THE DYSGENIC CLASSES
Before examining the methods by which society can put into effect some
measure of negative or restrictive eugenics, it may be well to decide
what classes of the population can properly fall within the scope of
such treatment. Strictly speaking, the problem is of course one of
individuals rather than classes, but for the sake of convenience it will
be treated as one of classes, it being understood that no individual
should be put under restriction with eugenic intent merely because he
may be supposed to belong to a given class; but that each case must be
investigated on its own merits,--and investigated with much more care
than has hitherto usually been thought necessary by many of those who
have advocated restrictive eugenic measures.
The first class demanding attention is that of those feeble-minded whose
condition is due to heredity. There is reason to believe that at least
two-thirds of the feeble-minded in the United States owe their condition
directly to heredity,[80] and will transmit it to a large per cent of
their descendants, if they have any. Feeble-minded persons from sound
stock, whose arrested development is due to scarlet fever or some
similar disease of childhood, or to accident, are of course not of
direct concern to eugenists.
The number of patent feeble-minded in the United States is probably not
less than 300,000, while the number of latent individuals--those
carrying the taint in their germ-plasm and capable of transmitting it to
their descendants, although the individuals themselves may show good
mental development--is necessarily much greater. The defect is highly
hereditary in nature: when two innately feeble-minded persons marry,
all their offspring, almost without exception, are feeble-minded. The
feeble-minded are never of much value to society--they never present
such instances as are found among the insane, of persons with some
mental lack of balance, who are yet geniuses. If restrictive eugenics
dealt with no other class than the hereditarily feeble-minded, and dealt
with that class effectively, it would richly justify its existence.
But there are other classes on which it can act with safety as well as
profit, and one of these is made up by the germinally insane. According
to the census of 1910, there are 187,791 insane in institutions in the
United States; there are also a certain number outside of institutions,
as to whom information can not easily be obtained. The number in the
hospitals represented a ratio of 204.3 per 100,000 of the general
population. In 1880, when the enumeration of insane was particularly
complete, a total of 91,959 was reported--a ratio of 188.3 per 100,000
of the total population at that time. This apparent increase of insanity
has been subjected to much analysis, and it is admitted that part of it
can be explained away. People are living longer now than formerly, and
as insanity is primarily a disease of old age, the number of insane is
thus increased. Better means of diagnosis are undoubtedly responsible
for some of the apparent increase. But when every conceivable allowance
is made, there yet remains ground for belief that the proportion of
insane persons in the population is increasing each year. This is partly
due to immigration, as is indicated by the immense and constantly
increasing insane population of the state of New York, where most
immigrants land. In some cases, people who actually show some form of
insanity may slip past the examiners; in the bulk of cases, probably, an
individual is adapted to leading a normal life in his native
environment, but transfer to the more strenuous environment of an
American city proves to be too much for his nervous organization. The
general flow of population from the country to large cities has a
similar effect in increasing the number of insane.
But when all is said, the fact remains that there are several hundred
thousand insane persons in the United States, many of whom are not
prevented from reproducing their kind, and that by this failure to
restrain them society is putting a heavy burden of expense, unhappiness
and a fearful dysgenic drag on coming generations.
The word "insanity," as is frequently objected, means little or nothing
from a biological point of view--it is a sort of catch-all to describe
many different kinds of nervous disturbance. No one can properly be made
the subject of restrictive measures for eugenic reasons, merely because
he is said to be "insane." It would be wholly immoral so to treat, for
example, a man or woman who was suffering from the form of insanity
which sometimes follows typhoid fever. But there are certain forms of
mental disease, generally lumped under the term "insanity," which
indicate a hereditarily disordered nervous organization, and individuals
suffering from one of these diseases should certainly not be given any
chance to perpetuate their insanity to posterity. Two types of insanity
are now recognized as especially transmissible:--dementia precox, a sort
of precocious old age, in which the patient (generally young) sinks into
a lethargy from which he rarely recovers; and manic-depressive insanity,
an over-excitable condition, in which there are occasional very erratic
motor discharges, alternating with periods of depression. Constitutional
psychopathic inferiority, which means a lack of emotional adaptability,
usually shows in the family history. The common type of insanity which
is characterized by mild hallucinations is of less concern from a
eugenic point of view.
