"Of these (287)," he continues, "26 were in 'Who's Who in
America?
Applied Eugenics by Roswell H. Johnson and Paul Popenoe
An increase in the number of non-sectarian bisexual societies, clubs
and similar organizations, and a diminution of the number of those
limited to men or to women alone is greatly to be desired. It is
doubtful whether the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. are, while separated,
as useful to society as they might be. Each of them tends to create a
celibate community, where the chance for meeting possible mates is
practically nil. The men's organization has made, so far as we are
aware, little organized attempt to meet this problem. The women's
organization in some cities has made the attempt, but apparently with
indifferent success. The idea of a merger of the two organizations with
reasonable differentiation as well would probably meet with little
approval from their directors just now, but is worth considering as an
answer to the urgent problem of providing social contacts for young
people in large cities.
It is encouraging that thoughtful people in all walks of life are
beginning to realize the seriousness of this problem of contacts for the
young, and the necessity of finding some solution. The novelist Miss
Maria Thompson Davies of Sweetbriar Farm, Madison, Tenn. , is quoted in a
recent newspaper interview as saying:
"I'm a Wellesley woman, but one reason why I'm dead against women's
colleges is because they shut girls up with women, at the most
impressionable period of the girls' lives, when they should be meeting
members of the opposite sex continually, learning to tolerate their
little weaknesses and getting ready to marry them. "
"The city should make arrangements to chaperon the meetings of its young
citizens. There ought to be municipal gathering places where, under the
supervision of tactful, warm-hearted women--themselves successfully
married--girls and young men might get introduced to each other and
might get acquainted. "
If it is thought that the time has not yet come for such municipal
action, there is certainly plenty of opportunity for action by the
parents, relatives and friends of young persons. The match-making
proclivities of some mothers are matters of current jest: where subtly
and wisely done they might better be taken seriously and held up as
examples worthy of imitation. Formal "full dress" social functions for
young people, where acquaintance is likely to be too perfunctory, should
be discouraged, and should give place to informal dances, beach parties,
house parties and the like, where boys and girls will have a chance to
come to know each other, and, at the proper age, to fall in love. Let
social stratification be not too rigid, yet maintained on the basis of
intrinsic worth rather than solely on financial or social position. If
parents will make it a matter of concern to give their boys and girls as
many desirable acquaintances of the opposite sex as possible, and to
give them opportunity for ripening these acquaintances, the problem of
the improvement of sexual selection will be greatly helped. Young people
from homes where such social advantages can not be given, or in large
cities where home life is for most of them non-existent, must become the
concern of the municipality, the churches, and every institution and
organization that has the welfare of the community and the race at
heart.
To sum up this chapter, we have pointed out the importance of sexual
selection, and shown that its eugenic action depends on young people
having the proper ideals, and being able to live up to these ideals.
Eugenists have in the past devoted themselves perhaps too exclusively to
the inculcation of sound ideals, without giving adequate attention to
the possibility of these high standards being acted upon. One of the
greatest problems confronting eugenics is that of giving young people of
marriageable age a greater range of choice. Much could be done by
organized action; but it is one of the hopeful features of the problem
that it can be handled in large part by intelligent individual action.
If older people would make a conscious effort to help young people widen
their circles of suitable acquaintances, they would make a valuable
contribution to race betterment.
CHAPTER XII
INCREASING THE MARRIAGE RATE OF THE SUPERIOR
No race can long survive unless it conforms to the principles of
eugenics, and indisputably the chief requirement for race survival is
that the superior part of the race should equal or surpass the inferior
part in fecundity.
It follows that the superior members of the community must marry, and at
a reasonably early age. If in the best elements of the community
celibacy increases, or if marriage is postponed far into the
reproductive period, the racial contribution of the superior will
necessarily fall, and after a few generations the race will consist
mainly of the descendants of inferior people, its eugenic average being
thereby much lowered.
In a survey of vital statistics, to ascertain whether marriages are as
frequent and as early as national welfare requires, the eugenist finds
at first no particularly alarming figures.
