The authors can speak only
for themselves, in declaring that eugenics will not be promoted by
coercive means except in a limited class of pathological cases; but they
are confident that other geneticists, with a very few exceptions, hold
the same attitude.
for themselves, in declaring that eugenics will not be promoted by
coercive means except in a limited class of pathological cases; but they
are confident that other geneticists, with a very few exceptions, hold
the same attitude.
Applied Eugenics by Roswell H. Johnson and Paul Popenoe
It must not be supposed that we
have any legislative panaceas to offer, or that the suggestions we make
are necessarily the correct ones. We are primarily concerned with
stimulating people to think about the eugenic aspects of their laws and
customs. Once the public thinks, numerous changes will be tried and the
results will show whether the changes shall be followed up or
discontinued.
The eugenic point of view that we have here taken is becoming rather
widespread, although it is often not recognized as eugenic. Thinkers in
all subjects that concern social progress are beginning to realize that
the test of whether or not a measure is good is its effect. The
pragmatic school of philosophy, which has been in vogue in recent years,
has reduced this attitude to a system. It is an attitude to be welcomed
wherever it is found, for it only needs the addition of a knowledge of
biology, to become eugenic.
TAXATION
To be just, any form of taxation should repress productive industry as
little as possible, and should be of a kind that can not easily be
shifted. In addition to these qualifications, it should, if possible,
contribute directly to the eugenic strength of the nation by favoring,
or at least by not penalizing, useful families. A heavy tax on land
values (in extreme, the single-tax) and a heavy tax on bachelors have
sometimes been proposed as likely to be eugenic in effect. But they are
open to criticism. The tax on land values appears too likely to be
indiscriminate in working: it would appear to favor inferior families as
much as superior ones. The tax on bachelors is proposed as a means of
getting bachelors to marry; but is this always desirable? It depends on
the quality of the bachelors. Even at present it is our belief that, on
the whole, the married men of the population are superior to the
unmarried men. If the action of sexual selection is improved still
further by the eugenics campaign, this difference in quality will be
increased. It will then be rather an advantage that the bachelors should
remain single, and a tax which would force them into marriage for
reasons of economy, is not likely to result in any eugenic gain. But a
moderate indirect tax by an exemption for a wife and each child after a
general exemption of $2,000 would be desirable.
The inheritance tax seems less open to criticism. Very large
inheritances should be taxed to a much greater degree than is at present
attempted in the United States, and the tax should be placed, not on the
total amount of the inheritance, but on the amount received by each
individual beneficiary. This tends to prevent the unfair guarantee of
riches to individuals regardless of their own worth and efforts. But to
suggest, on the other hand, as has often been done, that inheritances
should be confiscated by the government altogether, shows a lack of
appreciation of the value of a reasonable right to bequeath in
encouraging larger families among those having a high standard of
living. It is not desirable to penalize the kind of strains which
possess directing talent and constructive efficiency; and they certainly
would be penalized if a man felt that no matter how much he might
increase his fortune, he could not leave any of it to those who
continued his stock.
The sum exempted should not be large enough to tempt the beneficiary to
give up work and settle down into a life of complacent idleness, but
enough to be of decided assistance to him in bringing up a family:
$50,000 might be a good maximum. Above this, the rate should advance
rapidly, and should be progressive, not proportional. A 50% tax on
inheritances above $250,000 seems to us desirable, since large
inheritances tend to interfere with the correlation of wealth and social
worth, which is so necessary from a eugenic point of view as well as
from that of social justice.
The Federal estate law, passed in September, 1916, is a step in the
right direction. It places the exemption at $50,000 net. The rate,
however, is not rapid enough in its rise: e. g. , estates exceeding
$250,000 but less than $450,000 are taxed only 4%, while the maximum,
for estates above $5,000,000, is only 10%. This, moreover, is on the
total estate, while we favor the plan that taxes not the total amount
bequeathed but the amount inherited by each individual. With the ever
increasing need of revenue, it is certain that Congress will make a
radical increase in progressive inheritance tax on large fortunes, which
should be retained after the war.
Wisconsin and California have introduced an interesting innovation by
providing a further graded tax on inheritances in accordance with the
degree of consanguinity between the testator and the beneficiary. Thus a
small bequest to a son or daughter might be taxed only 1%; a large
bequest to a trained nurse or a spiritualistic medium might be taxed
15%. This is frank recognition of the fact that inheritance is to be
particularly justified as it tends to endow a superior family.
Eugenically it may be permissible to make moderate bequests to brothers,
nephews and nieces, as well as one's own children; and to endow
philanthropies; but the State might well take a large part of any
inheritance which would otherwise go to remote heirs, or to persons not
related to the testator.
At present there is, on the whole, a negative correlation between size
of family and income. The big families are, in general in the part of
the population which has the smallest income, and it is well established
that the number of children tends to decrease as the income increases
and as a family rises in the social scale--a fact to which we have
devoted some attention in earlier chapters. If this condition were to be
permanent, it would be somewhat difficult to suggest a eugenic form of
income tax. We believe, however, that it is not likely to be permanent
in its present extent. The spread of birth control seems likely to
reduce the negative correlation and the spread of eugenic ideas may
possibly convert it into a slight positive correlation, so that the
number of children may be more nearly proportional to the means of the
family. Perhaps it is Utopian to expect a positive correlation in the
near future, yet a decrease in the number of children born to the class
of casual laborers and unskilled workers is pretty certain to take place
as rapidly as the knowledge of methods of birth control is extended; and
at present it does not seem that this extension can be stopped by any of
the agencies that are opposing it.
