But whatever may be the origin of
this discrimination, it is justified in the last analysis by the fact
that a man is paid as the head of a family, a woman only as an
individual who ordinarily has fewer or no dependents to support.
this discrimination, it is justified in the last analysis by the fact
that a man is paid as the head of a family, a woman only as an
individual who ordinarily has fewer or no dependents to support.
Applied Eugenics by Roswell H. Johnson and Paul Popenoe
In the
first place, it is obvious that there are differences in the
achievements of fellow men. These socialists, having refused to accept
the great weight of germinal differences in accounting for the main
differences in achievement, have no alternative but to fall back on the
theory of economic determinism. Further, socialism is essentially a
reform movement; and if one expects to get aid for such a movement, it
is essential that one represent the consequences as highly important.
The doctrine of economic determinism of course furnishes ground for
glowing accounts of the changes that could be made by economic reform,
and therefore fits in well with the needs of the socialist
propagandists. When the failure of many nations to make any use of their
great resources in coal and water power is remembered; when the fact is
recalled that many of the ablest socialist leaders have been the sons of
well-to-do intellectuals who were never pinched by poverty; it must be
believed that the importance of economic determinism in the socialist
mind is caused more by its value for his propaganda purposes than a
weighing of the evidence.
Such are, we believe, the chief grounds on which socialists criticise
the eugenics movement. All of these criticisms should be stimulating,
should lead eugenists to avoid mistakes in program or procedure. But
none of them, we believe, is a serious objection to anything which the
great body of eugenists proposes to do.
What is to be said on the other side? What faults does the eugenist find
with the socialist movement?
For the central principle, the more equitable distribution of wealth, no
discussion is necessary. Most students of eugenics would probably assent
to its general desirability, although there is much room for discussion
as to what constitutes a really equitable division of wealth. In sound
socialist theory, it is to be distributed according to a man's value to
society; but the determination of this value is usually made impossible,
in socialist practice, by the intrusion of the metaphysical and
untenable dogma of equalitarianism.
If one man is by nature as capable as another, and equality of
opportunity[176] can be secured for all, it must follow that one man
will be worth just as much as another; hence the equitable distribution
of wealth would be an equal distribution of wealth, a proposal which
some socialists have made. Most of the living leaders of the socialist
movement certainly recognize its fallacy, but it seems so far to have
been found necessary to lean very far in this direction for the
maintenance of socialism as a movement of class protest.
Now this idea of the equality of human beings is, in every respect that
can be tested, absolutely false, and any movement which depends on it
will either be wrecked or, if successful, will wreck the state which it
tries to operate. It will mean the penalization of real worth and the
endowment of inferiority and incompetence. Eugenists can feel no
sympathy for a doctrine which is so completely at variance with the
facts of human nature.
But if it is admitted that men differ widely, and always must differ, in
ability and worth, then eugenics can be in accord with the socialistic
desire for distribution of wealth according to merit, for this will
make it possible to favor and help perpetuate the valuable strains in
the community and to discourage the inferior strains. T. N. Carver sums
up the argument[177] concisely:
"Distribution according to worth, usefulness or service is the system
which would most facilitate the progress of human adaptation. It would,
in the first place, stimulate each individual by an appeal to his own
self-interest, to make himself as useful as possible to the community.
In the second place, it would leave him perfectly free to labor in the
service of the community for altruistic reasons, if there was any
altruism in his nature. In the third place it would exercise a
beneficial selective influence upon the stock or race, because the
useful members would survive and perpetuate their kind and the useless
and criminal members would be exterminated. "
In so far as socialists rid themselves of their sentimental and Utopian
equalitarianism, the eugenist will join them willingly in a demand that
the distribution of wealth be made to depend as far as feasible on the
value of the individual to society. [178] As to the means by which this
distribution can be made, there will of course be differences of
opinion, to discuss which would be outside the province of this volume.
Fundamentally, eugenics is anti-individualistic and in so far a
socialistic movement, since it seeks a social end involving some degree
of individual subordination, and this fact would be more frequently
recognized if the movement which claims the name of socialist did not so
often allow the wish to believe that a man's environmental change could
eliminate natural inequalities to warp its attitude.
CHILD LABOR
It is often alleged that the abolition of child labor would be a great
eugenic accomplishment; but as is the case with nearly all such
proposals, the actual results are both complex and far-reaching.
The selective effects of child labor obviously operate directly on two
generations: (1) the parental generation and (2) the filial generation,
the children who are at work. The results of these two forms of
selection must be considered separately.
1. On the parental generation. The children who labor mostly come from
poor families, where every child up to the age of economic productivity
is an economic burden. If the children go to work at an early age, the
parents can afford to have more children and probably will, since the
children soon become to some extent an asset rather than a liability.
Child labor thus leads to a higher birth-rate of this class, abolition
of child labor would lead to a lower birth-rate, since the parents could
no longer afford to have so many children.
Karl Pearson has found reason to believe that this result can be
statistically traced in the birth-rate of English working people,--that
a considerable decline in their fecundity, due to voluntary restriction,
began after the passage of each of the laws which restricted child labor
and made children an expense from which no return could be expected.
If the abolition of child labor leads to the production of fewer
children in a certain section of the population the value of the result
to society, in this phase, will depend on whether or not society wants
that strain proportionately increased. If it is an inferior stock, this
one effect of the abolition of child labor would be eugenic.
Comparing the families whose children work with those whose children do
not, one is likely to conclude that the former are on the average
inferior to the latter. If so, child labor is in this one particular
aspect dysgenic, and its abolition, leading to a lower birth-rate in
this class of the population, will be an advantage.
2. On the filial generation. The obvious result of the abolition of
child labor will be, as is often and graphically told, to give children
a better chance of development. If they are of superior stock, and will
be better parents for not having worked as children (a proviso which
requires substantiation) the abolition of their labor will be of direct
eugenic benefit. Otherwise, its results will be at most indirect; or,
possibly, dysgenic, if they are of undesirable stock, and are enabled to
survive in greater numbers and reproduce. In necessarily passing over
the social and economic aspects of the question, we do not wish it
thought that we advocate child labor for the purpose of killing off an
undesirable stock prematurely. We are only concerned in pointing out
that the effects of child labor are many and various.
The effect of its abolition within a single family further depends on
whether the children who go to work are superior to those who stay at
home. If the strongest and most intelligent children are sent to work
and crippled or killed prematurely, while the weaklings and
feeble-minded are kept at home, brought up on the earnings of the
strong, and enabled to reach maturity and reproduce, then this aspect of
child labor is distinctly dysgenic.
The desirability of prohibiting child labor is generally conceded on
euthenic grounds, and we conclude that its results will on the whole be
eugenic as well, but that they are more complex than is usually
recognized.
COMPULSORY EDUCATION
Whether one favors or rejects compulsory education will probably be
determined by other arguments than those derived from eugenics;
nevertheless there are eugenic aspects of the problem which deserve to
be recognized.
One of the effects of compulsory education is similar to that which
follows the abolition of child labor--namely, that the child is made a
source of expense, not of revenue, to the parent. Not only is the child
unable to work, while at school, but to send him to school involves in
practice dressing him better than would be necessary if he stayed at
home. While it might fit the child to work more gainfully in later
years, yet the years of gain are so long postponed that the parent can
expect to share in but little of it.
These arguments would not affect the well-to-do parent, or the
high-minded parent who was willing or able to make some sacrifice in
order that his children might get as good a start as possible. But they
may well affect the opposite type of parent, with low efficiency and low
ideals. [179] This type of parent, finding that the system of compulsory
education made children a liability, not an immediate asset, would
thereby be led to reduce the size of his family, just as he seems to
have done when child labor was prohibited in England and children ceased
to be a source of revenue. Compulsory education has here, then, a
eugenic effect, in discouraging the reproduction of parents with the
least efficiency and altruism.
If this belief be well founded, it is likely that any measure tending to
decrease the cost of schooling for children will tend to diminish this
effect of compulsory education. Such measures as the free distribution
of text-books, the provision of free lunches at noon, or the extension
to school children of a reduced car-fare, make it easier for the selfish
or inefficient parent to raise children; they cost him less and
therefore he may tend to have more of them. If such were the case, the
measures referred to, despite the euthenic considerations, must be
classified as dysgenic.
In another and quite different way, compulsory education is of service
to eugenics. The educational system should be a sieve, through which all
the children of the country are passed,--or more accurately, a series of
sieves, which will enable the teacher to determine just how far it is
profitable to educate each child so that he may lead a life of the
greatest possible usefulness to the state and happiness to himself.
Obviously such a function would be inadequately discharged, if the
sieve failed to get all the available material; and compulsory education
makes it certain that none will be omitted.
It is very desirable that no child escape inspection, because of the
importance of discovering every individual of exceptional ability or
inability. Since the public educational system has not yet risen to the
need of this systematic mental diagnosis, private philanthropy should
for the present be alert to get appropriate treatment for the unusually
promising individual. In Pittsburgh, a committee of the Civic Club is
seeking youths of this type, who might be obliged to leave school
prematurely for economic reasons, and is aiding them to appropriate
opportunities. Such discriminating selection will probably become much
more widespread and we may hope a recognized function of the schools,
owing to the great public demonstration of psychometry now being
conducted at the cantonments for the mental classification of recruits.
Compulsory education is necessary for this selection.
We conclude that compulsory education, as such, is not only of service
to eugenics through the selection it makes possible, but may serve in a
more unsuspected way by cutting down the birth-rate of inferior
families.
VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE AND TRAINING
In arguments for vocational guidance and education of youth, one does
not often hear eugenics mentioned; yet these measures, if effectively
carried out, seem likely to be of real eugenic value.
The need for as perfect a correlation as possible between income and
eugenic worth, has been already emphasized. It is evident that if a man
gets into the wrong job, a job for which he is not well fitted, he may
make a very poor showing in life, while if properly trained in something
suited to him, his income would have been considerably greater. It will
be a distinct advantage to have superior young people get established
earlier, and this can be done if they are directly taught efficiency in
what they can do best, the boys being fitted for gainful occupations,
and the girls for wifehood and motherhood in addition.
As to the details of vocational guidance, the eugenist is perhaps not
entitled to give much advice; yet it seems likely that a more thorough
study of the inheritance of ability would be of value to the educator.
It was pointed out in Chapter IV that inheritance often seems to be
highly specialized,--a fact which leads to the inference that the son
might often do best in his father's calling or vocation, especially if
his mother comes from a family marked by similar capacities. It is
difficult to say how far the occupation of the son is, in modern
conditions, determined by heredity and how far it is the result of
chance, or the need of taking the first job open, the lack of any
special qualifications for any particular work, or some similar
environmental influence. Miss Perrin investigated 1,550 pairs of fathers
and sons in the English _Dictionary of National Biography_ and an equal
number in the English _Who's Who_. "It seems clear," she concluded,
"that whether we take the present or the long period of the past
embraced by the Dictionary, the environmental influences which induce a
man in this country to follow his father's occupation must have remained
very steady. " She found the coefficient of contingency[180] between
occupation of father and occupation of son in _Who's Who_ to be . 75 and
in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ . 76. For the inheritance of
physical and mental characters, in general, the coefficient would be
about . 5. She thinks, "therefore, we may say that in the choice of a
profession inherited taste counts for about 2/3 and environmental
conditions for about 1/3. "
An examination of 990 seventh and eighth grade boys in the public
schools of St. Paul[181] showed that only 11% of them desired to enter
the occupation of their fathers; there was a pronounced tendency to
choose occupations of a more remunerative or intellectual and less
manual sort than that followed by the father. That this preference
would always determine the ultimate occupation is not to be expected, as
a considerable per cent may fail to show the necessary ability.