In France, to whose vital statistics one naturally turns whenever race
suicide is suggested (and usually with a holier-than-thou attitude which
the Frenchman might much more correctly assume toward America), it
appears that there has been a very slight decrease in the proportion of
persons under 20 who are married, but that between the ages of 20 and 30
the proportion of those married has risen during recent years. The same
condition exists all over Europe, according to F. H. Hankins,[105]
except in England and Scotland. "Moreover on the whole marriages take
place earlier in France than in England, Germany or America. Nor is this
all, for a larger proportion of the French population is married than in
any of these countries. Thus the birth-rate in France has continued to
fall in spite of those very conditions which should have sustained it
or even caused it to increase. "
In America, conditions are not dissimilar. Although it is generally
believed that young persons are marrying at a later age than they did
formerly, the census figures show that for the population as a whole the
reverse is the case. Marriages are not only more numerous, but are
contracted at earlier ages than they were a quarter of a century ago.
Comparison of census returns for 1890, 1900 and 1910, reveals that for
both sexes the percentage of married has steadily increased and the
percentage listed as single has as steadily decreased. The census
classifies young men, for this purpose, in three age-groups: 15-19,
20-24, and 25-34; and in every one of these groups, a larger proportion
was married in 1910 than in 1900 or 1890. Conditions are the same for
women. So far as the United States as a whole is concerned, therefore,
marriage is neither being avoided altogether, nor postponed unduly,--in
fact, conditions in both respects seem to be improving every year.
So far the findings should gratify every eugenist. But the census
returns permit further analysis of the figures. They classify the
population under four headings: Native White of Native Parentage, Native
White of Foreign Parentage or of Mixed Parentage, Foreign-born White,
and Negro. Except among Foreign-born Whites, who are standing still, the
returns for 1910 show that in every one of these groups the marriage
rate has steadily increased during the past three decades; and that the
age of marriage is steadily declining in all groups during the same
period, with a slight irregularity of no real importance in the
statistics for foreign-born males.
On the whole, then, the marriage statistics of the United States are
reassuring. Even if examination is limited to the Native Whites of
Native Parentage, who are probably of greater eugenic worth, as a group,
than any of the other three, the marriage rate is found to be moving in
the right direction.
But going a step farther, one finds that within this group there are
great irregularities, which do not appear when the group is considered
as a whole. And these irregularities are of a nature to give the
eugenist grave concern.
If one sought, for example, to find a group of women distinctly superior
to the average, he might safely take the college graduates. Their
superior quality as a class lies in the facts that:
(a) They have survived the weeding-out process of grammar and high
school, and the repeated elimination by examinations in college.
(b) They have persevered, after those with less mental ability have
grown tired of the strain and have voluntarily dropped out.
(c) Some have even forced their way to college against great obstacles,
because attracted by the opportunities it offers them for mental
activity.
(d) Some have gone to college because their excellence has been
discovered by teachers or others who have strongly urged it.
All these attributes can not be merely acquired, but must be in some
degree inherent. Furthermore, these girls are not only superior in
themselves, but are ordinarily from superior parents, because
(a) Their parents have in most cases cooperated by desiring this higher
education for their daughters.
(b) The parents have in most cases had sufficient economic efficiency to
be able to afford a college course for their daughters.
Therefore, although the number of college women in the United States is
not great, their value eugenically is wholly disproportionate to their
numbers. If marriage within such a selected class as this is being
avoided, or greatly postponed, the eugenist can not help feeling
concerned.
And the first glance at the statistics gives adequate ground for
uneasiness. Take the figures for Wellesley College, for instance:
_Status in fall of 1912_ _Graduates_ _All students_
Per cent married (graduated 1879-1888) 55% 60%
Per cent married in:
10 years from graduation 35% 37%
20 years from graduation 48% 49%
From a racial standpoint, the significant marriage rate of any group of
women is the percentage that have married before the end of the
child-bearing period. Classes graduating later than 1888 are therefore
not included, and the record shows the marital status in the fall of
1912. In compiling these data deceased members and the few lost from
record are of course omitted.
In the foregoing study care was taken to distinguish as to when the
marriage took place. Obviously marriages with the women at 45 or over
being sterile must not be counted where it is the fecundity of the
marriage that is being studied. The reader is warned therefore to make
any necessary correction for this factor in the studies to follow in
some of which unfortunately care has not been taken to make the
necessary distinction.
Turn to Mount Holyoke College, the oldest of the great institutions for
the higher education of women in this country. Professor Amy Hewes has
collected the following data:
_Decade of graduation Per cent remaining single Per cent marrying_
1842-1849 14. 6 85. 4
1850-1859 24. 5 75. 5
1860-1869 39. 1 60. 9
1870-1879 40. 6 59. 4
1880-1889 42. 4 57. 6
1890-1892 50. 0 50. 0
Bryn Mawr College, between 1888 and 1900, graduated 376 girls, of whom
165, or 43. 9%, had married up to January 1, 1913.
