The desirable characters are still associated
with each other, but their association with fecundity is now negative.
with each other, but their association with fecundity is now negative.
Applied Eugenics by Roswell H. Johnson and Paul Popenoe
In a
letter dated March 16, 1916, the leader told of the discovery of the
remains of the tribe of Pikipitanges, a once populous tribe of which a
chief, six women and two boys alone are left. The tribe had been almost
wiped out, Dr. Farabee reported, by an epidemic of _influenza_!
If the aborigines of the New World succumb to the diseases of the
European, it is not less true that the European succumbs to diseases
against which his race has not been selected. The deadliness of yellow
fever to Americans in the tropics, and the relative immunity of Negroes,
is familiar; so too is the frequently fatal result of the African
tropical fevers on the white man, while the natives suffer from them
much less, having been made more resistant by centuries of natural
selection.
This long discussion may now be summarized. We dealt with lethal
selection, that form of natural selection which operates by prematurely
killing off the less fit and leaving the more fit to survive and
reproduce their kind. It is of course understood that the word "fit" in
this connection does not necessarily mean morally or mentally superior,
but merely fit for the particular environment. In a community of
rascals, the greatest rascal might be the fittest to survive. In the
slums of a modern city the Jewish type, stringently selected through
centuries of ghetto life, is particularly fit to survive, although it
may not be the physical ideal of an anthropologist.
Two forms of lethal selection were distinguished, one depending on
starvation and the other on causes not connected with the food supply.
Direct starvation is not a factor of importance in the survival of most
races during most of the time at the present day so far as the civilized
portion of the world is concerned. But disease and the other lethal
factors not connected with the food-supply, through which natural
selection acts, are still of great importance. From a half to two-thirds
of all deaths are of a selective character, even under favorable
conditions.
It is also to be noted, however, that with the progress of medicine, and
the diminution of unfit material, this kind of natural selection will
tend to become less and less widespread. For a long time, natural
selection in man has probably done little to cause marked change in his
physical or mental characteristics. Man's interference has prevented. In
recent centuries natural selection has probably done no more on the
whole than keep the race where it was: it is to be feared that it has
not even done that. It is doubtful if there is any race to-day which
attains the physical and mental average of the Athenians of 2,500 years
ago.
Lethal natural selection, then, has been and still is a factor of great
importance in the evolution of the race, but at present it is doing
little or nothing that promises to further the ideal of eugenics--race
betterment.
But lethal natural selection is only half the story. It is obvious that
if the constitution of a race can be altered by excess of deaths in a
certain class, it can equally be altered by excess of births in a
certain class. This is reproductive selection, which may appear in
either one of two forms. If the individual leaves few or no progeny
because of his failure to mate at the proper time, it is called sexual
selection; if, however, he mates, yet leaves few or no progeny (as
compared with other individuals), it is called fecundal selection.
Even in man, the importance of the role of reproductive selection is
insufficiently understood; in the lower animals scientists have tended
still more to undervalue it. As a fact, no species ordinarily multiplies
in such numbers as to exhaust all the food available, despite the
teaching of Malthus and Darwin to the contrary. The rate of reproduction
is the crux of natural selection; each species normally has such a
reproduction rate as will suffice to withstand the premature deaths and
sterility of some individuals, and yet not so large as to press unduly
upon the food supply. The problem of natural selection is a problem of
the adjustment between reproductive rate and death-rate, and the
struggle for subsistence is only one of several factors.
While the reproductive rate must be looked upon as a characteristic
which has its adaptations like other characteristics, it has one
peculiarity--its increase is always opposed by lethal selection. The
chances of life are reduced by reproducing, inasmuch as more danger is
entailed by the extra activities of courtship, and later, in bearing and
caring for the young, since these duties reduce the normal wariness of
individual life. The reproductive rate, therefore, always remains at the
lowest point which will suffice for the reproductive needs of the
species. For this reason alone the non-sustentative form of selection
might be expected to be the predominant kind.
J. T. Gulick and Karl Pearson have pointed out that there is a normal
conflict between natural selection and fecundal selection. Fecundal
selection is said by them to be constantly tending to increase the
reproductive rate, because fecundity is partly a matter of heredity, and
the fecund parents leave more offspring with the same characteristic.
Lethal selection, on the contrary, constantly asserts its power to
reduce the reproductive rate, because the reproductive demands on the
parents reduce their chances of life by interference with their natural
ability of self-protection. This is quite true, but the analysis is
incomplete, for an increased number of progeny not only decreases the
life chances of the parents, but also of the young, by reducing the
amount of care they receive.
In short, lethal selection and reproductive selection accomplish the
same end--a change in the constitution of the species--by different
means; but they are so closely linked together and balanced that any
change in the operation of one is likely to cause a change in the
operation of the other. This will be clearer when the effect of
reproductive selection is studied in man.