If the size of a family becomes more nearly proportional to the income,
instead of being inversely proportional to it as at present, and if
income is even roughly a measure of the value of a family to the
community--an assumption that can hardly be denied altogether, however
much one may qualify it in individual cases,--then the problem of taxing
family incomes will be easier. The effect of income differences will be,
on the whole, eugenic. It would then seem desirable to exempt from
taxation all incomes of married people below a certain critical sum,
this amount being the point at which change in income may be supposed to
not affect size of family. This means exemption of all incomes under
$2,000, an additional $2,000 for a wife and an additional $2,000 for
each child, and a steeply-graded advance above that amount, as very
large incomes act to reduce the size of family by introducing a
multiplicity of competing cares and interests. There is also a eugenic
advantage in heavy taxes on harmful commodities and unapprovable
luxuries.
THE "BACK TO THE FARM" MOVEMENT
One of the striking accompaniments of the development of American
civilization, as of all other civilizations, is the growth of the
cities. If (following the practice of the U. S. Census) all places with
2,500 or more population be classed as urban, it appears that 36. 1% of
the population of the United States was urban in 1890, that the
percentage had risen to 40. 5 in 1900, and that by 1910 not less than
46. 3% of the total population was urban.
There are four components of this growth of urban population: (1) excess
of births over deaths, (2) immigration from rural districts, (3)
immigration from other countries, and (4) the extension of area by
incorporation of suburbs. It is not to be supposed that the growth of
the cities is wholly at the expense of the country; J. M. Gillette
calculates[173] that 29. 8% of the actual urban gain of 11,826,000
between 1900 and 1910 was due to migration from the country, the
remaining 70. 2% being accounted for by the other three causes
enumerated.
Thus it appears that the movement from country to city is of
considerable proportions, even though it be much less than has sometimes
been alleged. This movement has eugenic importance because it is
generally believed, although more statistical evidence is needed, that
families tend to "run out" in a few generations under city conditions;
and it is generally agreed that among those who leave the rural
districts to go to the cities, there are found many of the best
representatives of the country families.
If superior people are going to the large cities, and if this removal
leads to a smaller reproductive contribution than they would otherwise
have made, then the growth of great cities is an important dysgenic
factor.
This is the view taken by O. F. Cook,[174] when he writes:
"Statistically speaking cities are centers of population, but
biologically or eugenically speaking they are centers of depopulation.
They are like sink-holes or _siguanas_, as the Indians of Guatemala call
the places where the streams of their country drop into subterranean
channels and disappear. It never happens that cities develop large
populations that go out and occupy the surrounding country. The movement
of population is always toward the city. The currents of humanity pass
into the urban _siguanas_ and are gone. "
"If the time has really come for the consideration of practical eugenic
measures, here is a place to begin, a subject worthy of the most careful
study--how to rearrange our social and economic system so that more of
the superior members of our race will stay on the land and raise
families, instead of moving to the city and remaining unmarried or
childless, or allowing their children to grow up in unfavorable urban
environments that mean deterioration and extinction. "
"The cities represent an eliminating agency of enormous efficiency, a
present condition that sterilizes and exterminates individuals and lines
of descent rapidly enough for all but the most sanguinary reformer. All
that is needed for a practical solution of the eugenic problem is to
reverse the present tendency for the better families to be drawn into
the city and facilitate the drafting of others for urban duty. . . . The
most practical eugenists of our age are the men who are solving the
problems of living in the country and thus keeping more and better
people under rural conditions where their families will survive. "
"To recognize the relation of eugenics to agriculture," Mr. Cook
concludes, "does not solve the problems of our race, but it indicates
the basis on which the problems need to be solved, and the danger of
wasting too much time and effort in attempting to salvage the derelict
populations of the cities. However important the problems of urban
society may be, they do not have fundamental significance from the
standpoint of eugenics, because urban populations are essentially
transient. The city performs the function of elimination, while
agriculture represents the constructive eugenic condition which must be
maintained and improved if the development of the race is to continue. "
On the other hand, city life does select those who are adapted to it. It
is said to favor the Mediterranean race in competition with the Nordic,
so that mixed city populations tend to become more brunette, the Nordic
strains dying out. How well this claim has been established
statistically is open to question; but there can be no doubt that the
Jewish race is an example of urban selection. It has withstood centuries
of city life, usually under the most severe conditions, in ghettoes, and
has survived and maintained a high average of mentality.
Until recently it has been impossible, because of the defective
registration of vital statistics in the United States, to get figures
which show the extent of the problem of urban sterilization. But Dr.
Gillette has obtained evidence along several indirect lines, and is
convinced that his figures are not far from the truth. [175] They show
the difference to be very large and its eugenic significance of
corresponding importance.
"When it is noted," Dr. Gillette says, "that the rural rate is almost
twice the urban rate for the nation as a whole, that in only one
division does the latter exceed the former, and that in some divisions
the rural rate is three times the urban rate, it can scarcely be doubted
that the factor of urbanization is the most important cause of lowered
increase rates. Urban birth-rates are lower than rural birth-rates, and
its death-rates are higher than those of the latter. "
Considering the United States in nine geographical divisions, Dr.