Studying the Vassar College graduates between 1867 and 1892, Robert J.
Sprague found that 509 of the total of 959 had married, leaving 47%
celibate. Adding the classes up to 1900, it was found that less than
half of the total number of graduates of the institution had married.
Remembering what a selected group of young women go to college, the
eugenist can hardly help suspecting that the women's colleges of the
United States, as at present conducted, are from his point of view doing
great harm to the race. This suspicion becomes a certainty, as one
investigation after another shows the same results. Statistics compiled
on marriages among college women (1901) showed that:
45% of college women marry before the age of 40.
90% of all United States women marry before the age of 40.
96% of Arkansas women marry before the age of 40.
80% of Massachusetts women marry before the age of 40.
In Massachusetts, it is further to be noted, 30% of all women have
married at the age when college women are just graduating.
It has, moreover, been demonstrated that the women who belong to Phi
Beta Kappa and other honor societies, and therefore represent a second
selection from an already selected class, have a lower marriage rate
than college women in general.
In reply to such facts, the eugenist is often told that the college
graduates marry as often and as early as the other members of their
families. We are comparing conditions that can not properly be compared,
we are informed, when we match the college woman's marriage rate with
that of a non-college woman who comes from a lower level of society.
But the facts will not bear out this apology. Miss M. R. Smith's
statistics[106] from the data of the Collegiate Alumnae show the true
situation. The average age at marriage was found to be for
_Years_
College women 26. 3
Their sisters 24. 2
Their cousins 24. 7
Their friends 24. 2
and the age distribution of those married was as follows:
_Equivalent_
_Percentage of married_ _College_ _non-college_
Under 23 years 8. 6 30. 1
23-32 years 83. 2 64. 9
33 and over 8. 0 5. 0
[Illustration: Wellesley Graduates and Non-graduates
FIG. 36. --Graph showing at a glance the record of the student
body in regard to marriage and birth rates, during the years indicated.
Statistics for the latest years have not been compiled, because it is
obvious that girls who graduated during the last fifteen years still
have a chance to marry and become mothers. ]
If these differences did not bring about any change in the birth-rate,
they could be neglected. A slight sacrifice might even be made, for the
sake of having mothers better prepared. But taken in connection with the
birth-rate figures which we shall present in the next chapter, they form
a serious indictment against the women's colleges of the United States.
Such conditions are not wholly confined to women's colleges, or to any
one geographical area. Miss Helen D. Murphey has compiled the statistics
for Washington Seminary, in Washington, Pennsylvania, a secondary school
for women, founded in 1837. The marriage rate among the graduates of
this institution has steadily declined, as is shown in the following
table where the records are considered by decades:
'45 '55 '65 '75 '85 '95 '00
Per cent. married 78 74 67 72 59 57 55
Per cent. who have gone into 20 13 12 19 30 30 39
other occupations than
home-making
A graph, plotted to show how soon after graduation these girls have
married, demonstrates that the greatest number of them wed five or six
years after receiving their diplomas, but that the number of those
marrying 10 years afterward is not very much less than that of the girls
who become brides in the first or second year after graduation (see Fig.
35).
C. S. Castle's investigation[107] of the ages at which eminent women of
various periods have married, is interesting in this connection, in
spite of the small number of individuals with which it deals:
_Century_ _Average age_ _Range_ _Number of cases_
12 16. 2 8-30 5
13 16. 6 12-29 5
14 13. 8 6-18 11
15 17. 6 13-26 20
16 21. 7 12-50 28
17 20. 0 13-43 30
18 23. 1 13-53 127
19 26. 2 15-67 189
Women in coeducational colleges, particularly the great universities of
the west, can not be compared without corrections with the women of the
eastern separate colleges, because they represent different family and
environmental selection. Their record none the less deserves careful
study. Miss Shinn[108] calculated the marriage rate of college women as
follows, assuming graduation at the age of 22:
_Women over_ _Coeducated_ _Separate_
25 38. 1 29. 6
30 49. 1 40. 1
35 53. 6 46. 6
40 56. 9 51. 8
She has shown that only a part of this discrepancy is attributable to
the geographic difference, some of it is the effect of lack of
co-education. Some of it is also attributable to the type of education.
