussed in some
detail by Plato, who suggested that the state intervene to mate the best
with the best, and the worst with the worst; the former should be
encouraged to have large families, and their children should be reared
by the government, while the children of the unfit were to be, as he
says, "put away in some mysterious, unknown places, as they should be."
Aristotle developed the idea on political lines, being more interested
in the economic than the biological aspects of marriage; but he held
firmly to the doctrine that the state should feel free to intervene in
the interests of reproductive selection.
For nearly two thousand years after this, conscious eugenic ideals were
largely ignored. Constant war reversed natural selection, as it is doing
to-day, by killing off the physically fit and leaving the relatively
unfit to reproduce the race; while monasticism and the enforced celibacy
of the priesthood performed a similar office for many of the mentally
superior, attracting them to a career in which they could leave no
posterity. At the beginning of the last century a germ of modern
eugenics is visible in Malthus' famous essay on population, in which he
directed attention to the importance of the birth-rate for human
welfare, since this essay led Darwin and Wallace to enunciate the theory
of natural selection, and to point out clearly the effects of artificial
selection. It is really on Darwin's work that the modern science of
eugenics is based, and it owes its beginning to Darwin's cousin, Francis
Galton.
Galton was born in 1822, studied mathematics and medicine, traveled
widely, attained fame as an explorer in South Africa, and after
inheriting sufficient income to make him independent, settled down in
London and gave his time to pioneering experiments in many branches of
science. He contributed largely to founding the science of meteorology,
opened new paths in experimental psychology, introduced the system of
finger prints to anthropology, and took up the study of heredity,
publishing in 1865 a series of articles under the title of "Hereditary
Talent and Genius," which contained his first utterances on eugenics.
The present generation can hardly understand what a new field Galton
broke. Even Darwin had supposed that men do not differ very much in
intellectual endowment, and that their differences in achievement are
principally the result of differences in zeal and industry. Galton's
articles, whose thesis was that better men could be bred by conscious
selection, attracted much attention from the scientific world and were
expanded in 1869 in his book _Hereditary Genius_.
This was an elaborate and painstaking study of the biographies of 977
men who would rank, according to Galton's estimate, as about 1 to 4,000
of the general population, in respect to achievement. The number of
families found to contain more than one eminent man was 300, divided as
follows: Judges, 85; Statesmen, 39; Commanders, 27; Literary, 33;
Scientific, 43; Poets, 20; Artists, 28; Divines, 25. The close groupings
of the interrelated eminence led to the conclusion that heredity plays a
very important part in achievement. The greater success of real sons of
great men as compared with adopted sons of great men likewise indicated,
he thought, that success is due to actual biological heredity rather
than to the good opportunities afforded the scion of the illustrious
family. Galton's conclusion was that by selecting from strains that
produced eminence, a superior human stock could be bred.
In 1874 he published a similar study of the heredity of 180 eminent
English scientists, reëmphasizing the claims of nature over nurture, to
use his familiar antithesis. In 1883 he published "Inquiries into the
Human Faculty and Its Development," a collection of evolutionary and
anthropometric essays where the word Eugenics was first used in a new
exposition of the author's views. "Natural Inheritance" appeared in
1889, being the essence of various memoirs published since "Hereditary
Genius," dealing with the general biological principles underlying the
study of heredity and continuing the study of resemblances between
individuals in respect to stature, eye color, artistic faculty and
morbid conditions.
Galton's interest in eugenics was not lessened by the abundant criticism
he received, and in 1901 he defended "The Possible Improvement of the
Human Breed under Existing Conditions of Law and Sentiment" before the
Anthropological Society. Three years later he read a paper entitled
"Eugenics; Its Definition, Scope and Aims," to the Sociological Society.
His program, in brief, was as follows:
1. Disseminate knowledge of hereditary laws as far as surely known and
promote their further study.
2. Inquire into birth rates of various strata of society (classified
according to civic usefulness) in ancient and modern nations.