Gillette secured the following results:
RATE OF NET ANNUAL INCREASE
_Division_ _Rural_ _Urban_ _Average_
New England 5. 0 7. 3 6. 8
Middle Atlantic 10. 7 9. 6 10. 4
East North Central 12. 4 10. 8 11. 6
West North Central 18. 1 10. 1 15. 8
South Atlantic 18. 9 6. 00 16. 0
East South Central 19. 7 7. 4 17. 8
West South Central 23. 9 10. 2 21. 6
Mountain 21. 1 10. 5 17. 6
Pacific 12. 6 6. 6 9. 8
---- ---- -----
Average 16. 9 8. 8 13. 65
Even though fuller returns might show these calculations to be
inaccurate, Dr. Gillette points out, they are all compiled on the same
basis, and therefore can be fairly compared, since any unforeseen cause
of increase or decrease would affect all alike.
It is difficult to compare the various divisions directly, because the
racial composition of the population of each one is different. But the
difference in rates is marked. The West South Central states would
almost double their population in four decades, by natural increase
alone, while New England would require 200 years to do so.
Dr. Gillette tried, by elaborate computations, to eliminate the effect
of immigration and emigration in each division, in order to find out the
standing of the old American stock. His conclusions confirm the beliefs
of the most pessimistic. "Only three divisions, all Western, add to
their population by means of an actual excess of income over outgo of
native-born Americans," he reports. Even should this view turn out to be
exaggerated, it is certain that the population of the United States is
at present increasing largely because of immigration and the high
fecundity of immigrant women, and that as far as its own older stock is
concerned, it has ceased to increase.
To state that this is due largely to the fact that country people are
moving to the city is by no means to solve the problem, in terms of
eugenics. It merely shows the exact nature of the problem to be solved.
This could be attacked at two points.
1. Attempts might be made to keep the rural population on the farms, and
to encourage a movement from the cities back to the country. Measures to
make rural life more attractive and remunerative and thus to keep the
more energetic and capable young people on the farm, have great eugenic
importance, from this point of view.
2. The growth of cities might be accepted as a necessary evil, an
unavoidable feature of industrial civilization, and direct attempts
might be made, through eugenic propaganda, to secure a higher birth-rate
among the superior parts of the city population.
The second method seems in many ways the more practicable. On the other
hand, the first method is in many ways more ideal, particularly because
it would not only cause more children to be born, but furnish these
children with a suitable environment after they were born, which the
city can not do. On the other hand, the city offers the better
environment for the especially gifted who require a specialized training
and later the field for its use in most cases.
In practice, the problem will undoubtedly have to be attacked by
eugenists on both sides. Dr. Gillette's statistics, showing the
appalling need, should prove a stimulus to eugenic effort.
DEMOCRACY
By democracy we understand a government which is responsive to the will
of a majority of the entire population, as opposed to an oligarchy where
the sole power is in the hands of a small minority of the entire
population, who are able to impose their will on the rest of the nation.
In discussing immigration, we have pointed out that it is of great
importance that the road for promotion of merit should always be open,
and that the road for demotion of incompetence should likewise be open.
These conditions are probably favored more by a democracy than by any
other form of government, and to that extent democracy is distinctly
advantageous to eugenics.
Yet this eugenic effect is not without a dysgenic after-effect. The very
fact that recognition is attainable by all, means that democracy leads
to social ambition; and social ambition leads to smaller families. This
influence is manifested mainly in the women, whose desire to climb the
social ladder is increased by the ease of ascent which is due to lack of
rigid social barriers. But while ascent is possible for almost anyone,
it is naturally favored by freedom from handicaps, such as a large
family of children. In the "successful" business and professional
classes, therefore, there is an inducement to the wife to limit the
number of her offspring, in order that she may have more time to devote
to social "duties. " In a country like Germany, with more or less
stratified social classes, this factor in the differential birth-rate
is probably less operative. The solution in America is not to create an
impermeable social stratification, but to create a public sentiment
which will honor women more for motherhood than for eminence in the
largely futile activities of polite society.
In quite another way, too great democratization of a country is
dangerous. The tendency is to ask, in regard to any measure, "What do
the people want? " while the question should be "What ought the people to
want? " The _vox populi_ may and often does want something that is in the
long run quite detrimental to the welfare of the state. The ultimate
test of a state is whether it is strong enough to survive, and a measure
that all the people, or a voting majority of them (which is the
significant thing in a democracy), want, may be such as to handicap the
state severely.
In general, experts are better able to decide what measures will be
desirable in the long run, than are voters of the general population,
most of whom know little about the real merits of many of the most
important projects. Yet democracies have a tendency to scorn the advice
of experts, most of the voters feeling that they are as good as any one
else, and that their opinion is entitled to as much weight as that of
the expert. This attitude naturally makes it difficult to secure the
passage of measures which are eugenic or otherwise beneficial in
character, since they often run counter to popular prejudices.
The initiative by small petitions, and the referendum as a frequent
resort, are dangerous. They are of great value if so qualified as to be
used only in real emergencies, as where a clique has got control of the
government and is running it for its self-interest, but as a regularly
and frequently functioning institution they are unlikely to result in
wise statesmanship.