The marriage rate of women graduates of Iowa State College[109] is as
follows:
1872-81 95. 8
1882-91 62. 5
1892-01 71. 2
1902-06 69. 0
Study of the alumni register of Oberlin,[110] one of the oldest
coeducational institutions, shows that the marriage rate of women
graduates, 1884-1905, was 65. 2%, only 34. 8% of them remaining unmarried.
If the later period, 1890-1905, alone is taken, only 55. 2% of the girls
have married. The figures for the last few classes in this period are
probably not complete.
At Kansas State Agricultural College, 1885-1905, 67. 6% of the women
graduates have married. At Ohio State University in the same period, the
percentage is only 54. 0. Wisconsin University, 1870-1905, shows a
percentage of 51. 8, the figures for the last five years of that period
being:
1901 33. 9
1902 52. 9
1903 45. 1
1904 32. 3
1905 37. 4
From alumni records of the University of Illinois, 54% of the women,
1880-1905, are found to be married.
It is difficult to discuss these figures without extensive study of each
case. But that only 53% of the women graduates of three great
universities like Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin, should be married, 10
years after graduation, indicates that something is wrong.
In most cases it is not possible to tell, from the alumni records of the
above colleges, whether the male graduates are or are not married. But
the class lists of Harvard and Yale have recently been carefully studied
by John C. Phillips,[111] who finds that in the period 1851-1890 74% of
the Harvard graduates and 78% of the Yale graduates married. In that
period, he found, the age of marriage has advanced only about 1 year,
from a little over 30 to just about 31. This is a much higher rate than
that of college women.
Statistics from Stanford University[112] offer an interesting comparison
because they are available for both men and women. Of 670 male
graduates, classes 1892 to 1900, inclusive, 490 or 73. 2% were reported
as married in 1910. Of 330 women, 160 or 48. 5% were married. These
figures are not complete, as some of the graduates in the later classes
must have married since 1910.
The conditions existing at Stanford are likewise found at Syracuse, on
the opposite side of the continent. Here, as H. J. Banker has shown,[113]
the men graduates marry most frequently 4. 5 years after taking their
degrees, and the women 4. 7 years. Of the women 57% marry, of the men
81%. The women marry at the average age of 27. 7 years and the men at
28. 8. Less than one-fourth of the marrying men married women within the
college. The last five decades he studied show a steady decrease in the
number of women graduates who marry, while the men are much more
constant. His figures are:
_Per cent of men_ _Per cent of women_
_Decade_ _graduates_ _graduates_
_married_ _married_
1852-61 81 87
1862-71 87 87
1872-81 90 81
1882-91 84 55
1892-01 73 48
C. B. Davenport, looking at the record of his own classmates at Harvard,
found[114] in 1909 that among the 328 original members there were 287
surviving, of whom nearly a third (31%) had never married.
"Of these (287)," he continues, "26 were in 'Who's Who in America? ' We
should expect, were success in professional life promoted by
bachelorship, to find something over a third of those in Who's Who to be
unmarried. Actually all but two, or less than 8%, were married, and one
of these has since married. The only still unmarried man was a temporary
member of the class and is an artist who has resided for a large part of
the time in Europe. There is, therefore, no reason to believe that
bachelorship favors professional success. "
Particularly pernicious in tending to prevent marriage is the influence
of certain professional schools, some of which have come to require a
college degree for entrance. In such a case the aspiring physician, for
example, can hardly hope to obtain a license to practice until he has
reached the age of 27 since 4 years are required in Medical College and
1 year in a hospital. His marriage must in almost every case be
postponed until a number of years after that of the young men of his own
class who have followed business careers.
This brief survey is enough to prove that the best educated young women
(and to a less extent young men) of the United States, who for many
reasons may be considered superior, are in many cases avoiding marriage
altogether, and in other cases postponing it longer than is desirable.
The women in the separate colleges of the East have the worst record in
this respect, but that of the women graduates of some of the
coeducational schools leaves much to be desired.
It is difficult to separate the causes which result in a postponement of
marriage, from those that result in a total avoidance of marriage. To a
large extent the causes are the same, and the result differs only in
degree. The effect of absolute celibacy of superior people, from a
eugenic point of view, is of course obvious to all, but the racial
effect of postponement of marriage, even for a few years, is not always
so clearly realized. The diagram in Fig. 36 may give a clearer
appreciation of this situation.