While inherited tastes and aptitude for some calling probably should
carry a good deal of weight in vocational guidance, we can not share the
exaggerated view which some sociologists hold about the great waste of
ability through the existence of round pegs in square holes. This
attitude is often expressed in such words as those of E. B. Woods:
"Ability receives its reward only when it is presented with the
opportunities of a fairly favorable environment, _its_ peculiarly
indispensable sort of environment. Naval commanders are not likely to be
developed in the Transvaal, nor literary men and artists in the soft
coal fields of western Pennsylvania. For ten men who succeed as
investigators, inventors, or diplomatists, there may be and probably are
in some communities fifty more who would succeed better under the same
circumstances. "
While there is some truth in this view, it exaggerates the evil by
ignoring the fact that good qualities frequently go together in an
individual. The man of Transvaal who is by force of circumstances kept
from a naval career is likely to distinguish himself as a successful
colonist, and perhaps enrich the world even more than if he had been
brought up in a maritime state and become a naval commander. It may be
that his inherited talent fitted him to be a better naval commander than
anything else; if so, it probably also fitted him to be better at many
other things, than are the majority of men. "Intrinsically good traits
have also good correlatives," physical, mental and moral.
F. A. Woods has brought together the best evidence of this, in his
studies of the royal families of Europe. If the dozen best generals were
selected from the men he has studied, they would of course surpass the
average man enormously in military skill; but, as he points out, they
would also surpass the average man to a very high degree as poets,--or
doubtless as cooks or lawyers, had they given any time to those
occupations. [182]
The above considerations lead to two suggestions for vocational
guidance: (i) it is desirable to ascertain and make use of the child's
inherited capacities as far as possible; but (2) it must not be supposed
that every child inherits the ability to do one thing only, and will
waste his life if he does not happen to get a chance to do that thing.
It is easy to suppose that the man who makes a failure as a paperhanger
might, if he had had the opportunity, have been a great electrical
engineer; it is easy to cite a few cases, such as that of General U. S.
Grant, which seem to lend some color to the theory, but statistical
evidence would indicate it is not the rule. If a man makes a failure as
a paperhanger, it is at least possible that he would have made a failure
of very many things that he might try; and if a man makes a brilliant
success as a paperhanger, or railway engineer, or school teacher, or
chemist, he is a useful citizen who would probably have gained a fair
measure of success in any one of several occupations that he might have
taken up but not in all.
To sum up: vocational guidance and training are likely to be of much
service to eugenics. They may derive direct help from heredity; and
their exponents may also learn that a man who is really good in one
thing is likely to be good in many things, and that a man who fails in
one thing would not necessarily achieve success if he were put in some
other career. One of their greatest services will probably be to put a
lot of boys into skilled trades, for which they are adapted and where
they will succeed, and thus prevent them from yielding to the desire for
a more genteel clerical occupation, in which they will not do more than
earn a bare living. This will assist in bringing about the high
correlation between merit and income which is so much to be desired.
THE MINIMUM WAGE
Legal enactment of a minimum wage is often urged as a measure that would
promote social welfare and race betterment. By minimum wage is to be
understood, according to its advocates, not the wage that will support a
single man, but one that will support a man, wife, and three or four
children. In the United States, the sum necessary for this purpose can
hardly be estimated at less than $2. 50 a day.
A living wage is certainly desirable for every man, but the idea of
giving every man a wage sufficient to support a family can not be
considered eugenic. In the first place, it interferes with the
adjustment of wages to ability, on the necessity of which we have often
insisted. In the second place, it is not desirable that society should
make it possible for every man to support a wife and three children; in
many cases it is desirable that it be made impossible for him to do so.
Eugenically, teaching methods of birth control to the married unskilled
laborer is a sounder way of solving his problems, than subsidizing him
so he can support a large family.
It must be frankly recognized that poverty is in many ways eugenic in
its effect, and that with the spread of birth control among people below
the poverty line, it is certain to be still more eugenic than at
present. It represents an effective, even though a cruel, method of
keeping down the net birth-rate of people who for one reason or another
are not economically efficient; and the element of cruelty, involved in
high infant mortality, will be largely mitigated by birth control. Free
competition may be tempered to the extent of furnishing every man enough
charity to feed him, if he requires charity for that purpose; and to
feed his family, if he already has one; but charity which will allow him
to increase his family, if he is too inefficient to support it by his
own exertions, is rarely a benefit eugenically.
The minimum wage is admittedly not an attempt to pay a man what he is
worth. It is an attempt to make it possible for every man, no matter
what his economic or social value, to support a family. Therefore, in so
far as it would encourage men of inferior quality to have or increase
families, it is unquestionably dysgenic.
MOTHERS' PENSIONS
Half of the states of the Union have already adopted some form of
pension for widowed mothers, and similar measures are being urged in
nearly all remaining states. The earliest of these laws goes back only
to 1911.
In general,[183] these laws apply to mothers who are widows, or in some
cases to those who have lost their means of support through imprisonment
or incapacity of the husband. The maximum age of the child on whose
account allowance is made varies from 14 to 16, in a few cases to 17 or
18. The amount allowed for each child varies in each state,
approximately between the limits of $100 and $200 a year. In most states
the law demands that the mother be a fit person, physically, mentally
and morally to bring up her children, and that it be to their interest
that they remain with her at home instead of being placed at work or
sent to some institution. In all cases considerable latitude is allowed
the administrator of the law,--a juvenile court, or board of county
commissioners, or some body with equivalent powers.
Laws of this character have often been described as being eugenic in
effect, but examination shows little reason for such a characterization.
Since the law applies for the most part to women who have lost their
husbands, it is evident that it is not likely to affect the differential
birth-rate which is of such concern to eugenics. On the whole, mothers'
pensions must be put in the class of work which may be undertaken on
humanitarian grounds, but they are probably slightly dysgenic rather
than eugenic, since they favor the preservation of families which are,
on the whole, of inferior quality, as shown by the lack of relatives
with ability or willingness to help them. On the other hand, they are
not likely to result in the production from these families of more
children than those already in existence.
HOUSING
At present it is sometimes difficult, in the more fashionable quarters
of large cities, to find apartments where families with children are
admitted. In other parts of the city, this difficulty appears to be much
less. Such a situation tends to discourage parenthood, on the part of
young couples who come of good families and desire to live in the part
of the city where their friends are to be found. It is at least likely
to cause postponement of parenthood until they feel financially able to
take a separate house. Here is an influence tending to lower the
birth-rate of young couples who have social aspirations, at least to the
extent of desiring to live in the pleasanter and more reputable part of
their city. Such a hindrance exists to a much less extent, if at all,
for those who have no reason for wanting to live in the fashionable part
of the city. This discrimination of some apartment owners against
families with children would therefore appear to be dysgenic in its
effect.
Married people who wish to live in the more attractive part of a city
should not be penalized. The remedy is to make it illegal to
discriminate against children. It is gratifying to note that recently a
number of apartment houses have been built in New York, especially with
a view to the requirements of children. The movement deserves wide
encouragement. Any apartment house is an unsatisfactory place in which
to bring up children, but since under modern urban conditions it is
inevitable that many children must be brought up in apartments, if they
are brought up at all, the municipality should in its own interests take
steps to ensure that conditions will be as good as possible for them. In
a few cases of model tenements, the favored poor tenants are better off
than the moderately well-to-do. It is essential that the latter be given
a chance to have children and bring them up in comfortable surroundings,
and the provision of suitable apartment houses would be a gain in every
large city.
The growing use of the automobile, which permits a family to live under
pleasant surroundings in the suburbs and yet reach the city daily,
alleviates the housing problem slightly. Increased facilities for rapid
transit are of the utmost importance in placing the city population (a
selected class, it will be remembered) under more favorable conditions
for bringing up their children. Zone rates should be designed to effect
this dispersal of population.
FEMINISM
The word "feminism" might be supposed to characterize a movement which
sought to emphasize the distinction between woman's nature and that of
man to provide for women's special needs. It was so used in early days
on the continent. But at present in England and America it denotes a
movement which is practically the reverse of this; which seeks to
minimize the difference between the two sexes. It may be broadly
described as a movement which seeks to remove all discrimination based
on sex. It is a movement to secure recognition of an equality of the two
sexes. The feminists variously demand that woman be recognized as the
equal of man (1) biologically, (2) politically, (3) economically.
1. Whether or not woman is to be regarded as biologically equal to man
depends on how one uses the word "equal. " If it is meant that woman is
as well adapted to her own particular kind of work as is man to his, the
statement will readily be accepted. Unfortunately, feminists show a
tendency to go beyond this and to minimize differentiation in their
claims of equality. An attempt is made to show that women do not differ
materially from men in the nature of their capacity of mental or
physical achievement. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman makes the logical
application by demanding that little girls' hair be cut short and that
they be prevented from playing with dolls in order that differences
fostered in this way be reduced.
In forming a judgment on this proposition, it must be remembered that
civilization covers not more than 10,000 years out of man's history of
half a million or more. During 490,000 out of the 500,000 years, man was
the hunter and warrior; while woman stayed at home of necessity to bear
and rear the young, to skin the prey, to prepare the food and clothing.
He must have a small knowledge of biology who could suppose that this
long history would not lead to any differentiation of the two sexes;
and the biologist knows that man and woman in some respects differ in
every cell of their bodies: that, as Jacques Loeb says, "Man and woman
are, physiologically, different species. "
But the biologist also knows that sex is a quantitative character. It is
impossible to draw a sharp line and say that those on one side are in
every respect men, and those on the other side in every respect women,
as one might draw a line between goats and sheep. Many women have a
considerable amount of "maleness"; numerous men have distinct feminine
characteristics, physical and mental. There is thus an ill-defined
"intermediate sex," as Edward Carpenter called it, whose size has been
kept down by sexual selection; or better stated there is so much
overlapping that it is a question of different averages with many
individuals of each sex beyond the average of the other sex.
A perusal of Havelock Ellis' book, _Man and Woman_, will leave little
doubt about the fact of sex differentiation, just as it will leave
little doubt that one sex is, in its way, quite as good as the other,
and that to talk of one sex as being inferior is absurd.
It is worth noting that the spread of feminism will reinforce the action
of sexual selection in keeping down the numbers of this "intermediate
sex. " In the past, women who lacked femininity or maternal instinct have
often married because the pressure of public opinion and economic
conditions made it uncomfortable for any woman to remain unmarried. And
they have had children because they could not help it, transmitting to
their daughters their own lack of maternal instinct. Under the new
regime a large proportion of such women do not marry, and accordingly
have few if any children to inherit their defects. Hence the average
level of maternal instinct of the women of America is likely steadily to
rise.
We conclude that any claim of biological equality of the two sexes must
use the word in a figurative sense, not ignoring the differentiation of
the two sexes, as extreme feminists are inclined to do. To this
differentiation we shall return later.
2. Political equality includes the demand for the vote and for the
removal of various legal restrictions, such as have sometimes prevented
a wife from disposing of her own property without the consent of her
husband or such as have made her citizenship follow that of her husband.