Recalling the truism that most human characters have a hereditary basis,
it is evident that the constitution of society will remain stable from
generation to generation, only if each section of society is reproducing
at the same rate as every other (and assuming, for the moment, that the
death-rate remains constant). Then if the birth-rate of one part of the
population is altered, if it is decreased, for example, the next
generation will contain proportionately fewer representatives of this
class, the succeeding generation fewer still, and so on
indefinitely--unless a selective death-rate is operating at the same
time. It is well known not only that the death-rate varies widely in
different parts of the population, as was pointed out in the earlier
part of this chapter, but that the birth-rate is rarely the same in any
two sections of the population. Evidently, therefore, the make-up of
society must necessarily be changing from generation to generation. It
will be the object of the rest of this chapter to investigate the ways
in which it is changing, while in the latter half of the book we shall
point out some of the ways in which it might be changed to better
advantage than it is at present.
Sexual selection, or differential success in marrying, will be discussed
at some length in Chapter XI; here it may be pointed out that the number
who fail to marry is very much greater than one often realizes. It has
already been noted that a large part of the population dies before it
reaches the age of marriage. Of 1,000 babies born in the United States,
only 750 will reach the average age of marriage; in some countries half
of the thousand will have fallen by that time. These dead certainly will
leave no descendants; but even of the survivors, part will fail to
marry. The returns of the thirteenth U. S. census showed that of the
males 45-64 years of age, 10% were single, while 11% of the females,
35-44 years old, were single. Few marriages will take place after those
ages. Add the number who died unmarried previous to those ages, but
after the age of 20, and it is safe to say that at least one-third of
the persons born in the United States die (early or late) without having
married.
The consideration of those who died before the age of marriage properly
comes under the head of lethal selection, but if attention is confined
to those who, though reaching the age of marriage, fail to marry, sexual
selection still has importance. For instance, it is generally known (and
some statistical proof will be given in Chapter XI) that beauty is
directly associated with the chance of marriage. The pretty girls in
general marry earlier as well in larger percentage; many of the ugly
ones will never find mates. Herbert Spencer argued ingeniously that
beauty is associated with general mental and moral superiority, and the
more exact studies of recent years have tended to confirm his
generalization. A recent, but not conclusive, investigation[65] showed
beauty to be correlated with intelligence to the extent of . 34. If this
is confirmed, it offers a good illustration of the action of sexual
selection in furthering the progressive evolution of the race. Miss
Gilmore, studying a group of normal school graduates, found a direct
correlation between intelligence (as judged by class marks) and early
marriage after graduation. Anyone who would take the trouble could
easily investigate numerous cases of this sort, which would show the
effect of sexual selection in perpetuating desirable qualities.
But sexual selection no longer has the importance that it once had, for
nowadays the mere fact of marriage is not a measure of fecundity, to the
extent that it once was. In the old days of unlimited fecundity, the
early marriage of a beautiful, or intelligent, woman meant a probable
perpetuation of her endowments; but at present, when artificial
restraint of fertility is so widespread, the result does not follow as a
matter of course: and it is evident that the race is little or not at
all helped by the early marriage of an attractive woman, if she has too
few or no children.
Fecundal selection, then, is becoming the important phase of
reproductive selection, in the evolution of civilized races. The
differential birth-rate is, as we have often insisted, the all-important
factor of eugenics, and it merits careful consideration from all sides.
Such consideration is made difficult by the inadequate vital statistics
of the United States (which ranks with Turkey and China in this
respect); but there is no doubt that the birth-rate as a whole is low,
as compared with that of other countries; although as a whole it is not
dangerously low and there is, of course, no necessary evil in a low
birth-rate, of itself, if the quality be satisfactory. The U. S. Census
tabulation for 1915 gives the following comparison of the number of
babies born alive each year, per 1,000 population, in various countries:
Russia in Europe (1909) 44. 0
Japan (1911) 34. 1
Italy (1913) 31. 7
Austria (1912) 31. 3
Spain (1913) 30. 4
Austria (1913) 28. 3
German Empire (1912) 28. 3
Holland (1913) 28. 1
Denmark (1913) 25. 6
Norway (1913) 25. 3
United States (registration area only, 1915) 24. 9
England and Wales (1913) 24. 1
Sweden (1912) 23. 8
Switzerland (1913) 23. 1
Belgium (1912) 22. 6
France (1912) 19. 0
The United States birth-rate may, on its face, appear high enough; but
its face does not show that this height is due largely to the fecundity
of immigrant women. Statistics to prove this are given in Chapter XIII,
but may be supplemented here by some figures from Pittsburgh.
Ward 7, in that city, contains the homes of many well-to-do, and
contains more representatives of the old American stock than any other
ward in the city, having 56. 4% of residents who are native born of
native parents while the majority of the residents in nearly all the
other wards in the city are either themselves foreign-born, or the
offspring of foreign-born parents.
Ward 7 has the lowest birth-rate and the lowest rate of net increase of
any ward in the city.