In general, the insane are more adequately restricted than any other
dysgenic class in the community; not because the community recognizes
the disadvantage of letting them reproduce their kind, but because there
is a general fear of them, which leads to their strict segregation; and
because an insane person is not considered legally competent to enter
into a marriage contract. In general, the present isolation of the sexes
at institutions for the insane is satisfactory; the principal problem
which insanity presents lies in the fact that an individual is
frequently committed to a hospital or asylum, kept there a few years
until apparently cured, and then discharged; whereupon he returns to his
family to beget offspring that are fairly likely to become insane at
some period in their lives. Every case of insanity should be accompanied
by an investigation of the patient's ancestry, and if there is
unmistakable evidence of serious neuropathic taint, such steps as are
necessary should be taken to prevent that individual from becoming a
parent at any time.
The hereditary nature of most types of epilepsy is generally held to be
established,[81] and restrictive measures should be used to prevent the
increase of the number of epileptics in the country. It has been
calculated that the number of epileptics in the state of New Jersey,
where the most careful investigation of the problem has been made, will
double every 30 years under present conditions.
In dealing with both insanity and epilepsy, the eugenist faces the
difficulty that occasionally people of the very kind whose production he
most wishes to see encouraged--real geniuses--may carry the taint. The
exaggerated claims of the Italian anthropologist C. Lombroso and his
school, in regard to the close relation between genius and insanity,
have been largely disproved; yet there remains little doubt that the two
sometimes do go together; and such supposed epileptics as Mohammed,
Julius Cæsar, and Napoleon will at once be called to mind. To apply
sweeping restrictive measures would prevent the production of a certain
amount of talent of a very high order. The situation can only be met by
dealing with every case on its individual merits, and recognizing that
it is to the interests of society to allow some very superior
individuals to reproduce, even though part of their posterity may be
mentally or physically somewhat unsound.
A field survey in two typical counties of Indiana (1916) showed that
there were 1.8 recognizable epileptics per thousand population. If
these figures should approximately hold good for the entire United
States, the number of epileptics can hardly be put at less than 150,000.
Some of them are not anti-social, but many of them are.
Feeble-mindedness and insanity were also included in the census
mentioned, and the total number of the three kinds of defectives was
found to be 19 per thousand in one county and 11.4 per thousand in the
other. This would suggest a total for the entire United States of
something like one million.
In addition to these well-recognized classes of hopelessly defective,
there is a class of defectives embracing very diverse characteristics,
which demands careful consideration. In it are those who are germinally
physical weaklings or deformed, those born with a hereditary diathesis
or predisposition toward some serious disease (e.g., Huntington's
Chorea), and those with some gross defect of the organs of special
sense. The germinally blind and deaf will particularly occur to mind in
the latter connection. Cases falling in this category demand careful
scrutiny by biological and psychological experts, before any action can
be taken in the interest of eugenics; in many cases the affected
individual himself will be glad to coöperate with society by remaining
celibate or by the practice of birth control, to the end of leaving no
offspring to bear what he has borne.
Finally, we come to the great class of delinquents who have hitherto
been made the particular object of solicitude, on the part of those who
have looked with favor upon sterilization legislation. The chronic
inebriate, the confirmed criminal, the prostitute, the pauper, all
deserve careful study by the eugenist. In many cases they will be found
to be feeble-minded, and proper restriction of the feeble-minded will
meet their cases. Thus there is reason to believe that from a third to
two-thirds of the prostitutes in American cities are feeble-minded.[82]
They should be committed to institutions for the feeble-minded and kept
there. It is certain that many of the pauper class, which fills up
almshouses, are similarly deficient. Indeed, the census of 1910
discovered that of the 84,198 paupers in institutions on the first of
January in that year, 13,238 were feeble-minded, 3,518 insane, 2,202
epileptic, 918 deaf-mute, 3,375 blind, 13,753 crippled, maimed or
deformed. A total of 63.7% of the whole had some serious physical or
mental defect. Obviously, most of these would be taken care of under
some other heading, in the program of restrictive eugenics. While
paupers should be prohibited from reproduction as long as they are in
state custody, careful discrimination is necessary in the treatment of
those whose condition is due more to environment than heredity.