In the United States, these legal restrictions are rapidly being
removed, at such a rate that in some states it is now the husband who
has a right to complain of certain legal discriminations.
Equal suffrage is also gaining steadily, but its eugenic aspect is not
wholly clear. Theoretically much is to be said for it, as making use of
woman's large social sympathies and responsibilities and interest in the
family; but in the states where it has been tried, its effects have not
been all that was hoped. Beneficial results are to be expected unless an
objectionably extreme feminism finds support.
In general, the demand for political equality, in a broad sense, seems
to the eugenist to be the most praiseworthy part of the feminist
program. The abolition of those laws, which now discharge women from
positions if they marry or have children, promises to be in principle a
particularly valuable gain.
3. Economic equality is often summed up in the catch phrase "equal pay
for equal work. " If the phrase refers to jobs where women are competing
on piecework with men, no one will object to it. In practice it applies
particularly to two distinct but interlocking demands: (a) that women
should receive the same pay as men for any given occupation--as,
stenography, for example; and (b) that child-bearing should be
recognized as just as much worthy of remuneration as any occupation
which men enter, and should be paid for (by the state) on the same
basis.
At present, there is almost universally a discrimination against women
in commerce and industry. They sometimes get no more than half as much
pay as men for similar grades of employment. But there is for this one
good reason. An employer needs experienced help, and he expects a man to
remain with him and become more valuable. He is, therefore, willing to
pay more because of this anticipation. In hiring a woman, he knows that
she will probably soon leave to marry.
But whatever may be the origin of
this discrimination, it is justified in the last analysis by the fact
that a man is paid as the head of a family, a woman only as an
individual who ordinarily has fewer or no dependents to support. Indeed,
it is largely this feature which, under the law of supply and demand,
has caused women to work for low wages.
It is evident that real economic equality between men and women must be
impossible, if the women are to leave their work for long periods of
time, in order to bear and rear children. It is normally impossible for
a woman to earn her living by competitive labor, at the same time that
she is bearing and rearing children. Either the doctrine of economic
equality is largely illusory, therefore, or else it must be extended to
making motherhood a salaried occupation just as much as mill work or
stenography.
The feminists have almost universally adopted the latter alternative.
They say that the woman who is capable of earning money, and who
abandons wage-earning for motherhood, ought to receive from the state as
nearly as possible what she would have received if she had not had
children; or else they declare that the expense of children should be
borne wholly by the community.
This proposal must be tested by asking whether it would tend to
strengthen and perpetuate the race or not. It is, in effect, a proposal
to have the state pay so much a head for babies. The fundamental
question is whether or not the quality of the babies would be taken into
account. Doubtless the babies of obviously feeble-minded women would be
excluded, but would it be possible for the state to pay liberally for
babies who would grow up to be productive citizens, and to refuse to pay
for babies that would doubtless grow up to be incompetents, dolts,
dullards, laggards or wasters? The scheme would work, eugenically, in
proportion as it is discriminatory and graded.
But the example of legislation in France and England, and the main trend
of popular thought in America, make it quite certain that at present,
and for many years to come, it will be impossible to have babies valued
on the basis of quality rather than mere numbers. It is sometimes
possible to get indirect measures of a eugenic nature passed, and it has
been found possible to secure the passage of direct measures which
prevent reproduction of those who are actually defective. But even the
most optimistic eugenist must feel that, short of the remote future, any
attempt to have the state grade and pay for babies on the basis of their
quality is certain to fail to pass.
The recent action of the municipality of Schonberg, Berlin, is typical.
It is now paying baby bounties at the rate of $12. 50 a head for the
first born, $2. 50 a head for all later born, and no questions asked. It
is to be feared that any success which the feminists may gain in
securing state aid for mothers in America will secure, as in Schonberg,
in England, in France, and in Australia, merely a small uniform sum.
This acts dysgenically because it is a stimulus to married people to
have large families in inverse proportion to their income, and is felt
most by those whose purpose in having children is least approvable.
The married woman of good stock ought to bear four children. For many
reasons these ought to be spaced well apart, preferably not much less
than three years. She must have oversight of these children until they
all reach adolescence. This means a period of about 12 + 13 = 25 years
during which her primary, though by no means her only, concern will be
mothercraft. It is hardly possible and certainly not desirable that she
should support herself outside of the home during this period. As state
support would pretty certainly be indiscriminate and dangerously
dysgenic, it therefore appears that the present custom of having the
father responsible for the support of the family is not only unavoidable
but desirable. If so, it is desirable to avoid reducing the wages of
married men too much by the competition of single women.
To attain this end, without working any injustice to women, it seems
wise to modify their education in general in such a way as to prepare
women for the kinds of work best adapted to her capacities and needs.
Women were long excluded from a higher education, and when they secured
it, they not unnaturally wanted the kind of education men were
receiving,--partly in order to demonstrate that they were not
intellectually inferior to men. Since this demonstration is now
complete, the continuation of duplicate curricula is uncalled for. The
coeducational colleges of the west are already turning away from the old
single curriculum and are providing for the election of more
differentiated courses for women. The separate women's colleges of the
east will doubtless do so eventually, since their own graduates and
students are increasingly discontented with the present narrow and
obsolete ideals. If the higher education of women, and much of the
elementary education, is directed toward differentiating them from men
and giving them distinct occupations (including primarily marriage and
motherhood) instead of training them so the only thing they are capable
of doing is to compete with men for men's jobs, the demand of "equal pay
for equal work" will be less difficult to reconcile with the interests
of the race. In this direction the feminists might find a large and
profitable field for the employment of their energies.
There is good ground for the feminist contention that women should be
liberally educated, that they should not be regarded by men as inferior
creatures, that they should have the opportunity of self-expression in a
richer, freer life than they have had in the past. All these gains can
be made without sacrificing any racial interests; and they must be so
made. The unrest of intelligent women is not to be lessened or removed
by educating them in the belief that they are not different from men and
setting them to work as men in the work of the world. Except where the
work is peculiarly adapted to women or there is a special individual
aptitude, such work will, for the reasons we have set forth, operate
dysgenically and therefore bring about the decadence of the race which
practices it.
The true solution is rather to be sought in recognizing the natural
differentiation of the two sexes and in emphasizing this differentiation
by education. Boys will be taught the nobility of being productive and
of establishing families; girls will have similar ideals held up to them
but will be taught to reach them in a different way, through cultivation
of the intellectual and emotional characters most useful to that
division of labor for which they are supremely adapted, as well as those
that are common to both sexes. The home must not be made a subordinate
interest, as some feminists desire, but it must be made a much richer,
deeper, more satisfying interest than it is too frequently at present.
OLD AGE PENSIONS
Pensions for aged people form an important part of the modern program of
social legislation. What their merits may be in relieving poverty will
not be discussed here. But beyond the direct effect, it is important to
inquire what indirect eugenic effect they would have, as compared with
the present system where the aged are most frequently supported by their
own children when they have failed through lack of thrift or for other
reasons to make provision for their old age.
The ordinary man, dependent on his daily work for a livelihood, can not
easily support his parents and his offspring at the same time. Aid given
to the one must be in some degree at the expense of the other. The
eugenic consequences will depend on what class of man is required to
contribute thus to parental support.
It is at once obvious that superior families will rarely encounter this
problem. The parents will, by their superior earning capacity and the
exercise of thrift and foresight, have provided for the wants of their
old age. A superior man will therefore seldom be under economic pressure
to limit the number of his own children because of the necessity of
supporting his parents. In inferior families, on the other hand, the
parents will have made no adequate provision for their old age. A son
will have to assume their support, and thus reduce the number of his own
children,--a eugenic result. With old age pensions from the state, the
economic pressure would be taken off these inferior families and the
children would thus be encouraged to marry earlier and have more
children,--a dysgenic result.
From this point of view, the most eugenic course would perhaps be to
make the support of parents by children compulsory, in cases where any
support was needed. Such a step would not handicap superior families,
but would hold back the inferior. A contributory system of old age
pensions, for which the money was provided out of the individual's
earnings, and laid aside for his old age, would also be satisfactory. A
system which led to the payment of old age pensions by the state would
be harmful.
The latter system would be evil in still another way because, as is the
case with most social legislation of this type, the funds for carrying
out such a scheme must naturally be furnished by the efficient members
of the community. This adds to their financial burdens and encourages
the young men to postpone marriage longer and to have fewer children
when they do marry,--a dysgenic result.
It appears, therefore, that old age pensions paid by the state would be
dysgenic in a number of ways, encouraging the increase of the inferior
part of the population at the expense of the superior. If old age
pensions are necessary, they should be contributory.
THE SEX HYGIENE MOVEMENT
Sexual morality is thought by some to be substantially synonymous with
eugenics or to be included by it. One of the authors has protested
previously[184] against this confusion of the meaning of the word
"eugenics. " The fallacy of believing that a campaign against sexual
immorality is a campaign for eugenics will be apparent if the
proposition is analyzed.
First, does sexual immorality increase or decrease the marriage rate of
the offenders? We conclude that it reduces the marriage rate. Although
it is true that some individuals might by sexual experience become so
awakened as to be less satisfied with a continent life, and might thus
in some cases be led to marriage, yet this is more than counterbalanced
by the following considerations:
1. The mere consciousness of loss of virginity has led in some sensitive
persons, especially women, to an unwillingness to marry from a sense of
unworthiness. This is not common, yet such cases are known.
2. The loss of reputation has prevented the marriage of the desired
mates. This is not at all uncommon.
3. Venereal infection has led to the abandonment of marriage. This is
especially common.
4. Illicit experiences may have been so disillusioning, owing to the
disaffecting nature of the consorts, that an attitude of pessimism and
misanthropy or misogyny is built up. Such an attitude prevents marriage
not only directly, but also indirectly, since persons with such an
outlook are thereby less attractive to the opposite sex.
5. A taste for sexual variety is built up so that the individual is
unwilling to commit himself to a monogamous union.
6. Occasionally, threat of blackmail by a jilted paramour prevents
marriage by the inability to escape these importunities.
We consider next the relative birth-rate of the married and the
incontinent unmarried. There can not be the slightest doubt that this is
vastly greater in the case of the married. The unmarried have not only
all the incentives of the married to keep down their birth-rate but also
the obvious and powerful incentive of concealment as well.
Passing to the relative death-rate of the illegitimate and legitimate
progeny, the actual data invariably indicate a decided advantage of the
legitimately born. The reasons are too obvious to be retailed.
Now, then, knowing that the racial contribution of the sexually moral is
greater than that of the sexually immoral, we may compare the quality of
the sexually moral and immoral, to get the evolutionary effect.
For this purpose a distinction must be made between the individual who
has been chaste till the normal time of marriage and whose sexual life
is truly monogamous, and that abnormal group who remain chaste and
celibate to an advanced age. These last are not moral in the last
analysis, if they have valuable and needed traits and are fertile,
because in the long run their failure to reproduce affects adversely the
welfare of their group. While the race suffers through the failure of
many of these individuals to contribute progeny, probably this does not
happen, so far as males are concerned, as much as might be supposed, for
such individuals are often innately defective in their instincts or, in
the case of disappointed lovers, have a badly proportioned emotional
equipment, since it leads them into a position so obviously opposed to
race interests.
But, to pass to the essential comparison, that between the sexually
immoral and the sexually moral as limited above, it is necessary first
of all to decide whether monogamy is a desirable and presumably
permanent feature of human society.