With this may be contrasted the sixth ward, which runs along the south
bank of the Allegheny river. It is one of the great factory districts of
the city, but also contains a large number of homes. Nearly 3,000 of its
14,817 males of voting age are illiterate. Its death-rate is the highest
in the city. Almost nine-tenths of its residents are either foreigners
or the children of foreigners. Its birth-rate is three times that of the
seventh ward.
Taking into account all the wards of the city, it is found that the
birth-rate _rises_ as one considers the wards which are marked by a
large foreign population, illiteracy, poverty and a high death-rate. On
the other hand, the birth-rate _falls_ as one passes to the wards that
have most native-born residents, most education, most prosperity--and,
to some extent, education and prosperity denote efficiency and eugenic
value. For 27 wards there is a high negative correlation (-. 673),
between birth-rate and percentage of native-born of native parents in
the population. The correlation between illiteracy and net increase[66]
is +. 731.
The net increase of Pittsburgh's population, therefore, is greatest
where the percentage of foreign-born and of illiterates is greatest.
The significance of such figures in natural selection must be evident.
Pittsburgh, like probably all large cities in civilized countries,
breeds from the bottom. The lower a class is in the scale of
intelligence, the greater is its reproductive contribution. Recalling
that intelligence is inherited, that like begets like in this respect,
one can hardly feel encouraged over the quality of the population of
Pittsburgh, a few generations hence.
Of course these illiterate foreign laborers are, from a eugenic point of
view, not wholly bad. The picture should not be painted any blacker than
the original. Some of these ignorant stocks, in another generation and
with decent surroundings, will furnish excellent citizens.
But taken as a whole, it can hardly be supposed that the fecund stocks
of Pittsburgh, with their illiteracy, squalor and tuberculosis, their
high death-rates, their economic straits, are as good eugenic material
as the families that are dying out in the more substantial residence
section which their fathers created in the eastern part of the city.
And it can hardly be supposed that the city, and the nation, of the
future, would not benefit by a change in the distribution of births,
whereby more would come from the seventh ward and its like, and fewer
from the sixth and its like.
Evidently, there is no difficulty about seeing this form of natural
selection at work, and at work in such a way as greatly to change the
character of one section of the species. For comparison, some figures
are presented from European sources. In the French war budget of 1911 it
appears that from 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 50, in
different districts of Paris, the number of yearly births was as
follows:
Very poor 108
Poor 99
Well-to-do 72
Very prosperous 65
Rich 53
Very rich 35
Disregarding the last class altogether, it is yet evident that while the
mother in a wealthy home bears two children, the mother in the slums
bears four. It is evident then that in Paris at the present time
reproductive selection is changing the mental and moral composition of
the population at a rapid rate, which can not be very materially reduced
even if it is found that the death-rate in the poorer districts is
considerably greater than it is on the more fashionable boulevards.
J. Bertillon has brought together[67] in a similar way data from a
number of cities, showing the following birth-rates:
_Berlin_ _Vienna_ _London_
Very poor quarters 157 200 147
Poor quarters 129 164 140
Comfortable quarters 114 155 107
Very comfortable 96 153 107
Rich 63 107 87
Very rich 47 81 63
--- --- ---
Average 102 153 109
Obviously, in all these cases reproductive selection will soon bring
about such a change in the character of the population, that a much
larger part of it than at present will have the hereditary
characteristics of the poorer classes and a much smaller part of it than
at present the hereditary characteristics of the well-to-do classes.
David Heron and others have recently studied[68] the relation which the
birth-rate in different boroughs of London bears to their social and
economic conditions. Using the correlation method, they found "that in
London the birth-rate per 1,000 married women, aged 15 to 54, is
highest where the conditions show the greatest poverty--namely, in
quarters where pawnbrokers abound, where unskilled labor is the
principal source of income, where consumption is most common and most
deadly, where pauperism is most rife, and, finally, where the greatest
proportion of the children born die in infancy. The correlation
coefficients show that the association of these evil conditions with the
relative number of children born is a very close one; and if the
question is put in another way, and the calculations are based on
measures of prosperity instead of on measures of poverty, a high degree
of correlation is found between prosperity and a low birth-rate.
"It must not be supposed that a high rate of infant mortality, which
almost invariably accompanies a high birth-rate, either in London or
elsewhere, goes far toward counteracting the effects of the differential
birth-rate. Where infant mortality is highest the average number of
children above the age of two for each married woman is highest also,
and although the chances of death at all ages are greater among the
inhabitants of the poorer quarters, their rate of natural increase
remains considerably higher than that of the inhabitants of the richer.
"From the detailed study of the figures made by Newsholme and Stevenson,
conclusions essentially the same as those of Heron can be drawn. . . .
Their first step was to divide the London boroughs into six groups
according to the average number of domestic servants for 100 families in
each. This is probably as good a measure of prosperity as any other.