The wise democracy is that which recognizes that officials may be
effectively chosen by vote, only for legislative offices; and which
recognizes that for executive offices the choice must be definitely
selective, that is, a choice of those who by merit are best fitted to
fill the positions. Appointment in executive officers is not offensive
when, as the name indicates, it is truly the best who govern. All
methods of choice by properly judged competition or examination with a
free chance to all, are, in principle, selective yet democratic in the
best sense, that of "equality of opportunity. " When the governing few
are not the best fitted for the work, a so-called aristocracy is of
course not an aristocracy (government by the best) at all, but merely an
oligarchy. When officers chosen by vote are not well fitted then such a
government is not "for the people. "
Good government is then an aristo-democracy. In it the final control
rests in a democratically chosen legislature working with a legislative
commission of experts, but all executive and judicial functions are
performed by those best qualified on the basis of executive or judicial
ability, not vote-getting or speech-making ability. All, however, are
eligible for such positions provided they can show genuine
qualifications.
SOCIALISM
It is difficult to define socialism in terms that will make a discussion
practicable. The socialist movement is one thing, the socialist
political program is another. But though the idea of socialism has as
many different forms as an amoeba, there is always a nucleus that
remains constant,--the desire for what is conceived to be a more
equitable distribution of wealth. The laborer should get the value which
his labor produces, it is held, subject only to subtraction of such a
part as is necessary to meet the costs of maintenance; and in order that
as little as possible need be subtracted for that purpose, the
socialists agree in demanding a considerable extension of the functions
of government: collective ownership of railways, mines, the tools of
production. The ideal socialistic state would be so organized, along
these lines, that the producer would get as much as possible of what he
produces, the non-producer nothing.
This principle of socialism is invariably accompanied by numerous
associated principles, and it is on these associated principles, not on
the fundamental principle, that eugenists and socialists come into
conflict. Equalitarianism, in particular, is so great a part of current
socialist thought that it is doubtful whether the socialist movement as
such can exist without it. And this equalitarianism is usually
interpreted not only to demand equality of opportunity, but is based on
a belief in substantial equality of native ability, where opportunity is
equal.
Any one who has read the preceding chapters will have no doubt that such
a belief is incompatible with an understanding of the principles of
biology. How, then, has it come to be such an integral part of
socialism?
Apparently it is because the socialist movement is, on the whole, made
up of those who are economically unsatisfied and discontented. Some of
the intellectual leaders of the movement are far from inferior, but they
too often find it necessary to share the views of their following, in
order to retain this following. A group which feels itself inferior will
naturally fall into an attitude of equalitarianism, whereas a group
which felt itself superior to the rest of society would not be likely
to.
Before criticising the socialistic attitude in detail, we will consider
some of the criticisms which some socialists make of eugenics.
1. It is charged that eugenics infringes on the freedom of the
individual. This charge (really that of the individualists more than of
socialists strictly speaking) is based mainly on a misconception of what
eugenics attempts to do. Coercive measures have little place in modern
eugenics, despite the gibes of the comic press. We propose little or no
interference with the freedom of the normal individual to follow his own
inclinations in regard to marriage or parenthood; we regard indirect
measures and the education of public opinion as the main practicable
methods of procedure. Such coercive measures as we indorse are limited
to grossly defective individuals, to whom the doctrine of personal
liberty can not be applied without stultifying it.
It is indeed unfortunate that there are a few sincere advocates of
eugenics who adhered to the idea of a wholesale surgical campaign. A few
reformers have told the public for several years of the desirability of
sterilizing the supposed 10,000,000 defectives at the bottom of the
American population. Lately one campaigner has raised this figure to
15,000,000. Such fantastic proposals are properly resented by socialists
and nearly every one else, but they are invariably associated in the
public mind with the conception of eugenics, in spite of the fact that
99 out of 100 eugenists would repudiate them.
The authors can speak only
for themselves, in declaring that eugenics will not be promoted by
coercive means except in a limited class of pathological cases; but they
are confident that other geneticists, with a very few exceptions, hold
the same attitude. There is no danger that this surgical campaign will
ever attain formidable proportions, and the socialist, we believe, may
rest assured that the progress of eugenics is not likely to infringe
unwarrantably on the principle of individual freedom, either by
sterilization or by coercive mating.
2. Eugenists are further charged with ignoring or paying too little
attention to the influence of the environment in social reform. This
charge is sometimes well founded, but it is not an inherent defect in
the eugenics program. The eugenist only asks that both factors be taken
into account, whereas in the past the factor of heredity has been too
often ignored. In the last chapter of this book we make an effort to
balance the two sides.
3. Again, it is alleged that eugenics proposes to substitute an
aristocracy for a democracy. We do think that those who have superior
ability should be given the greatest responsibilities in government. If
aristocracy means a government by the people who are best qualified to
govern, then eugenics has most to hope from an aristo-democratic system.
But admission to office should always be open to anyone who shows the
best ability; and the search for such ability must be much more thorough
in the future than it has been in the past.
4. Eugenists are charged with hindering social progress by endeavoring
to keep woman in the subordinate position of a domestic animal, by
opposing the movement for her emancipation, by limiting her activity to
child-bearing and refusing to recognize that she is in every way fitted
to take an equal part with man in the world's work. This objection we
have answered elsewhere, particularly in our discussion of feminism. We
recognize the general equality of the two sexes, but demand a
differentiation of function which will correspond to biological
sex-specialization. We can not yield in our belief that woman's greatest
function is motherhood, but recognition of this should increase, not
diminish, the strength of her position in the state.