We conclude that it is:
1. Because it is spreading at the expense of polygamy even where not
favored by legal interference. The change is most evident in China.
2. In monogamy, sexual selection puts a premium on valuable traits of
character, rather than on mere personal beauty or ability to acquire
wealth; and
3. The greatest amount of happiness is produced by a monogamous system,
since in a polygamous society so many men must remain unmarried and so
many women are dissatisfied with having to share their mates with
others.
Assuming this, then adaptation to the condition of monogamous society
represents race progress. Such a race profits if those who do not comply
with its conditions make a deficient racial contribution. It follows
then that sexual immorality is eugenic in its result for the species and
that if all sexual immorality should cease, an important means of race
progress might be lost. An illustration is the case of the Negro in
America, whose failure to increase more rapidly in number is largely
attributable to the widespread sterility resulting from venereal
infection. [185] Should venereal diseases be eliminated, that race might
be expected to increase in numbers very much faster than the whites.
It may be felt by some that this position would have an immoral effect
upon youth if widely accepted. This need not be feared. On the contrary,
we believe that one of the most powerful factors in ethical culture is
pride due to the consciousness of being one who is fit and worthy.
The traditional view of sexual morality has been to ignore the
selectional aspect here discussed and to stress the alleged
deterioration of the germ-plasm by the direct action of the toxins of
syphilis. The evidence relied upon to demonstrate this action seems to
be vitiated by the possibility that there was, instead, a transmitted
infection of the progeny. This "racial poison" action, since it is so
highly improbable from analogy, can not be credited until it has been
demonstrated in cases where the parents have been indubitably cured.
Is it necessary, then, to retain sexual immorality in order to achieve
race progress? No, because it is only one of many factors contributing
to race progress. Society can mitigate this as well as alcoholism,
disease, infant mortality--all powerful selective factors--without harm,
provided increased efficiency of other selective factors is ensured,
such as the segregation of defectives, more effective sexual selection,
a better correlation of income and ability, and a more eugenic
distribution of family limitation.
TRADES UNIONISM
A dysgenic feature often found in trades unionism will easily be
understood after our discussion of the minimum wage. The union tends to
standardize wages; it tends to fix a wage in a given industry, and
demand that nearly all workers in that classification be paid that wage.
It cannot be denied that some of these workers are much more capable
than others. Artificial interference with a more exact adjustment of
wages to ability therefore penalizes the better workmen and subsidizes
the worse ones. Economic pressure is thereby put on the better men to
have fewer children, and with the worse men encourages more children,
than would be the case if their incomes more nearly represented their
real worth. Payment according to the product, with prizes and bonuses so
much opposed by the unions, is more in accord with the principles of
eugenics.
PROHIBITION
It was shown in Chapter II that the attempt to ban alcoholic beverages
on the ground of direct dysgenic effect is based on dubious evidence.
But the prohibition of the use of liquors, at least those containing
more than 5% alcohol, can be defended on indirect eugenic grounds, as
well as on the familiar grounds of pathology and economics which are
commonly cited.
1. Unless it is present to such a degree as to constitute a neurotic
taint, the desire to be stimulated is not of itself necessarily a bad
thing. This will be particularly clear if the distribution of the
responsiveness to alcoholic stimulus is recalled. Some really valuable
strains, marked by this susceptibility, may be eliminated through the
death of some individuals from debauchery and the penalization of others
in preferential mating; this would be avoided if narcotics were not
available.
2. In selection for eugenic improvement, it is desirable not to have to
select for too many traits at once. If alcoholism could, through
prohibition, be eliminated from consideration, it would just so far
simplify the problem of eugenics.
3. Drunkenness interferes with the effectiveness of means for family
limitation, so that if his alcoholism is not extreme, the drunkard's
family is sometimes larger than it would otherwise be.
On the other hand, prohibition is dysgenic and intemperance is eugenic
in their effect on the species in so far as alcoholism is correlated
with other undesirable characters and brings about the elimination of
undesirable strains. But its action is not sufficiently discriminating
nor decisive; and if the strains have many serious defects, they can
probably be dealt with better in some other, more direct way.
We conclude, then, that, on the whole, prohibition is desirable for
eugenic as well as for other reasons.
PEDAGOGICAL CELIBACY
Whether women are more efficient teachers than men, and whether single
women are more efficient teachers than married women, are disputed
questions which it is not proposed here to consider. Accepting the
present fact, that most of the school teachers in the United States are
unmarried women, it is proper to examine the eugenic consequences of
this condition.
The withdrawal of this large body of women from the career of motherhood
into a celibate career may be desirable if these women are below the
average of the rest of the women of the population in eugenic quality.
But it would hardly be possible to find enough eugenic inferiors to fill
the ranks of teachers, without getting those who are inferior in actual
ability, in patent as well as latent traits. And the idea of placing
education in the hands of such inferior persons is not to be considered.
It is, therefore, inevitable that the teachers are, on the whole,
superior persons eugenically. Their celibacy must be considered highly
detrimental to racial welfare.
But, it may be said, there is a considerable number of women so
deficient in sex feeling or emotional equipment that they are certain
never to marry; they are, nevertheless, persons of intellectual ability.
Let them be the school teachers. This solution is, however, not
acceptable. Many women of the character described undoubtedly exist, but
they are better placed in some other occupation. It is wholly
undesirable that children should be reared under a neuter influence,
which is probably too common already in education.
If women are to teach, then, it must be concluded that on eugenic
grounds preference should be given to married rather than single
teachers, and that the single ones should be encouraged to marry. This
requires (1) that considerable change be made in the education of young
women, so that they shall be fitted for motherhood rather than
exclusively for school teaching as is often the case, and (2) that
social devices be brought into play to aid them in mating--since
undoubtedly a proportion of school teachers are single from the
segregating character of their profession, not from choice, and (3)
provision for employing some women on half-time and (4) increase of the
number of male teachers in high schools.
It is, perhaps, unnecessary to mention a fifth change necessary: that
school boards must be brought to see the undesirability of employing
only unmarried women, and of discharging them, no matter how efficient,
if they marry or have children. The courts must be enabled to uphold
woman's right of marriage and motherhood, instead of, as in some cases
at present, upholding school boards in their denial of this right.
Contracts which prevent women teachers from marrying or discontinuing
their work for marriage should be illegal, and talk about the "moral
obligation" of normal school graduates to teach should be
discountenanced.
Against the proposal to employ married school teachers, two objections
are urged. It is said (1) that for most women school teaching is merely
a temporary occupation, which they take up to pass the few years until
they shall have married. To this it may be replied that the hope of
marriage too often proves illusory to the young woman who enters on the
pedagogical career, because of the lack of opportunities to meet men,
and because the nature of her work is not such as to increase her
attractiveness to men, nor her fitness for home-making. Pedagogy is too
often a sterilizing institution, which takes young women who desire to
marry and impairs their chance of marriage.
Again it will be said (2) that married teachers would lose too much
time from their work; that their primary interests would be in their own
homes instead of in the school; that they could not teach school without
neglecting their own children. These objections fall in the realm of
education, not eugenics, and it can only be said here that the reasons
must be extraordinarily cogent, which will justify the enforcement of
celibacy on so large a body of superior young women as is now engaged in
school teaching.
The magnitude of the problem is not always realized. In 1914 the
Commissioner of education reported that there were, in the United
States, 169,929 men and 537,123 women engaged in teaching. Not less than
half a million women, therefore, are potentially affected by the
institution of pedagogical celibacy.
CHAPTER XIX
RELIGION AND EUGENICS
Man is the only animal with a religion. The conduct of the lower animals
is guided by instinct,[186] and instinct normally works for the benefit
of the species. Any action which is dictated by instinct is likely to
result in the preservation of the species, even at the expense of the
individual which acts, provided there has not been a recent change in
the environment.
But in the human species reason appears, and conduct is no longer
governed by instinct alone. A young man is impelled by instinct, for
instance, to marry. It is to the interests of the species that he marry,
and instinct therefore causes him to desire to marry and to act as he
desires. A lower animal would obey the impulse of instinct without a
moment's hesitation. Not so the man. Reason intervenes and asks, "Is
this really the best thing for you to do now? Would you not better wait
awhile and get a start in your business? Of course marriage would be
agreeable, but you must not be short-sighted. You don't want to assume a
handicap just now. " There is a corresponding reaction among the married
in respect to bearing additional children. The interests of self are
immediate and easily seen, the interests of the species are not so
pressing. In any such conflict between instinct and reason, one must
win; and if reason wins it is in some cases for the immediate benefit of
the individual but at the expense of the species' interests.
Now with reason dominant over instinct in man, there is a grave danger
that with each man consulting his own interests instead of those of the
species, some groups and even races will become exterminated. Along
with reason, therefore, it is necessary that some other forces shall
appear to control reason and give the interests of the species a chance
to be heard along with the interests of the individual.
One such force is religion. Without insisting that this is the only view
which may be taken of the origin of religion, or that this is the only
function of religion, we may yet assert that one of the useful purposes
served by religion is to cause men to adopt lines of conduct that will
be for the good of the race, although it may sacrifice the immediate
good of the individual. [187] Thus if a young Mohammedan be put in the
situation just described, he may decide that it is to his material
interest to postpone marriage. His religion then obtrudes itself, with
quotations from the Prophet to the effect that Hell is peopled with
bachelors. The young man is thereupon moved to marry, even if it does
cause some inconvenience to his business plans. Religion, reinforcing
instinct, has triumphed over reason and gained a victory for the larger
interests of the species, when they conflict with the immediate
interests of the individual.
From this point of view we may, paraphrasing Matthew Arnold, define
religion as _motivated ethics_. Ethics is a knowledge of right conduct,
religion is an agency to produce right conduct. And its working is more
like that of instinct than it is like that of reason. The irreligious
man, testing a proposition by reason alone, may decide that it is to the
interests of all concerned that he should not utter blasphemy. The
orthodox Christian never considers the pros and cons of the question; he
has the Ten Commandments and the teachings of his youth in his mind, and
he refrains from blasphemy in almost the instinctive way that he
refrains from putting his hand on a hot stove.
This chapter proposes primarily to consider how eugenics can be linked
with religion, and specifically the Christian religion; but the problem
is not a simple one, because Christianity is made of diverse elements.
Not only has it undergone some change during the last 1900 years, but it
was founded upon Judaism, which itself involved diverse elements. We
shall undertake to show that eugenics fits in well with Christianity;
but it must fit in with different elements in different ways.
We can distinguish four phases of religion:
1. Charm and taboo, or reward and punishment in the present life. The
believer in these processes thinks that certain acts possess particular
efficacies beyond those evident to his observation and reason; and that
peculiar malignities are to be expected as the consequence of certain
other acts. Perhaps no one in the memory of the tribe has ever tested
one of these acts to find whether the expected result would appear; it
is held as a matter of religious belief that the result would appear,
and the act is therefore avoided.
2. Reward and punishment in a future life after death. Whereas the first
system was supposed to bring immediate reward and punishment as the
result of certain acts, this second system postpones the result to an
after-life. There is in nature a system of reward and punishment which
everyone must have observed because it is part of the universal sequence
of cause and effect; but these two phases of religion carry the idea
still farther; they postulate rewards and punishments of a supernatural
character, over and above those which naturally occur. It is important
to note that in neither of these systems is God essentially involved.