They then determined the total birth-rate of the population in each
group, and arrived at the following figures:
_Group_
I. 10 domestic servants for 100 families 34. 97
II. 10-20 38. 32
III. 20-30 25. 99
IV. 30-40 25. 83
V. 40-60 25. 11
VI. Over 60 18. 24
"In order to find out how far the differences shown by these figures are
due to differences in the percentage of women who marry in each group
and the age at which they marry, they corrected the figures in such a
way as to make them represent what the birth-rates would be in each
group, if the proportion of wives of each age to the whole population
comprising the group was the same as it is in the whole of England and
Wales. The corrected birth-rates thus obtained were as follows:
_Group_
I 31. 56
II 25. 82
III 25. 63
IV 25. 50
V 25. 56
VI 20. 45
"It will readily be seen that the effect of the correction has been to
reduce the difference between the two extreme groups by about one-third,
showing that to this extent it is due to the way in which they differ as
to the average age and number of the women who marry. Further, Groups
II, III, IV and V have all been brought to about the same level, with a
corrected birth-rate about halfway between the highest and the lowest.
This shows that there is no gradual decrease in fertility associated
with a gradually increasing grade of prosperity, but that three sharply
divided classes may be distinguished: a very poor class with a high
degree of fertility, to which about a quarter of the population of
London belong, a rich class with a low degree of fertility, and a class
intermediate in both respects. "
"Eugenics is less directly concerned with this side of the question that
with the relative rate of increase of the different classes. This may be
found for the six groups in the usual way by deducting the death-rate
from the birth-rate. The following figures for the rate of natural
increase are then obtained:
_Group_
I 16. 56
II 13. 89
III 11. 43
IV 13. 81
V 10. 29
VI 5. 79
"The figures show in a manner which hardly admits of any doubt that in
London at any rate the inhabitants of the poorest quarters--over a
million in number--are reproducing themselves at a much greater rate
than the more well-to-do. "
A research on similar lines by S. R. Steinmetz[69] in Holland shows that
the average number of children in the lowest class families is 5. 44.
People in industry or small trade, skilled mechanics and professors of
theology have five children to the family; in other classes the number
is as follows:
Artists 4. 30
Well-to-do Commercial Classes 4. 27
High Officials 4. 00
University Professors (excluding theological) 3. 50
23 Scholars and Artists of the first rank 2. 60
It is not hard to see that the next generation in Holland is likely to
have proportionately fewer gifted individuals than has the present one.
Fortunately, it is very probable that the differential birth-rate is not
of such ominous import in rural districts as it is in cities, although
some of the tribes of degenerates which live in the country show
birth-rates of four to six children per wife. [70] But in the more highly
civilized nations now, something like a half of the population lives in
urban districts, and the startling extent to which these urban
populations breed from the bottom involves a disastrous change in the
balance of population within a few generations, unless it is in some way
checked.
Just how great the change may be, statistically, has been emphasized by
Karl Pearson, who points out that "50% of the married population provide
75% of the next generation," owing to the number of deaths before
maturity, the number of celibates and the number of childless
marriages. "The same rule may be expressed in another way: 50% of the
next generation is produced by 25% of the married population. " At this
rate in a few generations the less efficient and socially valuable, with
their large families, will overwhelm the more efficient and socially
valuable, and their small families.
Fecundal selection is at work to-day on a large scale, changing the
character of the population, and from a eugenic point of view changing
it for the worse. Fortunately, it is not impossible to arrest this
change.
But, it may be objected, is not this change merely "the survival of the
fittest? " In a sense, yes; and it is necessary that the more intelligent
classes should make themselves "fitter" to survive, by a change of
attitude toward reproduction. But the dying-out of the intellectually
superior part of the population is a pathological condition, not a part
of normal evolution; for barring artificial interference with the
birth-rate, fertility has been found to go hand in hand with general
superiority. This demonstration is due to F. A. Woods' study[71] of 608
members of the royal families of Europe, among whom, for reasons of
state, large families are desired, and among whom there has probably
been little restraint on the birth-rate. Averaging the ratings of his
individuals from grade 1, the mentally and physically very inferior, to
grade 10, the mentally and physically very superior, he found that the
number of children produced and brought to maturity increased in a
fairly direct ratio. His figures are as follows:
BOTH SEXES (AVERAGED)
Grades for virtues 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average number of
adult
children. 1. 66 2. 86 2. 99 2. 41 3. 44 3. 49 3. 05 3. 03 3. 93 3. 83
Investigations of Karl Pearson and Alexander Graham Bell[72] show that
fecundity and longevity are associated. It follows that the mentally
and morally superior, who are the most fecund, are also the
longest-lived; and as this longevity is largely due to inheritance it
follows that, under natural conditions, the standard of the stratum of
society under consideration would gradually rise, in respect to
longevity, in each generation.
Such is probably one of the methods by which the human race has
gradually increased its level of desirable characters in each
generation. The desirable characters were associated with each other,
and also with fecundity.
The desirable characters are still associated
with each other, but their association with fecundity is now negative.
It is in this change that eugenics finds justification for its existence
as a propaganda. Its object is to restore the positive correlation
between desirable characters and fecundity, on which the progressive
evolution of the race depends.