3. Collect reliable data showing how large and thriving families have
most frequently originated.
4. Study the influences affecting marriage.
5. Persistently set forth the national importance of Eugenics.
The following year, Galton again read a paper before the Society,
suggesting the award of certificates of quality to the eugenically fit.
He also maintained that marriage customs which are largely controlled by
public opinion could be modified for racial welfare through a molding of
public sentiment.
In 1904 he founded a Research Fellowship at the University of London to
determine, if possible, what the standard of fitness is, and in 1905 a
Scholarship was added. Edgar Schuster and Miss E. M. Elderton held these
posts until 1907, when Professor Karl Pearson took charge of the
research work and, at the resignation of Mr. Schuster, David Heron was
appointed Fellow. On Galton's death, January 17, 1911, it became known
that through the terms of his will a professorship was founded and
Professor Pearson was invited to hold it. His corps of workers
constitutes the Galton Eugenics Laboratory staff.
To spread throughout the British Empire such knowledge of eugenics as
might be gathered by specialists, the Eugenics Education Society was
formed in 1908 with Galton as honorary president. Its field comprises:
(1) Biology in so far as it concerns hereditary selection; (2)
Anthropology as related to race and marriage; (3) Politics, where it
bears on parenthood in relation to civic worth; (4) Ethics, in so far as
it promotes ideals that lead to the improvement of social quality; (5)
Religion, in so far as it strengthens and sanctifies eugenic duty.
In America the movement got an early start but developed slowly. The
first definite step was the formation of an Institute of Heredity in
Boston, shortly after 1880, by Loring Moody, who was assisted by the
poet Longfellow, Samuel E. Sewall, Mrs. Horace Mann, and other
well-known people. He proposed to work very much along the lines that
the Eugenics Record Office later adopted, but he was ahead of his time,
and his attempt seems to have come to nothing.
In 1883 Alexander Graham Bell, who may be considered the first
scientific worker in eugenics in the United States, published a paper on
the danger of the formation of a deaf variety of the human race in this
country, in which he gave the result of researches he had made at
Martha's Vineyard and other localities during preceding years, on the
pedigrees of congenitally deaf persons--deaf mutes, as they were then
called. He showed clearly that congenital deafness is largely due to
heredity, that it is much increased by consanguineous marriages, and
that it is of great importance to prevent the marriage of persons, in
both of whose families congenital deafness is present. About five years
later he founded the Volta Bureau in Washington, D. C., for the study of
deafness, and this has fostered a great deal of research work on this
particular phase of heredity.
In 1903 the American Breeders' Association was founded at St. Louis by
plant and animals breeders who desired to keep in touch with the new
subject of genetics, the science of breeding, which was rapidly coming
to have great practical importance. From the outset, the members
realized that the changes which they could produce in races of animals
and plants might also be produced in man, and the science of eugenics
was thus recognized on a sound biological basis. Soon a definite
eugenics section was formed, and as the importance of this section
increased, and it was realized that the name of Breeders' Association
was too narrowly construed by the public, the association changed its
name (1913) to the American Genetic Association, and the name of its
organ from the _American Breeders' Magazine_ to the _Journal of
Heredity_.
Under the auspices of this association, the Eugenics Record Office was
established at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, by Dr. C. B. Davenport.
It has been mainly supported by Mrs. E. H. Harriman, but has since been
taken over by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. It is gathering
pedigrees in many parts of the United States, analyzing them and
publishing the results in a series of bulletins.
In the last few years, the public has come to take a keen interest in
the possibilities of eugenics. This has led some sex hygienists, child
welfare workers, and persons similarly engaged, to attempt to capitalize
the interest in eugenics by appropriating the name for their own use. We
strongly object to any such misuse of the word, which should designate
the application of genetics to the human race. Sex hygiene, child
welfare, and other sanitary and sociological movements should stand on
their own feet and leave to eugenics the scope which its Greek
derivation indicates for it,--the science of good breeding.[73]
In all parts of Europe, the ideas of eugenics have gradually spread. In
1912 the first International Eugenics Congress was held at London, under
auspices of the Eugenics Education Society; more than 700 delegates were
in attendance.
Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria are united in an International
Eugenics Society and the war led to the formation of a number of
separate societies in Germany. Hungary has formed an organization of its
own, France has its society in Paris, and the Italian Anthropological
Society has given much attention to the subject. The Anthropological
Society of Denmark has similarly recognized eugenics by the formation of
a separate section. The Institut Solvay of Belgium, a foundation with
sociological aims, created a eugenics section several years ago; and in
Holland a strong committee has been formed. Last of all, Sweden has put
a large separate organization in the field.
In the United States the subject has interested many women's clubs,
college organizations and Young Men's Christian Associations, while the
periodical press has given it a large amount of attention. Public
enthusiasm, often ill-guided, has in a few cases outrun the facts, and
has secured legislation in some states, which by no means meets the
approval of most scientific eugenists.
When we speak of scientific eugenists, it may appear that we use the
word in an invidious way. We use it deliberately, and by using it we
mean to intimate that we do not think enthusiasm is an adequate
substitute for knowledge, in anyone who assumes to pass judgment upon a
measure as being eugenic or dysgenic--as likely to improve the race or
cause its deterioration. Eugenics is a biological science which, in its
application, must be interpreted with the help of the best scientific
method. Very few social workers, whose field eugenics touches, are
competent to understand its bearings without some study, and an
appreciation of eugenics is the more difficult for them, because an
understanding of it will show them that some of their work is based on
false premises. The average legislator is equally unlikely to understand
the full import of eugenics, unless he has made a definite effort to do
so. All the more honor, then, to the rapidly increasing number of social
workers and legislators who have grasped the full meaning of eugenics
and are now striving to put it in effect. The agriculturist, through his
experience with plants and animals, is probably better qualified than
anyone else to realize the practicability of eugenics, and it is
accordingly not a matter of mere chance that the science of eugenics in
America was built up by a breeders' association, and has found and still
finds hundreds of effective advocates in the graduates of the
agricultural colleges.
The program of eugenics naturally divides itself in two parts:
(1) Reducing the racial contribution of the least desirable part of the
population.
(2) Increasing the racial contribution of the superior part of the
population.
The first part of this program is the most pressing and the most easily
dealt with; it is no cause for surprise, then, that to many people it
has seemed to be the predominant aim of eugenics. Certainly the problem
is great enough to stagger anyone who looks it full in the face;
although for a variety of reasons, satisfactory statistical evidence of
racial degeneracy is hard to get.
Considering only the "institutional population" of the United States,
one gets the following figures:
BLIND: total, 64,763 according to census of 1900. Of these,
35,645 were totally blind and 29,118 partly blind. The affection is
stated to have been congenital in 4,730 cases. Nineteen per cent of the
blind were found to have blind relatives; 4.5% of them were returned as
the offspring of cousin marriages.
DEAF: total, 86,515, according to the census of 1900. More than
50,000 of them were deaf from childhood (under 20), 12,609 being deaf
from birth. At least 4.5% of the deaf were stated to be offspring of
cousin marriages, and 32.1% to have deaf relatives. The significance of
this can not be determined unless it is known how many normal persons
have deaf relatives (or blind relatives, in considering the preceding
paragraph), but it points to the existence of families that are
characterized by deafness (or blindness).
INSANE: the census of 1910 enumerated only the insane who were
in institutions; they numbered 187,791. The number outside of
institutions is doubtless considerable but can not be computed. The
institutional population is not a permanent, but mainly a transient one,
the number of persons discharged from institutions in 1910 being 29,304.
As the number and size of institutions does not increase very rapidly,
it would appear probable that 25,000 insane persons pass through and out
of institutions, and back into the general population, each year. From
this one can get some idea of the amount of neurotic weakness in the
population of the United States,--much of it congenital and heritable in
character.