They are in reality independent of the idea of God, since that is called
"luck" in some cases which in others is called the favor or wrath of
God. And again in some cases, one may be damned by a human curse,
although in others this curse of damnation is reserved for divine power.
first place, it is obvious that there are differences in the
achievements of fellow men. These socialists, having refused to accept
the great weight of germinal differences in accounting for the main
differences in achievement, have no alternative but to fall back on the
theory of economic determinism. Further, socialism is essentially a
reform movement; and if one expects to get aid for such a movement, it
is essential that one represent the consequences as highly important.
The doctrine of economic determinism of course furnishes ground for
glowing accounts of the changes that could be made by economic reform,
and therefore fits in well with the needs of the socialist
propagandists. When the failure of many nations to make any use of their
great resources in coal and water power is remembered; when the fact is
recalled that many of the ablest socialist leaders have been the sons of
well-to-do intellectuals who were never pinched by poverty; it must be
believed that the importance of economic determinism in the socialist
mind is caused more by its value for his propaganda purposes than a
weighing of the evidence.
Such are, we believe, the chief grounds on which socialists criticise
the eugenics movement. All of these criticisms should be stimulating,
should lead eugenists to avoid mistakes in program or procedure. But
none of them, we believe, is a serious objection to anything which the
great body of eugenists proposes to do.
What is to be said on the other side? What faults does the eugenist find
with the socialist movement?
For the central principle, the more equitable distribution of wealth, no
discussion is necessary. Most students of eugenics would probably assent
to its general desirability, although there is much room for discussion
as to what constitutes a really equitable division of wealth. In sound
socialist theory, it is to be distributed according to a man's value to
society; but the determination of this value is usually made impossible,
in socialist practice, by the intrusion of the metaphysical and
untenable dogma of equalitarianism.
If one man is by nature as capable as another, and equality of
opportunity[176] can be secured for all, it must follow that one man
will be worth just as much as another; hence the equitable distribution
of wealth would be an equal distribution of wealth, a proposal which
some socialists have made. Most of the living leaders of the socialist
movement certainly recognize its fallacy, but it seems so far to have
been found necessary to lean very far in this direction for the
maintenance of socialism as a movement of class protest.
Now this idea of the equality of human beings is, in every respect that
can be tested, absolutely false, and any movement which depends on it
will either be wrecked or, if successful, will wreck the state which it
tries to operate. It will mean the penalization of real worth and the
endowment of inferiority and incompetence. Eugenists can feel no
sympathy for a doctrine which is so completely at variance with the
facts of human nature.
But if it is admitted that men differ widely, and always must differ, in
ability and worth, then eugenics can be in accord with the socialistic
desire for distribution of wealth according to merit, for this will
make it possible to favor and help perpetuate the valuable strains in
the community and to discourage the inferior strains. T. N. Carver sums
up the argument[177] concisely:
"Distribution according to worth, usefulness or service is the system
which would most facilitate the progress of human adaptation. It would,
in the first place, stimulate each individual by an appeal to his own
self-interest, to make himself as useful as possible to the community.
In the second place, it would leave him perfectly free to labor in the
service of the community for altruistic reasons, if there was any
altruism in his nature. In the third place it would exercise a
beneficial selective influence upon the stock or race, because the
useful members would survive and perpetuate their kind and the useless
and criminal members would be exterminated. "
In so far as socialists rid themselves of their sentimental and Utopian
equalitarianism, the eugenist will join them willingly in a demand that
the distribution of wealth be made to depend as far as feasible on the
value of the individual to society. [178] As to the means by which this
distribution can be made, there will of course be differences of
opinion, to discuss which would be outside the province of this volume.
Fundamentally, eugenics is anti-individualistic and in so far a
socialistic movement, since it seeks a social end involving some degree
of individual subordination, and this fact would be more frequently
recognized if the movement which claims the name of socialist did not so
often allow the wish to believe that a man's environmental change could
eliminate natural inequalities to warp its attitude.
CHILD LABOR
It is often alleged that the abolition of child labor would be a great
eugenic accomplishment; but as is the case with nearly all such
proposals, the actual results are both complex and far-reaching.
The selective effects of child labor obviously operate directly on two
generations: (1) the parental generation and (2) the filial generation,
the children who are at work. The results of these two forms of
selection must be considered separately.
1. On the parental generation. The children who labor mostly come from
poor families, where every child up to the age of economic productivity
is an economic burden. If the children go to work at an early age, the
parents can afford to have more children and probably will, since the
children soon become to some extent an asset rather than a liability.
Child labor thus leads to a higher birth-rate of this class, abolition
of child labor would lead to a lower birth-rate, since the parents could
no longer afford to have so many children.
Karl Pearson has found reason to believe that this result can be
statistically traced in the birth-rate of English working people,--that
a considerable decline in their fecundity, due to voluntary restriction,
began after the passage of each of the laws which restricted child labor
and made children an expense from which no return could be expected.
If the abolition of child labor leads to the production of fewer
children in a certain section of the population the value of the result
to society, in this phase, will depend on whether or not society wants
that strain proportionately increased. If it is an inferior stock, this
one effect of the abolition of child labor would be eugenic.
Comparing the families whose children work with those whose children do
not, one is likely to conclude that the former are on the average
inferior to the latter. If so, child labor is in this one particular
aspect dysgenic, and its abolition, leading to a lower birth-rate in
this class of the population, will be an advantage.
2. On the filial generation. The obvious result of the abolition of
child labor will be, as is often and graphically told, to give children
a better chance of development. If they are of superior stock, and will
be better parents for not having worked as children (a proviso which
requires substantiation) the abolition of their labor will be of direct
eugenic benefit. Otherwise, its results will be at most indirect; or,
possibly, dysgenic, if they are of undesirable stock, and are enabled to
survive in greater numbers and reproduce. In necessarily passing over
the social and economic aspects of the question, we do not wish it
thought that we advocate child labor for the purpose of killing off an
undesirable stock prematurely. We are only concerned in pointing out
that the effects of child labor are many and various.
The effect of its abolition within a single family further depends on
whether the children who go to work are superior to those who stay at
home. If the strongest and most intelligent children are sent to work
and crippled or killed prematurely, while the weaklings and
feeble-minded are kept at home, brought up on the earnings of the
strong, and enabled to reach maturity and reproduce, then this aspect of
child labor is distinctly dysgenic.
The desirability of prohibiting child labor is generally conceded on
euthenic grounds, and we conclude that its results will on the whole be
eugenic as well, but that they are more complex than is usually
recognized.
COMPULSORY EDUCATION
Whether one favors or rejects compulsory education will probably be
determined by other arguments than those derived from eugenics;
nevertheless there are eugenic aspects of the problem which deserve to
be recognized.
One of the effects of compulsory education is similar to that which
follows the abolition of child labor--namely, that the child is made a
source of expense, not of revenue, to the parent. Not only is the child
unable to work, while at school, but to send him to school involves in
practice dressing him better than would be necessary if he stayed at
home. While it might fit the child to work more gainfully in later
years, yet the years of gain are so long postponed that the parent can
expect to share in but little of it.
These arguments would not affect the well-to-do parent, or the
high-minded parent who was willing or able to make some sacrifice in
order that his children might get as good a start as possible. But they
may well affect the opposite type of parent, with low efficiency and low
ideals. [179] This type of parent, finding that the system of compulsory
education made children a liability, not an immediate asset, would
thereby be led to reduce the size of his family, just as he seems to
have done when child labor was prohibited in England and children ceased
to be a source of revenue. Compulsory education has here, then, a
eugenic effect, in discouraging the reproduction of parents with the
least efficiency and altruism.
If this belief be well founded, it is likely that any measure tending to
decrease the cost of schooling for children will tend to diminish this
effect of compulsory education. Such measures as the free distribution
of text-books, the provision of free lunches at noon, or the extension
to school children of a reduced car-fare, make it easier for the selfish
or inefficient parent to raise children; they cost him less and
therefore he may tend to have more of them. If such were the case, the
measures referred to, despite the euthenic considerations, must be
classified as dysgenic.
In another and quite different way, compulsory education is of service
to eugenics. The educational system should be a sieve, through which all
the children of the country are passed,--or more accurately, a series of
sieves, which will enable the teacher to determine just how far it is
profitable to educate each child so that he may lead a life of the
greatest possible usefulness to the state and happiness to himself.
Obviously such a function would be inadequately discharged, if the
sieve failed to get all the available material; and compulsory education
makes it certain that none will be omitted.
It is very desirable that no child escape inspection, because of the
importance of discovering every individual of exceptional ability or
inability. Since the public educational system has not yet risen to the
need of this systematic mental diagnosis, private philanthropy should
for the present be alert to get appropriate treatment for the unusually
promising individual. In Pittsburgh, a committee of the Civic Club is
seeking youths of this type, who might be obliged to leave school
prematurely for economic reasons, and is aiding them to appropriate
opportunities. Such discriminating selection will probably become much
more widespread and we may hope a recognized function of the schools,
owing to the great public demonstration of psychometry now being
conducted at the cantonments for the mental classification of recruits.
Compulsory education is necessary for this selection.
We conclude that compulsory education, as such, is not only of service
to eugenics through the selection it makes possible, but may serve in a
more unsuspected way by cutting down the birth-rate of inferior
families.
VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE AND TRAINING
In arguments for vocational guidance and education of youth, one does
not often hear eugenics mentioned; yet these measures, if effectively
carried out, seem likely to be of real eugenic value.
The need for as perfect a correlation as possible between income and
eugenic worth, has been already emphasized. It is evident that if a man
gets into the wrong job, a job for which he is not well fitted, he may
make a very poor showing in life, while if properly trained in something
suited to him, his income would have been considerably greater. It will
be a distinct advantage to have superior young people get established
earlier, and this can be done if they are directly taught efficiency in
what they can do best, the boys being fitted for gainful occupations,
and the girls for wifehood and motherhood in addition.
As to the details of vocational guidance, the eugenist is perhaps not
entitled to give much advice; yet it seems likely that a more thorough
study of the inheritance of ability would be of value to the educator.
It was pointed out in Chapter IV that inheritance often seems to be
highly specialized,--a fact which leads to the inference that the son
might often do best in his father's calling or vocation, especially if
his mother comes from a family marked by similar capacities. It is
difficult to say how far the occupation of the son is, in modern
conditions, determined by heredity and how far it is the result of
chance, or the need of taking the first job open, the lack of any
special qualifications for any particular work, or some similar
environmental influence. Miss Perrin investigated 1,550 pairs of fathers
and sons in the English _Dictionary of National Biography_ and an equal
number in the English _Who's Who_. "It seems clear," she concluded,
"that whether we take the present or the long period of the past
embraced by the Dictionary, the environmental influences which induce a
man in this country to follow his father's occupation must have remained
very steady. " She found the coefficient of contingency[180] between
occupation of father and occupation of son in _Who's Who_ to be . 75 and
in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ . 76. For the inheritance of
physical and mental characters, in general, the coefficient would be
about . 5. She thinks, "therefore, we may say that in the choice of a
profession inherited taste counts for about 2/3 and environmental
conditions for about 1/3. "
An examination of 990 seventh and eighth grade boys in the public
schools of St. Paul[181] showed that only 11% of them desired to enter
the occupation of their fathers; there was a pronounced tendency to
choose occupations of a more remunerative or intellectual and less
manual sort than that followed by the father. That this preference
would always determine the ultimate occupation is not to be expected, as
a considerable per cent may fail to show the necessary ability.