The bearing of natural selection on the present-day evolution of the
human race, particularly in the United States of America, must be
reviewed in a few closing paragraphs.
Selection by death may result either from inadequate food supply, or
from some other lethal factor. The former type, although something of a
bugaboo ever since the time of Malthus, has in reality relatively little
effect on the human race at present. Non-sustentative lethal selection
in man is operating chiefly through zymotic diseases and the bad hygiene
of the mentally inferior.
Reproductive selection is increasingly effective and its action is such
as to cause grave alarm both through the failure of some to marry
properly (sexual selection) and the failure of some to bear enough
children, while others bear too many (fecundal selection). It is obvious
that the racial result of this process will depend on what kind of
people bear and rear the most children; and it has been shown that in
general the larger families are in the section of the population that
makes fewer contributions to human prosperity and happiness, while those
endowed with great gifts, who ought to be transmitting them to their
children, are in many cases not even reproducing their own number.
Natural selection raised man from apehood to his present estate. It is
still operating on him on a large scale, in several ways, but in none of
these ways is it now doing much actually to improve the race, and in
some ways, owing to man's own interference, it is rapidly hastening race
degeneracy.
CHAPTER VII
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE EUGENICS MOVEMENT
"Eugenics," wrote Francis Galton, who founded the science and coined the
name, "is the study of agencies under social control that may improve or
impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or
mentally. " The definition is universally accepted, but by its use of the
word "study" it defines a pure science, and the present book is
concerned rather with the application of such a science. Accepting
Galton's definition, we shall for our purposes slightly extend it by
saying that applied eugenics embraces all such measures, in use or
prospect either individually or collectively, as may improve or impair
the racial qualities of future generations of man, either physically or
mentally, whether or not this was the avowed purpose.
It is one of the newest of sciences. It was practically forced into
existence by logical necessity. It is certainly here to stay, and it
demands the right to speak, in many cases to cast the deciding vote, on
some of the most important questions that confront society.
The science of eugenics is the natural result of the spread and
acceptance of organic evolution, following the publication of Darwin's
work on _The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection_, in 1859.
It took a generation for his ideas to win the day; but then they
revolutionized the intellectual life of the civilized world. Man came to
realize that the course of nature is regular; that the observed
sequences of events can be described in formulas which are called
natural laws; he learned that he could achieve great results in plant
and animal breeding by working in harmony with these laws. Then the
question logically arose, "Is not man himself subject to these same
laws? Can he not use his knowledge of them to improve his own species,
as he has been more or less consciously improving the plants and animals
that were of most value to him, for many centuries? "
The evolutionist answered both these questions affirmatively. However
great may be the superiority of his mind, man is first of all an animal,
subject to the natural laws that govern other animals. He can learn to
comply with these laws; he can, therefore, take an active share in
furthering the process of evolution toward a higher life.
That, briefly, is the scope of the science of eugenics, as its founder,
Sir Francis Galton, conceived it. "Now that this new animal, man, finds
himself somehow in existence, endowed with a little power and
intelligence," Galton wrote 30 years ago, "he ought, I submit, to awake
to a fuller knowledge of his relatively great position, and begin to
assume a deliberate part in furthering the great work of evolution. He
may infer the course it is bound to pursue, from his observation of that
which it has already followed, and he might devote his modicum of power,
intelligence and kindly feeling to render its future progress less slow
and painful. Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half
consciously, and for his own personal advantages, but he has not yet
risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so,
deliberately and systematically. "
But, it may well be asked, how does this sudden need for eugenics arise,
when the world has gone along without it for hundreds of millions of
years in the past, and the human race has made the great ascent from an
ape-like condition in spite of the fact that such a science as eugenics
was never dreamed of?
For answer recall that natural selection, which is mainly responsible
for bringing man to his present situation, has worked chiefly through a
differential death-rate. The less fit die: the more fit survive. In the
earlier stages of society, man interfered little with natural selection.
But during the last century the increase of the philanthropic spirit and
the progress of medicine have done a great deal to interfere with the
selective process. In some ways, selection in the human race has almost
ceased; in many ways it is actually reversed, that is, it results in the
survival of the inferior rather than the superior. In the olden days the
criminal was summarily executed, the weakly child died soon after birth
through lack of proper care and medical attention, the insane were dealt
with so violently that if they were not killed by the treatment they
were at least left hopelessly "incurable" and had little chance of
becoming parents. Harsh measures, all of these, but they kept the
germ-plasm of the race reasonably purified.
To-day, how is it? The inefficients, the wastrels, the physical, mental,
and moral cripples are carefully preserved at public expense. The
criminal is turned out on parole after a few years, to become the father
of a family. The insane is discharged as "cured," again to take up the
duties of citizenship. The feeble-minded child is painfully "educated,"
often at the expense of his normal brother or sister. In short, the
undesirables of the race, with whom the bloody hand of natural selection
would have made short work early in life, are now nursed along to old
age.
Of course, one would not have it otherwise with respect to the
prolongation of life. To expose deformed children as the Spartans did
would outrage our moral sentiments; to chloroform the incurable is a
proposition that almost every one condemns.