FEEBLE-MINDED: the census (1910) lists only those in
institutions, who totaled about 40,000. The census experts believe that
200,000 would be a conservative estimate of the total number of
feeble-minded in the country, and many psychologists think that 300,000
would be more nearly accurate. The number of feeble-minded who are
receiving institutional care is almost certainly not more than 10% or
15% of the total, and many of these (about 15,000) are in almshouses,
not special institutions.
PAUPERS: There were 84,198 paupers enumerated in almshouses on
January 1, 1910, and 88,313 admitted during the year, which indicates
that the almshouse paupers are a rapidly shifting group. This
population, probably of several hundred thousand persons, who drift
into and out of almshouses, can hardly be characterized accurately, but
in large part it must be considered at least inefficient and probably of
mentally low grade.
CRIMINALS: The inmates of prisons, penitentiaries,
reformatories, and similar places of detention numbered 111,609 in 1910;
this does not include 25,000 juvenile delinquents. The jail population
is nearly all transient; one must be very cautious in inferring that
conviction for an offense against the law indicates lack of eugenic
value; but it is worth noting that the number of offenders who are
feeble-minded is probably not less than one-fourth or one-third. If the
number of inebriates could be added, it would greatly increase the
total; and inebriacy or chronic alcoholism is generally recognized now
as indicating in a majority of cases either feeble-mindedness or some
other defect of the nervous system. The number of criminals who are in
some way neurotically tainted is placed by some psychologists at 50% or
more of the total prison population.
Add to these a number of epileptics, tramps, prostitutes, beggars, and
others whom the census enumerator finds it difficult to catch, and the
total number of possible undesirable parents becomes very large. It is
in fact much larger than appears in these figures, because of the fact
that many people carry defects that are latent and only appear in the
offspring of a marriage representing two tainted strains. Thus the
feeble-minded child usually if not always has feeble-mindedness in both
his father's and mother's ancestry, and for every one of the patent
feeble-minded above enumerated, there may be several dozen latent ones,
who are themselves probably normal in every way and yet carry the
dangerously tainted germ-plasm.
The estimate has frequently been made that the United States would be
much better off eugenically if it were deprived of the future racial
contributions of at least 10% of its citizens. While literally true this
estimate is too high for the group which could be considered for
attempts to directly control in a practical eugenics program.
Natural selection, in the early days of man's history, would have killed
off many of these people early in life. They would have been unable to
compete with their physically and mentally more vigorous fellows and
would have died miserably by starvation or violence. Natural selection's
use of the death-rate was a brutal one, but at least it prevented such
traits as these people show from increasing in each generation.
Eugenists hope to arrive at the same result, not by the death-rate but
by the birth-rate. If germinally anti-social persons are kept humanely
segregated during their lifetime, instead of being turned out after a
few years of institutional life and allowed to marry, they will leave no
descendants, and the number of congenital defectives in the community
will be notably diminished. If the same policy is followed through
succeeding generations, the number of defectives, of those incapable of
taking a useful part in society, will become smaller and smaller. One
who does not believe that these people hand on their traits to their
descendants may profitably consider the famous history of the so-called
Juke family, a strain originating among the "finger lakes" of New York,
whose history was published by R. L. Dugdale as far back as 1877 and
lately restudied by A. H. Estabrook.
"From one lazy vagabond nicknamed 'Juke,' born in 1720, whose two sons
married five degenerate sisters, six generations numbering about 1,200
persons of every grade of idleness, viciousness, lewdness, pauperism,
disease, idiocy, insanity and criminality were traced. Of the total
seven generations, 300 died in infancy; 310 were professional paupers,
kept in almshouses a total of 2,300 years; 440 were physically wrecked
by their own 'diseased wickedness'; more than half the women fell into
prostitution; 130 were convicted criminals; 60 were thieves; 7 were
murderers; only 20 learned a trade, 10 of these in state prison, and all
at a state cost of over $1,250,000."[74]
How heredity works both ways, is shown by the history of the Kallikak
family, published by H. H. Goddard a few years ago.