While inherited tastes and aptitude for some calling probably should
carry a good deal of weight in vocational guidance, we can not share the
exaggerated view which some sociologists hold about the great waste of
ability through the existence of round pegs in square holes. This
attitude is often expressed in such words as those of E. B. Woods:
"Ability receives its reward only when it is presented with the
opportunities of a fairly favorable environment, _its_ peculiarly
indispensable sort of environment. Naval commanders are not likely to be
developed in the Transvaal, nor literary men and artists in the soft
coal fields of western Pennsylvania. For ten men who succeed as
investigators, inventors, or diplomatists, there may be and probably are
in some communities fifty more who would succeed better under the same
circumstances. "
While there is some truth in this view, it exaggerates the evil by
ignoring the fact that good qualities frequently go together in an
individual. The man of Transvaal who is by force of circumstances kept
from a naval career is likely to distinguish himself as a successful
colonist, and perhaps enrich the world even more than if he had been
brought up in a maritime state and become a naval commander. It may be
that his inherited talent fitted him to be a better naval commander than
anything else; if so, it probably also fitted him to be better at many
other things, than are the majority of men. "Intrinsically good traits
have also good correlatives," physical, mental and moral.
F. A. Woods has brought together the best evidence of this, in his
studies of the royal families of Europe. If the dozen best generals were
selected from the men he has studied, they would of course surpass the
average man enormously in military skill; but, as he points out, they
would also surpass the average man to a very high degree as poets,--or
doubtless as cooks or lawyers, had they given any time to those
occupations. [182]
The above considerations lead to two suggestions for vocational
guidance: (i) it is desirable to ascertain and make use of the child's
inherited capacities as far as possible; but (2) it must not be supposed
that every child inherits the ability to do one thing only, and will
waste his life if he does not happen to get a chance to do that thing.
It is easy to suppose that the man who makes a failure as a paperhanger
might, if he had had the opportunity, have been a great electrical
engineer; it is easy to cite a few cases, such as that of General U. S.
Grant, which seem to lend some color to the theory, but statistical
evidence would indicate it is not the rule. If a man makes a failure as
a paperhanger, it is at least possible that he would have made a failure
of very many things that he might try; and if a man makes a brilliant
success as a paperhanger, or railway engineer, or school teacher, or
chemist, he is a useful citizen who would probably have gained a fair
measure of success in any one of several occupations that he might have
taken up but not in all.
To sum up: vocational guidance and training are likely to be of much
service to eugenics. They may derive direct help from heredity; and
their exponents may also learn that a man who is really good in one
thing is likely to be good in many things, and that a man who fails in
one thing would not necessarily achieve success if he were put in some
other career. One of their greatest services will probably be to put a
lot of boys into skilled trades, for which they are adapted and where
they will succeed, and thus prevent them from yielding to the desire for
a more genteel clerical occupation, in which they will not do more than
earn a bare living. This will assist in bringing about the high
correlation between merit and income which is so much to be desired.
THE MINIMUM WAGE
Legal enactment of a minimum wage is often urged as a measure that would
promote social welfare and race betterment. By minimum wage is to be
understood, according to its advocates, not the wage that will support a
single man, but one that will support a man, wife, and three or four
children. In the United States, the sum necessary for this purpose can
hardly be estimated at less than $2. 50 a day.
A living wage is certainly desirable for every man, but the idea of
giving every man a wage sufficient to support a family can not be
considered eugenic. In the first place, it interferes with the
adjustment of wages to ability, on the necessity of which we have often
insisted. In the second place, it is not desirable that society should
make it possible for every man to support a wife and three children; in
many cases it is desirable that it be made impossible for him to do so.
Eugenically, teaching methods of birth control to the married unskilled
laborer is a sounder way of solving his problems, than subsidizing him
so he can support a large family.
It must be frankly recognized that poverty is in many ways eugenic in
its effect, and that with the spread of birth control among people below
the poverty line, it is certain to be still more eugenic than at
present. It represents an effective, even though a cruel, method of
keeping down the net birth-rate of people who for one reason or another
are not economically efficient; and the element of cruelty, involved in
high infant mortality, will be largely mitigated by birth control. Free
competition may be tempered to the extent of furnishing every man enough
charity to feed him, if he requires charity for that purpose; and to
feed his family, if he already has one; but charity which will allow him
to increase his family, if he is too inefficient to support it by his
own exertions, is rarely a benefit eugenically.
The minimum wage is admittedly not an attempt to pay a man what he is
worth. It is an attempt to make it possible for every man, no matter
what his economic or social value, to support a family. Therefore, in so
far as it would encourage men of inferior quality to have or increase
families, it is unquestionably dysgenic.
MOTHERS' PENSIONS
Half of the states of the Union have already adopted some form of
pension for widowed mothers, and similar measures are being urged in
nearly all remaining states. The earliest of these laws goes back only
to 1911.
In general,[183] these laws apply to mothers who are widows, or in some
cases to those who have lost their means of support through imprisonment
or incapacity of the husband. The maximum age of the child on whose
account allowance is made varies from 14 to 16, in a few cases to 17 or
18. The amount allowed for each child varies in each state,
approximately between the limits of $100 and $200 a year. In most states
the law demands that the mother be a fit person, physically, mentally
and morally to bring up her children, and that it be to their interest
that they remain with her at home instead of being placed at work or
sent to some institution. In all cases considerable latitude is allowed
the administrator of the law,--a juvenile court, or board of county
commissioners, or some body with equivalent powers.
Laws of this character have often been described as being eugenic in
effect, but examination shows little reason for such a characterization.
Since the law applies for the most part to women who have lost their
husbands, it is evident that it is not likely to affect the differential
birth-rate which is of such concern to eugenics. On the whole, mothers'
pensions must be put in the class of work which may be undertaken on
humanitarian grounds, but they are probably slightly dysgenic rather
than eugenic, since they favor the preservation of families which are,
on the whole, of inferior quality, as shown by the lack of relatives
with ability or willingness to help them. On the other hand, they are
not likely to result in the production from these families of more
children than those already in existence.
HOUSING
At present it is sometimes difficult, in the more fashionable quarters
of large cities, to find apartments where families with children are
admitted. In other parts of the city, this difficulty appears to be much
less. Such a situation tends to discourage parenthood, on the part of
young couples who come of good families and desire to live in the part
of the city where their friends are to be found. It is at least likely
to cause postponement of parenthood until they feel financially able to
take a separate house. Here is an influence tending to lower the
birth-rate of young couples who have social aspirations, at least to the
extent of desiring to live in the pleasanter and more reputable part of
their city. Such a hindrance exists to a much less extent, if at all,
for those who have no reason for wanting to live in the fashionable part
of the city. This discrimination of some apartment owners against
families with children would therefore appear to be dysgenic in its
effect.
Married people who wish to live in the more attractive part of a city
should not be penalized. The remedy is to make it illegal to
discriminate against children. It is gratifying to note that recently a
number of apartment houses have been built in New York, especially with
a view to the requirements of children. The movement deserves wide
encouragement. Any apartment house is an unsatisfactory place in which
to bring up children, but since under modern urban conditions it is
inevitable that many children must be brought up in apartments, if they
are brought up at all, the municipality should in its own interests take
steps to ensure that conditions will be as good as possible for them. In
a few cases of model tenements, the favored poor tenants are better off
than the moderately well-to-do. It is essential that the latter be given
a chance to have children and bring them up in comfortable surroundings,
and the provision of suitable apartment houses would be a gain in every
large city.
The growing use of the automobile, which permits a family to live under
pleasant surroundings in the suburbs and yet reach the city daily,
alleviates the housing problem slightly. Increased facilities for rapid
transit are of the utmost importance in placing the city population (a
selected class, it will be remembered) under more favorable conditions
for bringing up their children. Zone rates should be designed to effect
this dispersal of population.
FEMINISM
The word "feminism" might be supposed to characterize a movement which
sought to emphasize the distinction between woman's nature and that of
man to provide for women's special needs. It was so used in early days
on the continent. But at present in England and America it denotes a
movement which is practically the reverse of this; which seeks to
minimize the difference between the two sexes. It may be broadly
described as a movement which seeks to remove all discrimination based
on sex. It is a movement to secure recognition of an equality of the two
sexes. The feminists variously demand that woman be recognized as the
equal of man (1) biologically, (2) politically, (3) economically.
1. Whether or not woman is to be regarded as biologically equal to man
depends on how one uses the word "equal. " If it is meant that woman is
as well adapted to her own particular kind of work as is man to his, the
statement will readily be accepted. Unfortunately, feminists show a
tendency to go beyond this and to minimize differentiation in their
claims of equality. An attempt is made to show that women do not differ
materially from men in the nature of their capacity of mental or
physical achievement. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman makes the logical
application by demanding that little girls' hair be cut short and that
they be prevented from playing with dolls in order that differences
fostered in this way be reduced.
In forming a judgment on this proposition, it must be remembered that
civilization covers not more than 10,000 years out of man's history of
half a million or more. During 490,000 out of the 500,000 years, man was
the hunter and warrior; while woman stayed at home of necessity to bear
and rear the young, to skin the prey, to prepare the food and clothing.
He must have a small knowledge of biology who could suppose that this
long history would not lead to any differentiation of the two sexes;
and the biologist knows that man and woman in some respects differ in
every cell of their bodies: that, as Jacques Loeb says, "Man and woman
are, physiologically, different species. "
But the biologist also knows that sex is a quantitative character. It is
impossible to draw a sharp line and say that those on one side are in
every respect men, and those on the other side in every respect women,
as one might draw a line between goats and sheep. Many women have a
considerable amount of "maleness"; numerous men have distinct feminine
characteristics, physical and mental. There is thus an ill-defined
"intermediate sex," as Edward Carpenter called it, whose size has been
kept down by sexual selection; or better stated there is so much
overlapping that it is a question of different averages with many
individuals of each sex beyond the average of the other sex.
A perusal of Havelock Ellis' book, _Man and Woman_, will leave little
doubt about the fact of sex differentiation, just as it will leave
little doubt that one sex is, in its way, quite as good as the other,
and that to talk of one sex as being inferior is absurd.
It is worth noting that the spread of feminism will reinforce the action
of sexual selection in keeping down the numbers of this "intermediate
sex. " In the past, women who lacked femininity or maternal instinct have
often married because the pressure of public opinion and economic
conditions made it uncomfortable for any woman to remain unmarried. And
they have had children because they could not help it, transmitting to
their daughters their own lack of maternal instinct. Under the new
regime a large proportion of such women do not marry, and accordingly
have few if any children to inherit their defects. Hence the average
level of maternal instinct of the women of America is likely steadily to
rise.
We conclude that any claim of biological equality of the two sexes must
use the word in a figurative sense, not ignoring the differentiation of
the two sexes, as extreme feminists are inclined to do. To this
differentiation we shall return later.
2. Political equality includes the demand for the vote and for the
removal of various legal restrictions, such as have sometimes prevented
a wife from disposing of her own property without the consent of her
husband or such as have made her citizenship follow that of her husband.
In the United States, these legal restrictions are rapidly being
removed, at such a rate that in some states it is now the husband who
has a right to complain of certain legal discriminations.