5. Eugenists are charged with ignoring the fact of economic determinism,
the fact that a man's acts are governed by economic conditions. To
debate this question would be tedious and unprofitable. While we concede
the important role of economic determinism, we can not help feeling that
its importance in the eyes of socialists is somewhat factitious. 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.
have any legislative panaceas to offer, or that the suggestions we make
are necessarily the correct ones. We are primarily concerned with
stimulating people to think about the eugenic aspects of their laws and
customs. Once the public thinks, numerous changes will be tried and the
results will show whether the changes shall be followed up or
discontinued.
The eugenic point of view that we have here taken is becoming rather
widespread, although it is often not recognized as eugenic. Thinkers in
all subjects that concern social progress are beginning to realize that
the test of whether or not a measure is good is its effect. The
pragmatic school of philosophy, which has been in vogue in recent years,
has reduced this attitude to a system. It is an attitude to be welcomed
wherever it is found, for it only needs the addition of a knowledge of
biology, to become eugenic.
TAXATION
To be just, any form of taxation should repress productive industry as
little as possible, and should be of a kind that can not easily be
shifted. In addition to these qualifications, it should, if possible,
contribute directly to the eugenic strength of the nation by favoring,
or at least by not penalizing, useful families. A heavy tax on land
values (in extreme, the single-tax) and a heavy tax on bachelors have
sometimes been proposed as likely to be eugenic in effect. But they are
open to criticism. The tax on land values appears too likely to be
indiscriminate in working: it would appear to favor inferior families as
much as superior ones. The tax on bachelors is proposed as a means of
getting bachelors to marry; but is this always desirable? It depends on
the quality of the bachelors. Even at present it is our belief that, on
the whole, the married men of the population are superior to the
unmarried men. If the action of sexual selection is improved still
further by the eugenics campaign, this difference in quality will be
increased. It will then be rather an advantage that the bachelors should
remain single, and a tax which would force them into marriage for
reasons of economy, is not likely to result in any eugenic gain. But a
moderate indirect tax by an exemption for a wife and each child after a
general exemption of $2,000 would be desirable.
The inheritance tax seems less open to criticism. Very large
inheritances should be taxed to a much greater degree than is at present
attempted in the United States, and the tax should be placed, not on the
total amount of the inheritance, but on the amount received by each
individual beneficiary. This tends to prevent the unfair guarantee of
riches to individuals regardless of their own worth and efforts. But to
suggest, on the other hand, as has often been done, that inheritances
should be confiscated by the government altogether, shows a lack of
appreciation of the value of a reasonable right to bequeath in
encouraging larger families among those having a high standard of
living. It is not desirable to penalize the kind of strains which
possess directing talent and constructive efficiency; and they certainly
would be penalized if a man felt that no matter how much he might
increase his fortune, he could not leave any of it to those who
continued his stock.
The sum exempted should not be large enough to tempt the beneficiary to
give up work and settle down into a life of complacent idleness, but
enough to be of decided assistance to him in bringing up a family:
$50,000 might be a good maximum. Above this, the rate should advance
rapidly, and should be progressive, not proportional. A 50% tax on
inheritances above $250,000 seems to us desirable, since large
inheritances tend to interfere with the correlation of wealth and social
worth, which is so necessary from a eugenic point of view as well as
from that of social justice.
The Federal estate law, passed in September, 1916, is a step in the
right direction. It places the exemption at $50,000 net. The rate,
however, is not rapid enough in its rise: e. g. , estates exceeding
$250,000 but less than $450,000 are taxed only 4%, while the maximum,
for estates above $5,000,000, is only 10%. This, moreover, is on the
total estate, while we favor the plan that taxes not the total amount
bequeathed but the amount inherited by each individual. With the ever
increasing need of revenue, it is certain that Congress will make a
radical increase in progressive inheritance tax on large fortunes, which
should be retained after the war.
Wisconsin and California have introduced an interesting innovation by
providing a further graded tax on inheritances in accordance with the
degree of consanguinity between the testator and the beneficiary. Thus a
small bequest to a son or daughter might be taxed only 1%; a large
bequest to a trained nurse or a spiritualistic medium might be taxed
15%. This is frank recognition of the fact that inheritance is to be
particularly justified as it tends to endow a superior family.
Eugenically it may be permissible to make moderate bequests to brothers,
nephews and nieces, as well as one's own children; and to endow
philanthropies; but the State might well take a large part of any
inheritance which would otherwise go to remote heirs, or to persons not
related to the testator.
At present there is, on the whole, a negative correlation between size
of family and income. The big families are, in general in the part of
the population which has the smallest income, and it is well established
that the number of children tends to decrease as the income increases
and as a family rises in the social scale--a fact to which we have
devoted some attention in earlier chapters. If this condition were to be
permanent, it would be somewhat difficult to suggest a eugenic form of
income tax. We believe, however, that it is not likely to be permanent
in its present extent. The spread of birth control seems likely to
reduce the negative correlation and the spread of eugenic ideas may
possibly convert it into a slight positive correlation, so that the
number of children may be more nearly proportional to the means of the
family. Perhaps it is Utopian to expect a positive correlation in the
near future, yet a decrease in the number of children born to the class
of casual laborers and unskilled workers is pretty certain to take place
as rapidly as the knowledge of methods of birth control is extended; and
at present it does not seem that this extension can be stopped by any of
the agencies that are opposing it.