"At the beginning of the Revolutionary War a young man, known in the
history as Martin Kallikak, had a son by a nameless, feeble-minded girl,
from whom there have descended in the direct line four hundred and
eighty individuals. One hundred and forty-three of these are known to
have been feeble-minded, and only forty-six are known to have been
normal. The rest are unknown or doubtful. Thirty-six have been
illegitimate; thirty-three, sexually immoral, mostly prostitutes;
twenty-four, alcoholic; three, epileptic; eighty-two died in infancy;
three were criminal, and eight kept houses of ill-fame. After the war,
Martin Kallikak married a woman of good stock. From this union have come
in direct line four hundred and ninety-six, among whom only two were
alcoholic, and one known to be sexually immoral. The legitimate children
of Martin have been doctors, lawyers, judges, educators, traders,
landholders, in short, respectable citizens, men and women prominent in
every phase of social life. These two families have lived on the same
soil, in the same atmosphere, and in short, under the same general
environment, yet the bar sinister has marked every generation of one and
has been unknown in the other."
If it were possible to improve or eradicate these defective strains by
giving them better surroundings, the nation might easily get rid of this
burden. But we have given reasons in Chapter I for believing that the
problem can not be solved in that way, and more evidence to the same
effect will be present in other chapters of the book.
An understanding of the nature of the problem will show that present
methods of dispensing justice, giving charity, dealing with defectives
and working for social betterment need careful examination and numerous
modifications, if they are not to be ineffectual or merely palliative,
or worse still, if they are not to give temporary relief at the cost of
greatly aggravating the social disease in the end.
In the past America has given and at present still gives much thought to
the individual and little, if any, to posterity. Eugenics does not want
to diminish this regard for the individual, but it does insistently
declare that the interests of the many are greater than those of the
few, and it holds that a statesmanlike policy requires thought for the
future as well as the present. It would be hard to find a eugenist
to-day who would propose, with Plato, that the infants with bad heredity
should be put to death, but their right to grow up to the fullest
enjoyment of life does not necessarily include the right to pass on
their defective heredity to a long line of descendants, naturally
increasing in number in each generation. Indeed a regard for the
totality of human happiness makes it necessary that they should not so
continue.
While it is the hope of eugenics that fewer defective and anti-social
individuals shall be born in the future, it has been emphasized so much
that the program of eugenics is likely to be seen in false perspective.
In reality it is the less important side of the picture. More good
citizens are wanted, as well as fewer bad ones. Every race requires
leaders. These leaders appear from time to time, and enough is known
about eugenics now to show that their appearance is frequently
predictable, not accidental. It is possible to have them appear more
frequently; and in addition, to raise the level of the whole race,
making the entire nation happier and more useful. These are the great
tasks of eugenics. America needs more families like that old Puritan
strain which is one of the familiar examples of eugenics:
"At their head stands Jonathan Edwards, and behind him an array of his
descendants numbering in 1900, 1,394, of whom 295 were college
graduates; 13 presidents of our greatest colleges; 65 professors in
colleges, besides many principals of other important educational
institutions; 60 physicians, many of whom were eminent; 100 and more
clergymen, missionaries, or theological professors; 75 were officers in
the army and navy; 60 prominent authors and writers, by whom 135 books
of merit were written and published and 18 important periodicals edited;
33 American states and several foreign countries, and 92 American cities
and many foreign cities have profited by the beneficent influences of
their eminent activity; 100 and more were lawyers, of whom one was our
most eminent professor of law; 30 were judges; 80 held public office, of
whom one was vice president of the United States; three were United
States senators; several were governors, members of Congress, framers of
state constitutions, mayors of cities and ministers of foreign courts;
one was president of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company; 15 railroads,
many banks, insurance companies, and large industrial enterprises have
been indebted to their management. Almost if not every department of
social progress and of the public weal has felt the impulse of this
healthy and long-lived family. It is not known that any one of them was
ever convicted of crime."