In a consideration of the chronic inebriate, the problem of
environmental influences is again met in an acute form, aggravated by
the venom of controversy engendered by bigotry and self-interest. That
many chronic inebriates owe their condition almost wholly to heredity,
and are likely to leave offspring of the same character, is
indisputable. As to the possibility of "reforming" such an individual,
there may be room for a difference of opinion; as to the possibility of
reforming his germ-plasm, there can be none. Society owes them the best
possible care, and part of its care should certainly be to see that they
do not reproduce their kind. As to the borderland cases--and in the
matter of inebriety borderland is perhaps bigger than mainland--it is
doubtful whether much direct action can be taken in the present state of
scientific knowledge and of public sentiment. Education of public
opinion to avoid marriage with drunkards will probably be the most
effective means of procedure.
Finally, there is the criminal class, over which the respective
champions of heredity and environment have so often waged partisan
warfare. There is probably no field in which restrictive eugenics would
think of interfering, where it encounters so much danger as here--danger
of wronging both the individual and society. Laws such as have been
passed in several states, providing for the sterilization of criminals
_as such,_ must be deplored by the eugenist as much as they are by the
pseudo-sociologist who "does not believe in heredity"; but this is not
saying that there are not many cases in which eugenic action is
desirable; for inheritance of a lack of emotional control makes a man
in one sense a "born criminal."[83] He is not, in most respects, the
creature which he was made out to be by Lombroso and his followers; but
he exists, nevertheless, and no ameliorative treatment given him will be
of such value to society as preventing his reproduction.
The feeble-minded who make up a large proportion of the petty criminals
that fill the jails, must, of course, be excluded from this discussion
except to note that their conviction assists in discovering their
defect. They should be treated as feeble-minded, not as criminals.[84]
Those who may have been made criminals by society, by their environment,
must also be excepted. In an investigation, the benefit of the doubt
should be given to the individual. But when every possible concession is
made to the influence of environment, the psychiatric study of the
individual and the investigation of his family history still show that
there are criminals who congenitally lack the inhibitions and instincts
which make it possible for others to be useful members of society.[85]
When a criminal of this natural type is found, the duty of society is
unquestionably to protect itself by cutting off that line of descent.
This, we believe, covers all the classes which are at this time proper
subjects for direct restrictive action with eugenic intent; and we
repeat that the problem is not to deal with classes as a whole, but to
deal with individuals of the kind described, for the sake of
convenience, in the above categories. Artificial class names mean
nothing to evolution. It would be a crime to cut off the posterity of a
desirable member of society merely because he happened to have been
popularly stigmatized by some class name that carried opprobrium with
it. Similarly it would be immoral to encourage or permit the
reproduction of a manifestly defective member of society of the kinds
indicated, even though that individual might in some way have secured
the protection of a class name that was generally considered desirable.
Bearing this in mind, we believe no one can object to a proposal to
prevent the reproduction of those feeble-minded, insane, epileptic,
grossly defective or hopelessly delinquent people, whose condition can
be proved to be due to heredity and is therefore probably transmissible
to their offspring. We can imagine only one objection that might be
opposed to all the advantages of such a program--namely, that no proper
means can be found for putting it into effect. This objection is
occasionally urged, but we believe it to be wholly without weight. We
now propose to examine the various possible methods of restrictive
eugenics, and to inquire which of them society can most profitably
adopt.