If the size of a family becomes more nearly proportional to the income,
instead of being inversely proportional to it as at present, and if
income is even roughly a measure of the value of a family to the
community--an assumption that can hardly be denied altogether, however
much one may qualify it in individual cases,--then the problem of taxing
family incomes will be easier. The effect of income differences will be,
on the whole, eugenic. It would then seem desirable to exempt from
taxation all incomes of married people below a certain critical sum,
this amount being the point at which change in income may be supposed to
not affect size of family. This means exemption of all incomes under
$2,000, an additional $2,000 for a wife and an additional $2,000 for
each child, and a steeply-graded advance above that amount, as very
large incomes act to reduce the size of family by introducing a
multiplicity of competing cares and interests. There is also a eugenic
advantage in heavy taxes on harmful commodities and unapprovable
luxuries.
THE "BACK TO THE FARM" MOVEMENT
One of the striking accompaniments of the development of American
civilization, as of all other civilizations, is the growth of the
cities. If (following the practice of the U. S. Census) all places with
2,500 or more population be classed as urban, it appears that 36. 1% of
the population of the United States was urban in 1890, that the
percentage had risen to 40. 5 in 1900, and that by 1910 not less than
46. 3% of the total population was urban.
There are four components of this growth of urban population: (1) excess
of births over deaths, (2) immigration from rural districts, (3)
immigration from other countries, and (4) the extension of area by
incorporation of suburbs. It is not to be supposed that the growth of
the cities is wholly at the expense of the country; J. M. Gillette
calculates[173] that 29. 8% of the actual urban gain of 11,826,000
between 1900 and 1910 was due to migration from the country, the
remaining 70. 2% being accounted for by the other three causes
enumerated.
Thus it appears that the movement from country to city is of
considerable proportions, even though it be much less than has sometimes
been alleged. This movement has eugenic importance because it is
generally believed, although more statistical evidence is needed, that
families tend to "run out" in a few generations under city conditions;
and it is generally agreed that among those who leave the rural
districts to go to the cities, there are found many of the best
representatives of the country families.
If superior people are going to the large cities, and if this removal
leads to a smaller reproductive contribution than they would otherwise
have made, then the growth of great cities is an important dysgenic
factor.
This is the view taken by O. F. Cook,[174] when he writes:
"Statistically speaking cities are centers of population, but
biologically or eugenically speaking they are centers of depopulation.
They are like sink-holes or _siguanas_, as the Indians of Guatemala call
the places where the streams of their country drop into subterranean
channels and disappear. It never happens that cities develop large
populations that go out and occupy the surrounding country. The movement
of population is always toward the city. The currents of humanity pass
into the urban _siguanas_ and are gone. "
"If the time has really come for the consideration of practical eugenic
measures, here is a place to begin, a subject worthy of the most careful
study--how to rearrange our social and economic system so that more of
the superior members of our race will stay on the land and raise
families, instead of moving to the city and remaining unmarried or
childless, or allowing their children to grow up in unfavorable urban
environments that mean deterioration and extinction. "
"The cities represent an eliminating agency of enormous efficiency, a
present condition that sterilizes and exterminates individuals and lines
of descent rapidly enough for all but the most sanguinary reformer. All
that is needed for a practical solution of the eugenic problem is to
reverse the present tendency for the better families to be drawn into
the city and facilitate the drafting of others for urban duty. . . . The
most practical eugenists of our age are the men who are solving the
problems of living in the country and thus keeping more and better
people under rural conditions where their families will survive. "
"To recognize the relation of eugenics to agriculture," Mr. Cook
concludes, "does not solve the problems of our race, but it indicates
the basis on which the problems need to be solved, and the danger of
wasting too much time and effort in attempting to salvage the derelict
populations of the cities. However important the problems of urban
society may be, they do not have fundamental significance from the
standpoint of eugenics, because urban populations are essentially
transient. The city performs the function of elimination, while
agriculture represents the constructive eugenic condition which must be
maintained and improved if the development of the race is to continue. "
On the other hand, city life does select those who are adapted to it. It
is said to favor the Mediterranean race in competition with the Nordic,
so that mixed city populations tend to become more brunette, the Nordic
strains dying out. How well this claim has been established
statistically is open to question; but there can be no doubt that the
Jewish race is an example of urban selection. It has withstood centuries
of city life, usually under the most severe conditions, in ghettoes, and
has survived and maintained a high average of mentality.
Until recently it has been impossible, because of the defective
registration of vital statistics in the United States, to get figures
which show the extent of the problem of urban sterilization. But Dr.
Gillette has obtained evidence along several indirect lines, and is
convinced that his figures are not far from the truth. [175] They show
the difference to be very large and its eugenic significance of
corresponding importance.
"When it is noted," Dr. Gillette says, "that the rural rate is almost
twice the urban rate for the nation as a whole, that in only one
division does the latter exceed the former, and that in some divisions
the rural rate is three times the urban rate, it can scarcely be doubted
that the factor of urbanization is the most important cause of lowered
increase rates. Urban birth-rates are lower than rural birth-rates, and
its death-rates are higher than those of the latter. "
Considering the United States in nine geographical divisions, Dr.