Every one will agree that the nation needs more families like that. How
can it get them? Galton blazed the way in 1865, when he pointed to
selective breeding as the effective means. The animal breeder knows what
marvels he can accomplish by this means; but it is not practicable to
breed human beings in that direct way. Is there any indirect method of
reaching the same ends?
There are, in our opinion, a good many such means, and it is the
principal purpose of this book to point them out. The problem of
constructive or positive eugenics, naturally divides itself into two
parts:
1. To secure a sufficient number of marriages of the superior.
2. To secure an adequate birth-rate from these marriages.
The problem of securing these two results is a complex one, which must
be attacked by a variety of methods. It is necessary that superior
people first be made to desire marriage and children; and secondly, that
it be economically and otherwise possible for them to carry out this
desire.
It may be of interest to know how the Germans are attacking the problem,
even though some of their measures may be considered ineffective or
inadvisable.
At its annual meeting in 1914 the German Society for Race Hygiene
adopted a resolution on the subject of applied eugenics. "The future of
the German people is at stake," it declares. "The German empire can not
in the long run maintain its true nationality and the independence of
its development, if it does not begin without delay and with the
greatest energy to mold its internal and external politics as well as
the whole life of the people in accordance with eugenic principles. Most
important of all are measures for a higher reproduction of healthy and
able families. The rapidly declining birth-rate of the healthy and able
families necessarily leads to the social, economical and political
retrogression of the German people," it points out, and then goes on to
enumerate the causes of this decline, which it thinks is partly due to
the action of racial poisons but principally to the increasing willful
restriction of the number of children.
The society recognizes that the reasons for this limitation of the size
of families are largely economic. It enumerates the question of expense,
considerations of economic inheritance--that is, a father does not like
to divide up his estate too much; the labor of women, which is
incompatible with the raising of a large family; and the difficulties
caused by the crowded housing in the large cities.
In order to secure a posterity sufficient in number and ability, the
resolution continues, The German Society for Race Hygiene demands:
1. A back-to-the farm movement.
2. Better housing facilities in the cities.
3. Economic assistance of large families through payment of a
substantial relief to married mothers who survive their husbands, and
consideration of the number of children in the payment of public and
private employees.
4. Abolition of certain impediments to marriage, such as the army
regulation forbidding officers to marry before they reach a certain
grade.
5. Increase of tax on alcohol, tobacco and luxuries, the proceeds to be
used to subsidize worthy families.
6. Medical regulations of a hygienic nature.
7. Setting out large prizes for excellent works of art (novels, dramas,
plastic arts) which glorify the ideal of motherhood, the family and
simple life.
8. Awakening a national mind ready to undergo sacrifices on behalf of
future generations.
In spite of some defects such a program brings out clearly the principle
of eugenics,--the substitution of a selective birth-rate for the
selective death-rate by which natural selection has brought the race to
its present level. Nature lets a multitude of individuals be born and
kills off the poorer ones; eugenics proposes to have fewer poor ones and
more good ones born in each generation.
Any means which tends to bring about one of those ends, is a part of
Applied Eugenics.
By this time the reader will have seen that eugenics has some definite
ideals not only as to how the race can be kept from deteriorating
further, under the interference with natural selection which
civilization entails, but as to how its physical, mental and moral level
can actually be raised. He can easily draw his own conclusions as to
what eugenics does _not_ propose. No eugenist worthy of the name has
ever proposed to breed genius as the stockman breeds trotting horses,
despite jibes of the comic press to the contrary. But if young people,
before picking out their life partners, are thoroughly imbued with the
idea that such qualities as energy, longevity, a sound constitution,
public and private worth, are primarily due to heredity, and if they are
taught to realize the fact that one marries not an individual but a
family, the eugenist believes that better matings will be made,
sometimes realized, sometimes insensibly.