Francis Galton clearly perceived the importance of this point, and
attempted in several ways to arrive at a just idea of it. One of the
most striking of his investigations is based on Dr. Duncan's statistics
from a maternity hospital. Dividing the mothers into five-year groups,
according to their age, and stating the median age of the group for the
sake of simplicity, instead of giving the limits, he arrived at the
following table:
_Age of mother at_ _Approximate average_
_her marriage_ _fertility_
17 9. 00--6 * 1. 5
22 7. 50--5 * 1. 5
27 6. 00--4 * 1. 5
32 4. 50--3 * 1. 5
which shows that the relative fertility of mothers married at the ages
of 17, 22, 27 and 32, respectively, is as 6, 5, 4, and 3 approximately.
"The increase in population by a habit of early marriages," he adds, "is
further augmented by the greater rapidity with which the generations
follow each other. By the joint effect of these two causes, a large
effect is in time produced. "
Certainly the object of eugenics is not to merely increase human
numbers. Quality is more important than quantity in a birth-rate. But it
must be evident that other things being equal, a group which marries
early will, after a number of generations, supplant a group which
marries even a few years later. And there is abundant evidence to show
that some of the best elements of the old, white, American race are
being rapidly eliminated from the population of America, because of
postponement or avoidance of marriage.
Taking the men alone, we find that failure to marry may often be
ascribed to one of the following reasons:
1. The cultivation of a taste for sexual variety and a consequent
unwillingness to submit to the restraints of marriage.
2. Pessimism in regard to women from premature or unfortunate sex
experiences.
3. Infection by venereal disease.
4. Deficiency in normal sexual feeling, or perversion.
5. Deficiency of one kind or another, physical or mental, causing
difficulty in getting an acceptable mate.
The persons in groups 4 and 5 certainly and in groups 1, 2, and 3
probably to a less extent, are inferior, and their celibacy is an
advantage to the race, rather than a disadvantage, from a eugenic point
of view. Their inferiority is in part the result of bad environment. But
since innate inferiority is so frequently a large factor, the bad
environment often being experienced only because the nature was inferior
to start with, the average of the group as a whole must be considered
innately inferior.
Then there are among celibate men two other classes, largely superior by
nature:
6. Those who seek some other end so ardently that they will not make the
necessary sacrifice in money and freedom, in order to marry.
7. Those whose likelihood of early marriage is reduced by a prolonged
education and apprenticeship. Prolongation of the celibate period often
results in life-long celibacy.
Some of the most important means of remedying the above conditions, in
so far as they are dysgenic, can be grouped under three general heads:
1. Try to lead all young men to avoid a loose sexual life and venereal
disease. A general effort will be heeded more by the superior than by
the inferior.
2. Hold up the role of husband and father as particularly honorable, and
proclaim its shirking, without adequate cause, as dishonorable. Depict
it as a happier and healthier state than celibacy or pseudo-celibacy.
For a man to say he has never met a girl he can love simply means he has
not diligently sought one, or else he has a deficient emotional
equipment; for there are many, surprisingly many, estimable, attractive,
unmarried women.
3. Cease prolonging the educational period past the early twenties. It
is time to call a halt on the schools and universities, whose constant
lengthening of the educational period will result in a serious loss to
the race. External circumstances of an educational nature should not be
allowed to force a young man to postpone his marriage past the age of
25. This means that students must be allowed to specialize earlier. If
there is need of limiting the number of candidates, competitive entrance
examinations may be arranged on some rational basis. Superior young men
should marry, even at some cost to their early efficiency. The high
efficiency of any profession can be more safely kept up by demanding a
minimum amount of continuation work in afternoon, evening, or seasonal
classes, laboratories, or clinics. No more graduate fellowships should
be established until those now existing carry a stipend adequate for
marriage. Those which already carry larger stipends should not be
limited to bachelors, as are the most valuable awards at Princeton, the
ten yearly Proctor fellowships of $1,000 each.
The causes of the remarkable failure of college women to marry can not
be exhaustively investigated here, but for the purposes of eugenics they
may be roughly classified as unavoidable and avoidable. Under the first
heading must be placed those girls who are inherently unmarriageable,
either because of physical defect or, more frequently, mental
defect,--most often an over-development of intellect at the expense of
the emotions, which makes a girl either unattractive to men, or inclines
her toward a celibate career and away from marriage and motherhood.
Opinions differ as to the proportion of college girls who are inherently
unmarriageable. Anyone who has been much among them will testify that a
large proportion of them are not inherently unmarriageable, however, and
their celibacy for the most part must be classified as avoidable. Their
failure to marry may be because
(1) They desire not to marry, due to a preference for a career, or
development of a cynical attitude toward men and matrimony, due to a
faulty education, or
(2) They desire to marry, but do not, for a variety of reasons such as:
(a) They are educated for careers, such as school-teaching, where they
have little opportunity to meet men.