Gillette secured the following results:
RATE OF NET ANNUAL INCREASE
_Division_ _Rural_ _Urban_ _Average_
New England 5. 0 7. 3 6. 8
Middle Atlantic 10. 7 9. 6 10. 4
East North Central 12. 4 10. 8 11. 6
West North Central 18. 1 10. 1 15. 8
South Atlantic 18. 9 6. 00 16. 0
East South Central 19. 7 7. 4 17. 8
West South Central 23. 9 10. 2 21. 6
Mountain 21. 1 10. 5 17. 6
Pacific 12. 6 6. 6 9. 8
---- ---- -----
Average 16. 9 8. 8 13. 65
Even though fuller returns might show these calculations to be
inaccurate, Dr. Gillette points out, they are all compiled on the same
basis, and therefore can be fairly compared, since any unforeseen cause
of increase or decrease would affect all alike.
It is difficult to compare the various divisions directly, because the
racial composition of the population of each one is different. But the
difference in rates is marked. The West South Central states would
almost double their population in four decades, by natural increase
alone, while New England would require 200 years to do so.
Dr. Gillette tried, by elaborate computations, to eliminate the effect
of immigration and emigration in each division, in order to find out the
standing of the old American stock. His conclusions confirm the beliefs
of the most pessimistic. "Only three divisions, all Western, add to
their population by means of an actual excess of income over outgo of
native-born Americans," he reports. Even should this view turn out to be
exaggerated, it is certain that the population of the United States is
at present increasing largely because of immigration and the high
fecundity of immigrant women, and that as far as its own older stock is
concerned, it has ceased to increase.
To state that this is due largely to the fact that country people are
moving to the city is by no means to solve the problem, in terms of
eugenics. It merely shows the exact nature of the problem to be solved.
This could be attacked at two points.
1. Attempts might be made to keep the rural population on the farms, and
to encourage a movement from the cities back to the country. Measures to
make rural life more attractive and remunerative and thus to keep the
more energetic and capable young people on the farm, have great eugenic
importance, from this point of view.
2. The growth of cities might be accepted as a necessary evil, an
unavoidable feature of industrial civilization, and direct attempts
might be made, through eugenic propaganda, to secure a higher birth-rate
among the superior parts of the city population.
The second method seems in many ways the more practicable. On the other
hand, the first method is in many ways more ideal, particularly because
it would not only cause more children to be born, but furnish these
children with a suitable environment after they were born, which the
city can not do. On the other hand, the city offers the better
environment for the especially gifted who require a specialized training
and later the field for its use in most cases.
In practice, the problem will undoubtedly have to be attacked by
eugenists on both sides. Dr. Gillette's statistics, showing the
appalling need, should prove a stimulus to eugenic effort.
DEMOCRACY
By democracy we understand a government which is responsive to the will
of a majority of the entire population, as opposed to an oligarchy where
the sole power is in the hands of a small minority of the entire
population, who are able to impose their will on the rest of the nation.
In discussing immigration, we have pointed out that it is of great
importance that the road for promotion of merit should always be open,
and that the road for demotion of incompetence should likewise be open.
These conditions are probably favored more by a democracy than by any
other form of government, and to that extent democracy is distinctly
advantageous to eugenics.
Yet this eugenic effect is not without a dysgenic after-effect. The very
fact that recognition is attainable by all, means that democracy leads
to social ambition; and social ambition leads to smaller families. This
influence is manifested mainly in the women, whose desire to climb the
social ladder is increased by the ease of ascent which is due to lack of
rigid social barriers. But while ascent is possible for almost anyone,
it is naturally favored by freedom from handicaps, such as a large
family of children. In the "successful" business and professional
classes, therefore, there is an inducement to the wife to limit the
number of her offspring, in order that she may have more time to devote
to social "duties. " In a country like Germany, with more or less
stratified social classes, this factor in the differential birth-rate
is probably less operative. The solution in America is not to create an
impermeable social stratification, but to create a public sentiment
which will honor women more for motherhood than for eminence in the
largely futile activities of polite society.
In quite another way, too great democratization of a country is
dangerous. The tendency is to ask, in regard to any measure, "What do
the people want? " while the question should be "What ought the people to
want? " The _vox populi_ may and often does want something that is in the
long run quite detrimental to the welfare of the state. The ultimate
test of a state is whether it is strong enough to survive, and a measure
that all the people, or a voting majority of them (which is the
significant thing in a democracy), want, may be such as to handicap the
state severely.
In general, experts are better able to decide what measures will be
desirable in the long run, than are voters of the general population,
most of whom know little about the real merits of many of the most
important projects. Yet democracies have a tendency to scorn the advice
of experts, most of the voters feeling that they are as good as any one
else, and that their opinion is entitled to as much weight as that of
the expert. This attitude naturally makes it difficult to secure the
passage of measures which are eugenic or otherwise beneficial in
character, since they often run counter to popular prejudices.
The initiative by small petitions, and the referendum as a frequent
resort, are dangerous. They are of great value if so qualified as to be
used only in real emergencies, as where a clique has got control of the
government and is running it for its self-interest, but as a regularly
and frequently functioning institution they are unlikely to result in
wise statesmanship.