Furthermore, if children from such matings are made an asset rather than
a liability; if society ceases to penalize, in a hundred insidious ways,
the parents of large and superior families, but honors and aids them
instead, one may justifiably hope that the birth-rate in the most useful
and happy part of the population will steadily increase.
Perhaps that is as far as it is necessary that the aim of eugenics
should be defined; yet one can hardly ignore the philosophical aspect
of the problem. Galton's suggestion that man should assist the course of
his own evolution meets with the general approval of biologists; but
when one asks what the ultimate goal of human evolution should be, one
faces a difficult question. Under these circumstances, can it be said
that eugenics really has a goal, or is it merely stumbling along in the
dark, possibly far from the real road, of whose existence it is aware
but of whose location it has no knowledge?
There are several routes on which one can proceed with the confidence
that, if no one of them is the main road, at least it is likely to lead
into the latter at some time. Fortunately, eugenics is, paradoxical as
it may seem, able to advance on all these paths at once; for it proposes
no definite goal, it sets up no one standard to which it would make the
human race conform. Taking man as it finds him, it proposes to multiply
all the types that have been found by past experience or present reason
to be of most value to society. Not only would it multiply them in
numbers, but also in efficiency, in capacity to serve the race.
By so doing, it undoubtedly fulfills the requirements of that popular
philosophy which holds the aim of society to be the greatest happiness
for the greatest number, or more definitely the increase of the totality
of human happiness. To cause not to exist those who would be doomed from
birth to give only unhappiness to themselves and those about them; to
increase the number of those in whom useful physical and mental traits
are well developed; to bring about an increase in the number of
energetic altruists and a decrease in the number of the anti-social or
defective; surely such an undertaking will come nearer to increasing the
happiness of the greatest number, than will any temporary social
palliative, any ointment for incurable social wounds. To those who
accept that philosophy, made prominent by Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart
Mill, Herbert Spencer, and a host of other great thinkers, eugenics
rightly understood must seem a prime necessity of society.
But can any philosophy dispense with eugenics? Take those to whom the
popular philosophy of happiness seems a dangerous goal and to whom the
only object of evolution that one is at present justified in
recognizing is that of the perpetuation of the species and of the
progressive conquest of nature, the acquiring of an ascendancy over all
the earth. This is now as much a matter of self-preservation as it is of
progress: although man no longer fights for life with the cave bear and
saber-toothed tiger, the microbes which war with him are far more
dangerous enemies than the big mammals of the past. The continuation of
evolution, if it means conquest, is not a work for dilettantes and Lotos
Eaters; it is a task that demands unremitting hard work.
To this newer philosophy of creative work eugenics is none the less
essential. For eugenics wants in the world more physically sound men and
women _with greater ability in any valuable way_. Whatever the actual
goal of evolution may be, it can hardly be assumed by any except the
professional pessimist, that a race made up of such men and women is
going to be handicapped by their presence.
The correlation of abilities is as well attested as any fact in
psychology. Those who decry eugenics on the ground that it is impossible
to establish any "standard of perfection," since society needs many
diverse kinds of people, are overlooking this fact. Any plan which
increases the production of children in able families of _various_ types
will thereby produce more ability of all kinds, since if a family is
particularly gifted in one way, it is likely to be gifted above the
average in several other desirable ways.
Eugenics sets up no specific superman, as a type to which the rest of
the race must be made to conform. It is not looking forward to the
cessation of its work in a eugenic millenium. It is a perpetual process,
which seeks only to raise the level of the race by the production of
fewer people with physical and mental defects, and more people with
physical and mental excellencies. Such a race should be able to
perpetuate itself, to subdue nature, to improve its environment
progressively; its members should be happy and productive. To establish
such a goal seems justified by the knowledge of evolution which is now
available; and to make progress toward it is possible.