(b) Their education makes them less desirable mates than girls who have
had some training along the lines of home-making and mothercraft.
(c) They have remained in partial segregation until past the age when
they are physically most attractive, and when the other girls of their
age are marrying.
(d) Due to their own education, they demand on the part of suitors a
higher degree of education than the young men of their acquaintance
possess. A girl of this type wants to marry but desires a man who is
educationally her equal or superior. As men of such type are relatively
rare, her chances of marriage are reduced.
(e) Their experience in college makes them desire a standard of living
higher than that of their own families or of the men among whom they
were brought up. They become resistant to the suit of men who are of
ordinary economic status. While waiting for the appearance of a suitor
who is above the average in both intelligence and wealth, they pass the
marriageable age.
(f) They are better educated than the young men of their acquaintance,
and the latter are afraid of them. Some young men dislike to marry girls
who know more than they do, except in the distinctively feminine fields.
These and various similar causes help to lower the marriage-rate of
college women and to account for the large number of alumnae who desire
to marry but are unable to do so. In the interest of eugenics, the
various difficulties must be met in appropriate ways.
Marriage is not desirable for those who are eugenically inferior, from
weak constitutions, defective sexuality, or inherent mental deficiency.
But beyond these groups of women are the much larger groups of celibates
who are distinctly superior, and whose chances of marriage have been
reduced for one of the reasons mentioned above or through living in
cities with an undue proportion of female residents. Then there are,
besides these, superior women who, because they are brought up in
families without brothers or brothers' friends, are so unnaturally shy
that they are unable to become friendly with men, however much they may
care to. It is evident that life in a separate college for women often
intensifies this defect. There are still other women who repel men by a
manner of extreme self-repression and coldness, sometimes the result of
parents' or teachers' over-zealous efforts to inculcate modesty and
reserve, traits valuable in due degree but harmful in excess.
When will educators learn that the education of the emotions is as
important as that of the intellect? When will the schools awake to the
fact that a large part of life consists in relations with other human
beings, and that much of their educational effort is absolutely
valueless, or detrimental, to success in the fundamentally necessary
practice of dealing with other individuals which is imposed on every
one? Many a college girl of the finest innate qualities, who sincerely
desires to enter matrimony, is unable to find a husband of her own
class, simply because she has been rendered so cold and unattractive, so
over-stuffed intellectually and starved emotionally, that a typical man
does not desire to spend the rest of his life in her company. The same
indictment applies in a less degree to men. It is generally believed
that an only child is frequently to be found in this class.
On the other hand, it is equally true--perhaps more important--that many
innately superior young men are rejected, because of their manner of
life. Superior young men should be induced to keep their physical
records clean, in order that they may not suffer the severe depreciation
which they would otherwise sustain in the eyes of superior women.
But in efforts to teach chastity, sex itself must not be made to appear
an evil thing. This is a grave mistake and all too common since the rise
of the sex-hygiene movement. Undoubtedly a considerable amount of the
celibacy in sensitive women may be traced to ill-balanced mothers and
teachers who, in word and attitude, build up an impression that sex is
indecent and bestial, and engender in general a damaging suspicion of
men. [115]
Level heads are necessary in the sex ethics campaign. Whereas the
venereal diseases will probably, with a continuation of present progress
in treatment and prophylaxis, be brought under control in the course of
a century, the problem of differential mating will exist as long as the
race does, which can hardly be less than tens of millions of years.
Lurid presentation, by drama, novel, or magazine-story, of dramatic and
highly-colored individual sex histories, is to be avoided. These often
impress an abnormal situation on sensitive girls so strongly that
aversion to marriage, or sex antagonism, is aroused. Every effort should
be made to permeate art--dramatic, plastic, or literary--with the
highest ideals of sex and parenthood. A glorification of motherhood and
fatherhood in these ways would have a portentous influence on public
opinion.
"The true, intimate chronicle of an everyday married life has not been
written. Here is a theme for genius; for only genius can divine and
reveal the beauty, the pathos, and the wonder of the normal or the
commonplace. A felicitous marriage has its comedy, its complexities, its
element, too, of tragedy and grief, as well as its serenity and fealty.