Equal suffrage is also gaining steadily, but its eugenic aspect is not
wholly clear. Theoretically much is to be said for it, as making use of
woman's large social sympathies and responsibilities and interest in the
family; but in the states where it has been tried, its effects have not
been all that was hoped. Beneficial results are to be expected unless an
objectionably extreme feminism finds support.
In general, the demand for political equality, in a broad sense, seems
to the eugenist to be the most praiseworthy part of the feminist
program. The abolition of those laws, which now discharge women from
positions if they marry or have children, promises to be in principle a
particularly valuable gain.
3. Economic equality is often summed up in the catch phrase "equal pay
for equal work. " If the phrase refers to jobs where women are competing
on piecework with men, no one will object to it. In practice it applies
particularly to two distinct but interlocking demands: (a) that women
should receive the same pay as men for any given occupation--as,
stenography, for example; and (b) that child-bearing should be
recognized as just as much worthy of remuneration as any occupation
which men enter, and should be paid for (by the state) on the same
basis.
At present, there is almost universally a discrimination against women
in commerce and industry. They sometimes get no more than half as much
pay as men for similar grades of employment. But there is for this one
good reason. An employer needs experienced help, and he expects a man to
remain with him and become more valuable. He is, therefore, willing to
pay more because of this anticipation. In hiring a woman, he knows that
she will probably soon leave to marry.
But whatever may be the origin of
this discrimination, it is justified in the last analysis by the fact
that a man is paid as the head of a family, a woman only as an
individual who ordinarily has fewer or no dependents to support. Indeed,
it is largely this feature which, under the law of supply and demand,
has caused women to work for low wages.
It is evident that real economic equality between men and women must be
impossible, if the women are to leave their work for long periods of
time, in order to bear and rear children. It is normally impossible for
a woman to earn her living by competitive labor, at the same time that
she is bearing and rearing children. Either the doctrine of economic
equality is largely illusory, therefore, or else it must be extended to
making motherhood a salaried occupation just as much as mill work or
stenography.
The feminists have almost universally adopted the latter alternative.
They say that the woman who is capable of earning money, and who
abandons wage-earning for motherhood, ought to receive from the state as
nearly as possible what she would have received if she had not had
children; or else they declare that the expense of children should be
borne wholly by the community.
This proposal must be tested by asking whether it would tend to
strengthen and perpetuate the race or not. It is, in effect, a proposal
to have the state pay so much a head for babies. The fundamental
question is whether or not the quality of the babies would be taken into
account. Doubtless the babies of obviously feeble-minded women would be
excluded, but would it be possible for the state to pay liberally for
babies who would grow up to be productive citizens, and to refuse to pay
for babies that would doubtless grow up to be incompetents, dolts,
dullards, laggards or wasters? The scheme would work, eugenically, in
proportion as it is discriminatory and graded.
But the example of legislation in France and England, and the main trend
of popular thought in America, make it quite certain that at present,
and for many years to come, it will be impossible to have babies valued
on the basis of quality rather than mere numbers. It is sometimes
possible to get indirect measures of a eugenic nature passed, and it has
been found possible to secure the passage of direct measures which
prevent reproduction of those who are actually defective. But even the
most optimistic eugenist must feel that, short of the remote future, any
attempt to have the state grade and pay for babies on the basis of their
quality is certain to fail to pass.
The recent action of the municipality of Schonberg, Berlin, is typical.
It is now paying baby bounties at the rate of $12. 50 a head for the
first born, $2. 50 a head for all later born, and no questions asked. It
is to be feared that any success which the feminists may gain in
securing state aid for mothers in America will secure, as in Schonberg,
in England, in France, and in Australia, merely a small uniform sum.
This acts dysgenically because it is a stimulus to married people to
have large families in inverse proportion to their income, and is felt
most by those whose purpose in having children is least approvable.
The married woman of good stock ought to bear four children. For many
reasons these ought to be spaced well apart, preferably not much less
than three years. She must have oversight of these children until they
all reach adolescence. This means a period of about 12 + 13 = 25 years
during which her primary, though by no means her only, concern will be
mothercraft. It is hardly possible and certainly not desirable that she
should support herself outside of the home during this period. As state
support would pretty certainly be indiscriminate and dangerously
dysgenic, it therefore appears that the present custom of having the
father responsible for the support of the family is not only unavoidable
but desirable. If so, it is desirable to avoid reducing the wages of
married men too much by the competition of single women.
To attain this end, without working any injustice to women, it seems
wise to modify their education in general in such a way as to prepare
women for the kinds of work best adapted to her capacities and needs.
Women were long excluded from a higher education, and when they secured
it, they not unnaturally wanted the kind of education men were
receiving,--partly in order to demonstrate that they were not
intellectually inferior to men. Since this demonstration is now
complete, the continuation of duplicate curricula is uncalled for. The
coeducational colleges of the west are already turning away from the old
single curriculum and are providing for the election of more
differentiated courses for women. The separate women's colleges of the
east will doubtless do so eventually, since their own graduates and
students are increasingly discontented with the present narrow and
obsolete ideals. If the higher education of women, and much of the
elementary education, is directed toward differentiating them from men
and giving them distinct occupations (including primarily marriage and
motherhood) instead of training them so the only thing they are capable
of doing is to compete with men for men's jobs, the demand of "equal pay
for equal work" will be less difficult to reconcile with the interests
of the race. In this direction the feminists might find a large and
profitable field for the employment of their energies.
There is good ground for the feminist contention that women should be
liberally educated, that they should not be regarded by men as inferior
creatures, that they should have the opportunity of self-expression in a
richer, freer life than they have had in the past. All these gains can
be made without sacrificing any racial interests; and they must be so
made. The unrest of intelligent women is not to be lessened or removed
by educating them in the belief that they are not different from men and
setting them to work as men in the work of the world. Except where the
work is peculiarly adapted to women or there is a special individual
aptitude, such work will, for the reasons we have set forth, operate
dysgenically and therefore bring about the decadence of the race which
practices it.
The true solution is rather to be sought in recognizing the natural
differentiation of the two sexes and in emphasizing this differentiation
by education. Boys will be taught the nobility of being productive and
of establishing families; girls will have similar ideals held up to them
but will be taught to reach them in a different way, through cultivation
of the intellectual and emotional characters most useful to that
division of labor for which they are supremely adapted, as well as those
that are common to both sexes. The home must not be made a subordinate
interest, as some feminists desire, but it must be made a much richer,
deeper, more satisfying interest than it is too frequently at present.
OLD AGE PENSIONS
Pensions for aged people form an important part of the modern program of
social legislation. What their merits may be in relieving poverty will
not be discussed here. But beyond the direct effect, it is important to
inquire what indirect eugenic effect they would have, as compared with
the present system where the aged are most frequently supported by their
own children when they have failed through lack of thrift or for other
reasons to make provision for their old age.
The ordinary man, dependent on his daily work for a livelihood, can not
easily support his parents and his offspring at the same time. Aid given
to the one must be in some degree at the expense of the other. The
eugenic consequences will depend on what class of man is required to
contribute thus to parental support.
It is at once obvious that superior families will rarely encounter this
problem. The parents will, by their superior earning capacity and the
exercise of thrift and foresight, have provided for the wants of their
old age. A superior man will therefore seldom be under economic pressure
to limit the number of his own children because of the necessity of
supporting his parents. In inferior families, on the other hand, the
parents will have made no adequate provision for their old age. A son
will have to assume their support, and thus reduce the number of his own
children,--a eugenic result. With old age pensions from the state, the
economic pressure would be taken off these inferior families and the
children would thus be encouraged to marry earlier and have more
children,--a dysgenic result.
From this point of view, the most eugenic course would perhaps be to
make the support of parents by children compulsory, in cases where any
support was needed. Such a step would not handicap superior families,
but would hold back the inferior. A contributory system of old age
pensions, for which the money was provided out of the individual's
earnings, and laid aside for his old age, would also be satisfactory. A
system which led to the payment of old age pensions by the state would
be harmful.
The latter system would be evil in still another way because, as is the
case with most social legislation of this type, the funds for carrying
out such a scheme must naturally be furnished by the efficient members
of the community. This adds to their financial burdens and encourages
the young men to postpone marriage longer and to have fewer children
when they do marry,--a dysgenic result.
It appears, therefore, that old age pensions paid by the state would be
dysgenic in a number of ways, encouraging the increase of the inferior
part of the population at the expense of the superior. If old age
pensions are necessary, they should be contributory.
THE SEX HYGIENE MOVEMENT
Sexual morality is thought by some to be substantially synonymous with
eugenics or to be included by it. One of the authors has protested
previously[184] against this confusion of the meaning of the word
"eugenics. " The fallacy of believing that a campaign against sexual
immorality is a campaign for eugenics will be apparent if the
proposition is analyzed.
First, does sexual immorality increase or decrease the marriage rate of
the offenders? We conclude that it reduces the marriage rate. Although
it is true that some individuals might by sexual experience become so
awakened as to be less satisfied with a continent life, and might thus
in some cases be led to marriage, yet this is more than counterbalanced
by the following considerations:
1. The mere consciousness of loss of virginity has led in some sensitive
persons, especially women, to an unwillingness to marry from a sense of
unworthiness. This is not common, yet such cases are known.
2. The loss of reputation has prevented the marriage of the desired
mates. This is not at all uncommon.
3. Venereal infection has led to the abandonment of marriage. This is
especially common.
4. Illicit experiences may have been so disillusioning, owing to the
disaffecting nature of the consorts, that an attitude of pessimism and
misanthropy or misogyny is built up. Such an attitude prevents marriage
not only directly, but also indirectly, since persons with such an
outlook are thereby less attractive to the opposite sex.
5. A taste for sexual variety is built up so that the individual is
unwilling to commit himself to a monogamous union.
6. Occasionally, threat of blackmail by a jilted paramour prevents
marriage by the inability to escape these importunities.
We consider next the relative birth-rate of the married and the
incontinent unmarried. There can not be the slightest doubt that this is
vastly greater in the case of the married. The unmarried have not only
all the incentives of the married to keep down their birth-rate but also
the obvious and powerful incentive of concealment as well.
Passing to the relative death-rate of the illegitimate and legitimate
progeny, the actual data invariably indicate a decided advantage of the
legitimately born. The reasons are too obvious to be retailed.
Now, then, knowing that the racial contribution of the sexually moral is
greater than that of the sexually immoral, we may compare the quality of
the sexually moral and immoral, to get the evolutionary effect.
For this purpose a distinction must be made between the individual who
has been chaste till the normal time of marriage and whose sexual life
is truly monogamous, and that abnormal group who remain chaste and
celibate to an advanced age. These last are not moral in the last
analysis, if they have valuable and needed traits and are fertile,
because in the long run their failure to reproduce affects adversely the
welfare of their group. While the race suffers through the failure of
many of these individuals to contribute progeny, probably this does not
happen, so far as males are concerned, as much as might be supposed, for
such individuals are often innately defective in their instincts or, in
the case of disappointed lovers, have a badly proportioned emotional
equipment, since it leads them into a position so obviously opposed to
race interests.
But, to pass to the essential comparison, that between the sexually
immoral and the sexually moral as limited above, it is necessary first
of all to decide whether monogamy is a desirable and presumably
permanent feature of human society.
We conclude that it is:
1. Because it is spreading at the expense of polygamy even where not
favored by legal interference. The change is most evident in China.