But this philanthropic spirit, this zealous regard for the interests of
the unfortunate, which is rightly considered one of the highest
manifestations of Christian civilization, has in many cases benefited
the few at the expense of the many. The present generation, in making
its own life comfortable, is leaving a staggering bill to be paid by
posterity.
It is at this point that eugenics comes in and demands that a
distinction be made between the interests of the individual and the
interests of the race. It does not yield to any one in its solicitude
for the individual unfortunate; but it says, "His happiness in life does
not need to include leaving a family of children, inheritors of his
defects, who if they were able to think might curse him for begetting
them and curse society for allowing them to be born. " And looking at the
other side of the problem, eugenics says to the young man and young
woman, "You should enjoy the greatest happiness that love can bring to
a life. But something more is expected of you than a selfish,
short-sighted indifference to all except yourselves in the world. When
you understand the relation of the individual to the race, you will find
your greatest happiness only in a marriage which will result in a family
of worthy children. You are temporarily a custodian of the inheritance
of the whole past; it is far more disgraceful for you to squander or
ruin this heritage, or to regard it as intended solely for your
individual, selfish gratification, than it would be for you to dissipate
a fortune in money which you had received, or to betray any trust which
had been confided to you by one of your fellow men. "
Such is the teaching of eugenics. It is not wholly new. The early Greeks
gave much thought to it, and with the insight which characterized them,
they rightly put the emphasis on the constructive side; they sought to
breed better men and women, not merely to accomplish a work of hygiene,
to lessen taxes, and reduce suffering, by reducing the number of
unfortunates among them. As early as the first half of the sixth century
B. C. the Greek poet Theognis of Megara wrote: "We look for rams and
asses and stallions of good stock, and one believes that good will come
from good; yet a good man minds not to wed an evil daughter of an evil
sire, if he but give her much wealth. . . . Wealth confounds our stock.
Marvel not that the stock of our folk is tarnished, for the good is
mingling with the base. " A century later eugenics was discussed in some
detail by Plato, who suggested that the state intervene to mate the best
with the best, and the worst with the worst; the former should be
encouraged to have large families, and their children should be reared
by the government, while the children of the unfit were to be, as he
says, "put away in some mysterious, unknown places, as they should be. "
Aristotle developed the idea on political lines, being more interested
in the economic than the biological aspects of marriage; but he held
firmly to the doctrine that the state should feel free to intervene in
the interests of reproductive selection.
For nearly two thousand years after this, conscious eugenic ideals were
largely ignored. Constant war reversed natural selection, as it is doing
to-day, by killing off the physically fit and leaving the relatively
unfit to reproduce the race; while monasticism and the enforced celibacy
of the priesthood performed a similar office for many of the mentally
superior, attracting them to a career in which they could leave no
posterity. At the beginning of the last century a germ of modern
eugenics is visible in Malthus' famous essay on population, in which he
directed attention to the importance of the birth-rate for human
welfare, since this essay led Darwin and Wallace to enunciate the theory
of natural selection, and to point out clearly the effects of artificial
selection. It is really on Darwin's work that the modern science of
eugenics is based, and it owes its beginning to Darwin's cousin, Francis
Galton.
Galton was born in 1822, studied mathematics and medicine, traveled
widely, attained fame as an explorer in South Africa, and after
inheriting sufficient income to make him independent, settled down in
London and gave his time to pioneering experiments in many branches of
science. He contributed largely to founding the science of meteorology,
opened new paths in experimental psychology, introduced the system of
finger prints to anthropology, and took up the study of heredity,
publishing in 1865 a series of articles under the title of "Hereditary
Talent and Genius," which contained his first utterances on eugenics.
The present generation can hardly understand what a new field Galton
broke. Even Darwin had supposed that men do not differ very much in
intellectual endowment, and that their differences in achievement are
principally the result of differences in zeal and industry. Galton's
articles, whose thesis was that better men could be bred by conscious
selection, attracted much attention from the scientific world and were
expanded in 1869 in his book _Hereditary Genius_.
This was an elaborate and painstaking study of the biographies of 977
men who would rank, according to Galton's estimate, as about 1 to 4,000
of the general population, in respect to achievement. The number of
families found to contain more than one eminent man was 300, divided as
follows: Judges, 85; Statesmen, 39; Commanders, 27; Literary, 33;
Scientific, 43; Poets, 20; Artists, 28; Divines, 25. The close groupings
of the interrelated eminence led to the conclusion that heredity plays a
very important part in achievement. The greater success of real sons of
great men as compared with adopted sons of great men likewise indicated,
he thought, that success is due to actual biological heredity rather
than to the good opportunities afforded the scion of the illustrious
family. Galton's conclusion was that by selecting from strains that
produced eminence, a superior human stock could be bred.