Matrimony, whether the pair fare well or ill, is always a great
adventure, a play of deep instincts and powerful emotions, a drama of
two psyches. Every marriage provides a theme for the literary artist. No
lives are free from enigmas. "[116]
More "temperance" in work would probably promote marriage of able and
ambitious young people. Walter Gallichan complains that "we do not even
recognize love as a finer passion than money greed. It is a kind of
luxury, or pleasant pastime, for the sentimentally minded. Love is so
undervalued as a source of happiness, a means of grace, and a completion
of being, that many men would sooner work to keep a motor car than to
marry. "
Men should be taught greater respect for the individuality of women, so
that no high-minded girl will shrink from marriage with the idea that it
means a surrender of her personality and a state of domestic servitude.
A more discriminating idea of sex-equality is desirable, and a
recognition by men that women are not necessarily creatures of inferior
mentality. It would be an advantage if men's education included some
instruction along these lines. It would be a great gain, also if
intelligent women had more knowledge of domestic economy and
mothercraft, because one of the reasons why the well-educated girl is
handicapped in seeking a mate is the belief all too frequently well
founded of many young men that she is a luxury which he can not afford.
Higher education in general needs to be reoriented. It has too much
glorified individualism, and put a premium on "white collar" work. The
trend toward industrial education will help to correct this situation.
Professor Sprague[117] points out another very important fault, when he
says: "More strong men are needed on the staffs of public schools and
women's colleges, and in all of these institutions more married
instructors of both sexes are desirable. The catalogue of one of the
[women's] colleges referred to above shows 114 professors and
instructors, of whom 100 are women, of whom only two have ever married.
Is it to be expected that the curriculum created by such a staff would
idealize and prepare for family and home life as the greatest work of
the world and the highest goal of woman, and teach race survival as a
patriotic duty? Or, would it be expected that these bachelor staffs
would glorify the independent vocation and life for women and create
employment bureaus to enable their graduates to get into the offices,
schools and other lucrative jobs? The latter seems to be what occurs. "
Increase of opportunity for superior young people to meet each other, as
discussed in our chapter on sexual selection, will play a very large
part in raising the marriage rate. And finally, the delayed or avoided
marriage of the intellectual classes is in large part a reflection of
public opinion, which has wrongly represented other things as being more
worth while than marriage.
"The promotion of marriage in early adult life, as a part of social
hygiene, must begin with a new canonization of marriage," Mr. Gallichan
declares. "This is equally the task of the fervent poet and the
scientific thinker, whose respective labors for humanity are never at
variance in essentials. . . . The sentiment for marriage can be deepened by
a rational understanding of the passion that attracts and unites the
sexes. We need an apotheosis of conjugal love as a basis for a new
appreciation of marriage. Reverence for love should be fostered from the
outset of the adolescent period by parents and pedagogues. "
If, in addition to this "diffusion of healthier views of the conjugal
relation," some of the economic changes suggested in later chapters are
put in effect, it seems probable that the present racially disastrous
tendency of the most superior young men and women to postpone or avoid
marriage would be checked.
CHAPTER XIII
INCREASE OF THE BIRTH-RATE OF THE SUPERIOR
Imagine 200 babies born to parents of native stock in the United States.
On the average, 103 of them will be boys and 97 girls. By the time the
girls reach a marriageable age (say 20 years), at least 19 will have
died, leaving 78 possible wives, on whom the duty of perpetuating that
section of the race depends.
We said "Possible" wives, not probable; for not all will marry. It is
difficult to say just how many will become wives, but Robert J. Sprague
has reported on several investigations that illuminate the point.
In a selected New England village in 1890, he says, "there were forty
marriageable girls between the ages of 20 and 35. To-day thirty-two of
these are married, 20 per cent. are spinsters.
"An investigation of 260 families of the Massachusetts Agricultural
College students shows that out of 832 women over 40 years of age 755 or
91 per cent. have married, leaving only 9 per cent. spinsters. This and
other observations indicate that the daughters of farmers marry more
generally than those of some other classes.
"In sixty-nine (reporting) families represented by the freshman class of
Amherst College (1914) there are 229 mothers and aunts over 40 years of
age, of whom 186 or 81 per cent. have already married.
"It would seem safe to conclude that about 15 per cent. of native women
in general American society do not marry during the child-bearing
period. " Deducting 15 per cent. from the 78 possible wives leaves
sixty-six probable wives. Now among the native wives of Massachusetts 20
per cent. do not produce children, and deducting these thirteen
childless ones from the sixty-six probable wives leaves fifty-three
probable, married, child-bearing women, who must be depended on to
reproduce the original 200 individuals with whom we began this chapter.