2. In monogamy, sexual selection puts a premium on valuable traits of
character, rather than on mere personal beauty or ability to acquire
wealth; and
3. The greatest amount of happiness is produced by a monogamous system,
since in a polygamous society so many men must remain unmarried and so
many women are dissatisfied with having to share their mates with
others.
Assuming this, then adaptation to the condition of monogamous society
represents race progress. Such a race profits if those who do not comply
with its conditions make a deficient racial contribution. It follows
then that sexual immorality is eugenic in its result for the species and
that if all sexual immorality should cease, an important means of race
progress might be lost. An illustration is the case of the Negro in
America, whose failure to increase more rapidly in number is largely
attributable to the widespread sterility resulting from venereal
infection. [185] Should venereal diseases be eliminated, that race might
be expected to increase in numbers very much faster than the whites.
It may be felt by some that this position would have an immoral effect
upon youth if widely accepted. This need not be feared. On the contrary,
we believe that one of the most powerful factors in ethical culture is
pride due to the consciousness of being one who is fit and worthy.
The traditional view of sexual morality has been to ignore the
selectional aspect here discussed and to stress the alleged
deterioration of the germ-plasm by the direct action of the toxins of
syphilis. The evidence relied upon to demonstrate this action seems to
be vitiated by the possibility that there was, instead, a transmitted
infection of the progeny. This "racial poison" action, since it is so
highly improbable from analogy, can not be credited until it has been
demonstrated in cases where the parents have been indubitably cured.
Is it necessary, then, to retain sexual immorality in order to achieve
race progress? No, because it is only one of many factors contributing
to race progress. Society can mitigate this as well as alcoholism,
disease, infant mortality--all powerful selective factors--without harm,
provided increased efficiency of other selective factors is ensured,
such as the segregation of defectives, more effective sexual selection,
a better correlation of income and ability, and a more eugenic
distribution of family limitation.
TRADES UNIONISM
A dysgenic feature often found in trades unionism will easily be
understood after our discussion of the minimum wage. The union tends to
standardize wages; it tends to fix a wage in a given industry, and
demand that nearly all workers in that classification be paid that wage.
It cannot be denied that some of these workers are much more capable
than others. Artificial interference with a more exact adjustment of
wages to ability therefore penalizes the better workmen and subsidizes
the worse ones. Economic pressure is thereby put on the better men to
have fewer children, and with the worse men encourages more children,
than would be the case if their incomes more nearly represented their
real worth. Payment according to the product, with prizes and bonuses so
much opposed by the unions, is more in accord with the principles of
eugenics.
PROHIBITION
It was shown in Chapter II that the attempt to ban alcoholic beverages
on the ground of direct dysgenic effect is based on dubious evidence.
But the prohibition of the use of liquors, at least those containing
more than 5% alcohol, can be defended on indirect eugenic grounds, as
well as on the familiar grounds of pathology and economics which are
commonly cited.
1. Unless it is present to such a degree as to constitute a neurotic
taint, the desire to be stimulated is not of itself necessarily a bad
thing. This will be particularly clear if the distribution of the
responsiveness to alcoholic stimulus is recalled. Some really valuable
strains, marked by this susceptibility, may be eliminated through the
death of some individuals from debauchery and the penalization of others
in preferential mating; this would be avoided if narcotics were not
available.
2. In selection for eugenic improvement, it is desirable not to have to
select for too many traits at once. If alcoholism could, through
prohibition, be eliminated from consideration, it would just so far
simplify the problem of eugenics.
3. Drunkenness interferes with the effectiveness of means for family
limitation, so that if his alcoholism is not extreme, the drunkard's
family is sometimes larger than it would otherwise be.
On the other hand, prohibition is dysgenic and intemperance is eugenic
in their effect on the species in so far as alcoholism is correlated
with other undesirable characters and brings about the elimination of
undesirable strains. But its action is not sufficiently discriminating
nor decisive; and if the strains have many serious defects, they can
probably be dealt with better in some other, more direct way.
We conclude, then, that, on the whole, prohibition is desirable for
eugenic as well as for other reasons.
PEDAGOGICAL CELIBACY
Whether women are more efficient teachers than men, and whether single
women are more efficient teachers than married women, are disputed
questions which it is not proposed here to consider. Accepting the
present fact, that most of the school teachers in the United States are
unmarried women, it is proper to examine the eugenic consequences of
this condition.
The withdrawal of this large body of women from the career of motherhood
into a celibate career may be desirable if these women are below the
average of the rest of the women of the population in eugenic quality.
But it would hardly be possible to find enough eugenic inferiors to fill
the ranks of teachers, without getting those who are inferior in actual
ability, in patent as well as latent traits. And the idea of placing
education in the hands of such inferior persons is not to be considered.
It is, therefore, inevitable that the teachers are, on the whole,
superior persons eugenically. Their celibacy must be considered highly
detrimental to racial welfare.
But, it may be said, there is a considerable number of women so
deficient in sex feeling or emotional equipment that they are certain
never to marry; they are, nevertheless, persons of intellectual ability.
Let them be the school teachers. This solution is, however, not
acceptable. Many women of the character described undoubtedly exist, but
they are better placed in some other occupation. It is wholly
undesirable that children should be reared under a neuter influence,
which is probably too common already in education.
If women are to teach, then, it must be concluded that on eugenic
grounds preference should be given to married rather than single
teachers, and that the single ones should be encouraged to marry. This
requires (1) that considerable change be made in the education of young
women, so that they shall be fitted for motherhood rather than
exclusively for school teaching as is often the case, and (2) that
social devices be brought into play to aid them in mating--since
undoubtedly a proportion of school teachers are single from the
segregating character of their profession, not from choice, and (3)
provision for employing some women on half-time and (4) increase of the
number of male teachers in high schools.
It is, perhaps, unnecessary to mention a fifth change necessary: that
school boards must be brought to see the undesirability of employing
only unmarried women, and of discharging them, no matter how efficient,
if they marry or have children. The courts must be enabled to uphold
woman's right of marriage and motherhood, instead of, as in some cases
at present, upholding school boards in their denial of this right.
Contracts which prevent women teachers from marrying or discontinuing
their work for marriage should be illegal, and talk about the "moral
obligation" of normal school graduates to teach should be
discountenanced.
Against the proposal to employ married school teachers, two objections
are urged. It is said (1) that for most women school teaching is merely
a temporary occupation, which they take up to pass the few years until
they shall have married. To this it may be replied that the hope of
marriage too often proves illusory to the young woman who enters on the
pedagogical career, because of the lack of opportunities to meet men,
and because the nature of her work is not such as to increase her
attractiveness to men, nor her fitness for home-making. Pedagogy is too
often a sterilizing institution, which takes young women who desire to
marry and impairs their chance of marriage.
Again it will be said (2) that married teachers would lose too much
time from their work; that their primary interests would be in their own
homes instead of in the school; that they could not teach school without
neglecting their own children. These objections fall in the realm of
education, not eugenics, and it can only be said here that the reasons
must be extraordinarily cogent, which will justify the enforcement of
celibacy on so large a body of superior young women as is now engaged in
school teaching.
The magnitude of the problem is not always realized. In 1914 the
Commissioner of education reported that there were, in the United
States, 169,929 men and 537,123 women engaged in teaching. Not less than
half a million women, therefore, are potentially affected by the
institution of pedagogical celibacy.
CHAPTER XIX
RELIGION AND EUGENICS
Man is the only animal with a religion. The conduct of the lower animals
is guided by instinct,[186] and instinct normally works for the benefit
of the species. Any action which is dictated by instinct is likely to
result in the preservation of the species, even at the expense of the
individual which acts, provided there has not been a recent change in
the environment.
But in the human species reason appears, and conduct is no longer
governed by instinct alone. A young man is impelled by instinct, for
instance, to marry. It is to the interests of the species that he marry,
and instinct therefore causes him to desire to marry and to act as he
desires. A lower animal would obey the impulse of instinct without a
moment's hesitation. Not so the man. Reason intervenes and asks, "Is
this really the best thing for you to do now? Would you not better wait
awhile and get a start in your business? Of course marriage would be
agreeable, but you must not be short-sighted. You don't want to assume a
handicap just now. " There is a corresponding reaction among the married
in respect to bearing additional children. The interests of self are
immediate and easily seen, the interests of the species are not so
pressing. In any such conflict between instinct and reason, one must
win; and if reason wins it is in some cases for the immediate benefit of
the individual but at the expense of the species' interests.
Now with reason dominant over instinct in man, there is a grave danger
that with each man consulting his own interests instead of those of the
species, some groups and even races will become exterminated. Along
with reason, therefore, it is necessary that some other forces shall
appear to control reason and give the interests of the species a chance
to be heard along with the interests of the individual.
One such force is religion. Without insisting that this is the only view
which may be taken of the origin of religion, or that this is the only
function of religion, we may yet assert that one of the useful purposes
served by religion is to cause men to adopt lines of conduct that will
be for the good of the race, although it may sacrifice the immediate
good of the individual. [187] Thus if a young Mohammedan be put in the
situation just described, he may decide that it is to his material
interest to postpone marriage. His religion then obtrudes itself, with
quotations from the Prophet to the effect that Hell is peopled with
bachelors. The young man is thereupon moved to marry, even if it does
cause some inconvenience to his business plans. Religion, reinforcing
instinct, has triumphed over reason and gained a victory for the larger
interests of the species, when they conflict with the immediate
interests of the individual.
From this point of view we may, paraphrasing Matthew Arnold, define
religion as _motivated ethics_. Ethics is a knowledge of right conduct,
religion is an agency to produce right conduct. And its working is more
like that of instinct than it is like that of reason. The irreligious
man, testing a proposition by reason alone, may decide that it is to the
interests of all concerned that he should not utter blasphemy. The
orthodox Christian never considers the pros and cons of the question; he
has the Ten Commandments and the teachings of his youth in his mind, and
he refrains from blasphemy in almost the instinctive way that he
refrains from putting his hand on a hot stove.
This chapter proposes primarily to consider how eugenics can be linked
with religion, and specifically the Christian religion; but the problem
is not a simple one, because Christianity is made of diverse elements.
Not only has it undergone some change during the last 1900 years, but it
was founded upon Judaism, which itself involved diverse elements. We
shall undertake to show that eugenics fits in well with Christianity;
but it must fit in with different elements in different ways.
We can distinguish four phases of religion:
1. Charm and taboo, or reward and punishment in the present life. The
believer in these processes thinks that certain acts possess particular
efficacies beyond those evident to his observation and reason; and that
peculiar malignities are to be expected as the consequence of certain
other acts. Perhaps no one in the memory of the tribe has ever tested
one of these acts to find whether the expected result would appear; it
is held as a matter of religious belief that the result would appear,
and the act is therefore avoided.
2. Reward and punishment in a future life after death. Whereas the first
system was supposed to bring immediate reward and punishment as the
result of certain acts, this second system postpones the result to an
after-life. There is in nature a system of reward and punishment which
everyone must have observed because it is part of the universal sequence
of cause and effect; but these two phases of religion carry the idea
still farther; they postulate rewards and punishments of a supernatural
character, over and above those which naturally occur. It is important
to note that in neither of these systems is God essentially involved.
They are in reality independent of the idea of God, since that is called
"luck" in some cases which in others is called the favor or wrath of
God. And again in some cases, one may be damned by a human curse,
although in others this curse of damnation is reserved for divine power.