The wise democracy is that which recognizes that officials may be
effectively chosen by vote, only for legislative offices; and which
recognizes that for executive offices the choice must be definitely
selective, that is, a choice of those who by merit are best fitted to
fill the positions. Appointment in executive officers is not offensive
when, as the name indicates, it is truly the best who govern. All
methods of choice by properly judged competition or examination with a
free chance to all, are, in principle, selective yet democratic in the
best sense, that of "equality of opportunity. " When the governing few
are not the best fitted for the work, a so-called aristocracy is of
course not an aristocracy (government by the best) at all, but merely an
oligarchy. When officers chosen by vote are not well fitted then such a
government is not "for the people. "
Good government is then an aristo-democracy. In it the final control
rests in a democratically chosen legislature working with a legislative
commission of experts, but all executive and judicial functions are
performed by those best qualified on the basis of executive or judicial
ability, not vote-getting or speech-making ability. All, however, are
eligible for such positions provided they can show genuine
qualifications.
SOCIALISM
It is difficult to define socialism in terms that will make a discussion
practicable. The socialist movement is one thing, the socialist
political program is another. But though the idea of socialism has as
many different forms as an amoeba, there is always a nucleus that
remains constant,--the desire for what is conceived to be a more
equitable distribution of wealth. The laborer should get the value which
his labor produces, it is held, subject only to subtraction of such a
part as is necessary to meet the costs of maintenance; and in order that
as little as possible need be subtracted for that purpose, the
socialists agree in demanding a considerable extension of the functions
of government: collective ownership of railways, mines, the tools of
production. The ideal socialistic state would be so organized, along
these lines, that the producer would get as much as possible of what he
produces, the non-producer nothing.
This principle of socialism is invariably accompanied by numerous
associated principles, and it is on these associated principles, not on
the fundamental principle, that eugenists and socialists come into
conflict. Equalitarianism, in particular, is so great a part of current
socialist thought that it is doubtful whether the socialist movement as
such can exist without it. And this equalitarianism is usually
interpreted not only to demand equality of opportunity, but is based on
a belief in substantial equality of native ability, where opportunity is
equal.
Any one who has read the preceding chapters will have no doubt that such
a belief is incompatible with an understanding of the principles of
biology. How, then, has it come to be such an integral part of
socialism?
Apparently it is because the socialist movement is, on the whole, made
up of those who are economically unsatisfied and discontented. Some of
the intellectual leaders of the movement are far from inferior, but they
too often find it necessary to share the views of their following, in
order to retain this following. A group which feels itself inferior will
naturally fall into an attitude of equalitarianism, whereas a group
which felt itself superior to the rest of society would not be likely
to.
Before criticising the socialistic attitude in detail, we will consider
some of the criticisms which some socialists make of eugenics.
1. It is charged that eugenics infringes on the freedom of the
individual. This charge (really that of the individualists more than of
socialists strictly speaking) is based mainly on a misconception of what
eugenics attempts to do. Coercive measures have little place in modern
eugenics, despite the gibes of the comic press. We propose little or no
interference with the freedom of the normal individual to follow his own
inclinations in regard to marriage or parenthood; we regard indirect
measures and the education of public opinion as the main practicable
methods of procedure. Such coercive measures as we indorse are limited
to grossly defective individuals, to whom the doctrine of personal
liberty can not be applied without stultifying it.
It is indeed unfortunate that there are a few sincere advocates of
eugenics who adhered to the idea of a wholesale surgical campaign. A few
reformers have told the public for several years of the desirability of
sterilizing the supposed 10,000,000 defectives at the bottom of the
American population. Lately one campaigner has raised this figure to
15,000,000. Such fantastic proposals are properly resented by socialists
and nearly every one else, but they are invariably associated in the
public mind with the conception of eugenics, in spite of the fact that
99 out of 100 eugenists would repudiate them.
The authors can speak only
for themselves, in declaring that eugenics will not be promoted by
coercive means except in a limited class of pathological cases; but they
are confident that other geneticists, with a very few exceptions, hold
the same attitude. There is no danger that this surgical campaign will
ever attain formidable proportions, and the socialist, we believe, may
rest assured that the progress of eugenics is not likely to infringe
unwarrantably on the principle of individual freedom, either by
sterilization or by coercive mating.
2. Eugenists are further charged with ignoring or paying too little
attention to the influence of the environment in social reform. This
charge is sometimes well founded, but it is not an inherent defect in
the eugenics program. The eugenist only asks that both factors be taken
into account, whereas in the past the factor of heredity has been too
often ignored. In the last chapter of this book we make an effort to
balance the two sides.
3. Again, it is alleged that eugenics proposes to substitute an
aristocracy for a democracy. We do think that those who have superior
ability should be given the greatest responsibilities in government. If
aristocracy means a government by the people who are best qualified to
govern, then eugenics has most to hope from an aristo-democratic system.
But admission to office should always be open to anyone who shows the
best ability; and the search for such ability must be much more thorough
in the future than it has been in the past.
4. Eugenists are charged with hindering social progress by endeavoring
to keep woman in the subordinate position of a domestic animal, by
opposing the movement for her emancipation, by limiting her activity to
child-bearing and refusing to recognize that she is in every way fitted
to take an equal part with man in the world's work. This objection we
have answered elsewhere, particularly in our discussion of feminism. We
recognize the general equality of the two sexes, but demand a
differentiation of function which will correspond to biological
sex-specialization. We can not yield in our belief that woman's greatest
function is motherhood, but recognition of this should increase, not
diminish, the strength of her position in the state.
5. Eugenists are charged with ignoring the fact of economic determinism,
the fact that a man's acts are governed by economic conditions. To
debate this question would be tedious and unprofitable. While we concede
the important role of economic determinism, we can not help feeling that
its importance in the eyes of socialists is somewhat factitious. 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.