That means that each woman who demonstrates ability to bear offspring
must bear 3. 7 children. This it must be noted, is a minimum number, for
no account has been taken of those who, through some defect or disease
developed late in life, become unmarriageable. In general, unless every
married woman brings three children to maturity, the race will not even
hold its own in numbers. And this means that each woman must bear four
children, since not all the children born will live. If the married
women of the country bear fewer than nearly four children each, the race
is in danger of losing ground.
Such a statement ought to strike the reader as one of grave importance;
but we labor under no delusion that it will do so. For we are painfully
aware that the bugaboo of the declining birth-rate of superior people
has been raised so often in late years, that it has become stale by
repetition. It no longer causes any alarm. The country is filled with
sincere but mentally short-sighted individuals, who are constantly ready
to vociferate that numbers are no very desirable thing in a birth-rate;
that quality is wanted, not quantity; that a few children given ideal
care are of much more value to the state and the race than are many
children, who can not receive this attention.
And this attitude toward the subject, we venture to assert, is a graver
peril to the race than is the declining birth-rate itself. For there is
enough truth in it to make it plausible, and to separate the truth from
the dangerous untruth it contains, and to make the bulk of the
population see the distinction, is a task which will tax every energy of
the eugenist.
Unfortunately, this is not a case of mere difference of opinion between
men; it is a case of antagonism between men and nature. If a race
hypnotize itself into thinking that its views about race suicide are
superior to nature's views, it may make its own end a little less
painful; but it will not postpone that end for a single minute. The
contest is to the strong, and although numbers are not the most
important element in strength, it is very certain that a race made up
of families containing one child each will not be the survivor in the
struggle for existence.
The idea, therefore, that race suicide and general limitation of births
to the irreducible minimum, can be effectively justified by any
conceivable appeal to economic or sociological factors, is a mistake
which will eventually bring about the extinction of the people making
it.
This statement must not be interpreted wrongly. Certainly we would not
argue that a high birth-rate in itself is necessarily a desirable thing.
It is not the object of eugenics to achieve as big a population as
possible, regardless of quality. But in the last analysis, the only
wealth of a nation is its people; moreover some people, are as national
assets, worth more than others. The goal, then, might be said to be: a
population adjusted in respect to its numbers to the resources of the
country, and that number of the very best quality possible. Great
diversity of people is required in modern society, but of each desirable
kind the best obtainable representatives are to be desired.
It is at once evident that a decline, rather than an increase, in the
birth-rate of some sections of the population, is wanted. There are some
strata at the bottom that are a source of weakness rather than of
strength to the race, and a source of unhappiness rather than of
happiness to themselves and those around them. These should be reduced
in number, as we have shown at some length earlier in this book.
The other parts of the population should be perpetuated by the best,
rather than the worst. In no other way can the necessary leaders be
secured, without whom, in commerce, industry, politics, science, the
nation is at a great disadvantage. The task of eugenics is by no means
what it is sometimes supposed to be: to breed a superior caste. But a
very important part of its task is certainly to increase the number of
leaders in the race. And it is this part of its task, in particular,
which is menaced by the declining birth-rate in the United States.
As every one knows, race suicide is proceeding more rapidly among the
native whites than among any other large section of the population; and
it is exactly this part of the population which has in the past
furnished most of the eminent men of the country.
It has been shown in previous chapters that eminent men do not appear
wholly by chance in the population. The production of eminence is
largely a family affair; and in America, "the land of opportunity" as
well as in older countries, people of eminence are much more
interrelated than chance would allow. It has been shown, indeed, that in
America it is at least a 500 to 1 bet that an eminent person will be
rather closely related to some other eminent person, and will not be a
sporadic appearance in the population. [118]
Taken with other considerations advanced in earlier chapters, this means
that a falling off in the reproduction of the old American best strains
means a falling off in the number of eminent men which the United States
will produce. No improvement in education can prevent a serious loss,
for the strong minds get more from education.
The old American stock has produced a vastly greater proportion of
eminence, has accomplished a great deal more proportionately, in modern
times, than has other any stock whose representatives have been coming
in large numbers as immigrants to these shores during the last
generation. It is, therefore, likely to continue to surpass them, unless
it declines too greatly in numbers. For this reason, we feel justified
in concluding that the decline of the birth-rate in the old American
stock represents a decline in the birth-rate of a superior element.
There is another way of looking at this point.