In 1874 he published a similar study of the heredity of 180 eminent
English scientists, reemphasizing the claims of nature over nurture, to
use his familiar antithesis. In 1883 he published "Inquiries into the
Human Faculty and Its Development," a collection of evolutionary and
anthropometric essays where the word Eugenics was first used in a new
exposition of the author's views. "Natural Inheritance" appeared in
1889, being the essence of various memoirs published since "Hereditary
Genius," dealing with the general biological principles underlying the
study of heredity and continuing the study of resemblances between
individuals in respect to stature, eye color, artistic faculty and
morbid conditions.
Galton's interest in eugenics was not lessened by the abundant criticism
he received, and in 1901 he defended "The Possible Improvement of the
Human Breed under Existing Conditions of Law and Sentiment" before the
Anthropological Society. Three years later he read a paper entitled
"Eugenics; Its Definition, Scope and Aims," to the Sociological Society.
His program, in brief, was as follows:
1. Disseminate knowledge of hereditary laws as far as surely known and
promote their further study.
2. Inquire into birth rates of various strata of society (classified
according to civic usefulness) in ancient and modern nations.
3. Collect reliable data showing how large and thriving families have
most frequently originated.
4. Study the influences affecting marriage.
5. Persistently set forth the national importance of Eugenics.
The following year, Galton again read a paper before the Society,
suggesting the award of certificates of quality to the eugenically fit.
He also maintained that marriage customs which are largely controlled by
public opinion could be modified for racial welfare through a molding of
public sentiment.
In 1904 he founded a Research Fellowship at the University of London to
determine, if possible, what the standard of fitness is, and in 1905 a
Scholarship was added. Edgar Schuster and Miss E. M. Elderton held these
posts until 1907, when Professor Karl Pearson took charge of the
research work and, at the resignation of Mr. Schuster, David Heron was
appointed Fellow. On Galton's death, January 17, 1911, it became known
that through the terms of his will a professorship was founded and
Professor Pearson was invited to hold it. His corps of workers
constitutes the Galton Eugenics Laboratory staff.
To spread throughout the British Empire such knowledge of eugenics as
might be gathered by specialists, the Eugenics Education Society was
formed in 1908 with Galton as honorary president. Its field comprises:
(1) Biology in so far as it concerns hereditary selection; (2)
Anthropology as related to race and marriage; (3) Politics, where it
bears on parenthood in relation to civic worth; (4) Ethics, in so far as
it promotes ideals that lead to the improvement of social quality; (5)
Religion, in so far as it strengthens and sanctifies eugenic duty.
In America the movement got an early start but developed slowly. The
first definite step was the formation of an Institute of Heredity in
Boston, shortly after 1880, by Loring Moody, who was assisted by the
poet Longfellow, Samuel E. Sewall, Mrs. Horace Mann, and other
well-known people. He proposed to work very much along the lines that
the Eugenics Record Office later adopted, but he was ahead of his time,
and his attempt seems to have come to nothing.
In 1883 Alexander Graham Bell, who may be considered the first
scientific worker in eugenics in the United States, published a paper on
the danger of the formation of a deaf variety of the human race in this
country, in which he gave the result of researches he had made at
Martha's Vineyard and other localities during preceding years, on the
pedigrees of congenitally deaf persons--deaf mutes, as they were then
called. He showed clearly that congenital deafness is largely due to
heredity, that it is much increased by consanguineous marriages, and
that it is of great importance to prevent the marriage of persons, in
both of whose families congenital deafness is present. About five years
later he founded the Volta Bureau in Washington, D. C. , for the study of
deafness, and this has fostered a great deal of research work on this
particular phase of heredity.
In 1903 the American Breeders' Association was founded at St. Louis by
plant and animals breeders who desired to keep in touch with the new
subject of genetics, the science of breeding, which was rapidly coming
to have great practical importance. From the outset, the members
realized that the changes which they could produce in races of animals
and plants might also be produced in man, and the science of eugenics
was thus recognized on a sound biological basis. Soon a definite
eugenics section was formed, and as the importance of this section
increased, and it was realized that the name of Breeders' Association
was too narrowly construed by the public, the association changed its
name (1913) to the American Genetic Association, and the name of its
organ from the _American Breeders' Magazine_ to the _Journal of
Heredity_.
Under the auspices of this association, the Eugenics Record Office was
established at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, by Dr. C. B. Davenport.
It has been mainly supported by Mrs. E. H. Harriman, but has since been
taken over by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. It is gathering
pedigrees in many parts of the United States, analyzing them and
publishing the results in a series of bulletins.
In the last few years, the public has come to take a keen interest in
the possibilities of eugenics. This has led some sex hygienists, child
welfare workers, and persons similarly engaged, to attempt to capitalize
the interest in eugenics by appropriating the name for their own use. We
strongly object to any such misuse of the word, which should designate
the application of genetics to the human race. Sex hygiene, child
welfare, and other sanitary and sociological movements should stand on
their own feet and leave to eugenics the scope which its Greek
derivation indicates for it,--the science of good breeding. [73]
In all parts of Europe, the ideas of eugenics have gradually spread. In
1912 the first International Eugenics Congress was held at London, under
auspices of the Eugenics Education Society; more than 700 delegates were
in attendance.
Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria are united in an International
Eugenics Society and the war led to the formation of a number of
separate societies in Germany. Hungary has formed an organization of its
own, France has its society in Paris, and the Italian Anthropological
Society has given much attention to the subject. The Anthropological
Society of Denmark has similarly recognized eugenics by the formation of
a separate section. The Institut Solvay of Belgium, a foundation with
sociological aims, created a eugenics section several years ago; and in
Holland a strong committee has been formed. Last of all, Sweden has put
a large separate organization in the field.
In the United States the subject has interested many women's clubs,
college organizations and Young Men's Christian Associations, while the
periodical press has given it a large amount of attention. Public
enthusiasm, often ill-guided, has in a few cases outrun the facts, and
has secured legislation in some states, which by no means meets the
approval of most scientific eugenists.
When we speak of scientific eugenists, it may appear that we use the
word in an invidious way. We use it deliberately, and by using it we
mean to intimate that we do not think enthusiasm is an adequate
substitute for knowledge, in anyone who assumes to pass judgment upon a
measure as being eugenic or dysgenic--as likely to improve the race or
cause its deterioration. Eugenics is a biological science which, in its
application, must be interpreted with the help of the best scientific
method. Very few social workers, whose field eugenics touches, are
competent to understand its bearings without some study, and an
appreciation of eugenics is the more difficult for them, because an
understanding of it will show them that some of their work is based on
false premises. The average legislator is equally unlikely to understand
the full import of eugenics, unless he has made a definite effort to do
so. All the more honor, then, to the rapidly increasing number of social
workers and legislators who have grasped the full meaning of eugenics
and are now striving to put it in effect. The agriculturist, through his
experience with plants and animals, is probably better qualified than
anyone else to realize the practicability of eugenics, and it is
accordingly not a matter of mere chance that the science of eugenics in
America was built up by a breeders' association, and has found and still
finds hundreds of effective advocates in the graduates of the
agricultural colleges.
The program of eugenics naturally divides itself in two parts:
(1) Reducing the racial contribution of the least desirable part of the
population.
(2) Increasing the racial contribution of the superior part of the
population.
The first part of this program is the most pressing and the most easily
dealt with; it is no cause for surprise, then, that to many people it
has seemed to be the predominant aim of eugenics. Certainly the problem
is great enough to stagger anyone who looks it full in the face;
although for a variety of reasons, satisfactory statistical evidence of
racial degeneracy is hard to get.
Considering only the "institutional population" of the United States,
one gets the following figures:
BLIND: total, 64,763 according to census of 1900. Of these,
35,645 were totally blind and 29,118 partly blind. The affection is
stated to have been congenital in 4,730 cases. Nineteen per cent of the
blind were found to have blind relatives; 4. 5% of them were returned as
the offspring of cousin marriages.
DEAF: total, 86,515, according to the census of 1900. More than
50,000 of them were deaf from childhood (under 20), 12,609 being deaf
from birth. At least 4. 5% of the deaf were stated to be offspring of
cousin marriages, and 32. 1% to have deaf relatives. The significance of
this can not be determined unless it is known how many normal persons
have deaf relatives (or blind relatives, in considering the preceding
paragraph), but it points to the existence of families that are
characterized by deafness (or blindness).
INSANE: the census of 1910 enumerated only the insane who were
in institutions; they numbered 187,791. The number outside of
institutions is doubtless considerable but can not be computed. The
institutional population is not a permanent, but mainly a transient one,
the number of persons discharged from institutions in 1910 being 29,304.
As the number and size of institutions does not increase very rapidly,
it would appear probable that 25,000 insane persons pass through and out
of institutions, and back into the general population, each year. From
this one can get some idea of the amount of neurotic weakness in the
population of the United States,--much of it congenital and heritable in
character.
FEEBLE-MINDED: the census (1910) lists only those in
institutions, who totaled about 40,000. The census experts believe that
200,000 would be a conservative estimate of the total number of
feeble-minded in the country, and many psychologists think that 300,000
would be more nearly accurate. The number of feeble-minded who are
receiving institutional care is almost certainly not more than 10% or
15% of the total, and many of these (about 15,000) are in almshouses,
not special institutions.
PAUPERS: There were 84,198 paupers enumerated in almshouses on
January 1, 1910, and 88,313 admitted during the year, which indicates
that the almshouse paupers are a rapidly shifting group. This
population, probably of several hundred thousand persons, who drift
into and out of almshouses, can hardly be characterized accurately, but
in large part it must be considered at least inefficient and probably of
mentally low grade.
CRIMINALS: The inmates of prisons, penitentiaries,
reformatories, and similar places of detention numbered 111,609 in 1910;
this does not include 25,000 juvenile delinquents. The jail population
is nearly all transient; one must be very cautious in inferring that
conviction for an offense against the law indicates lack of eugenic
value; but it is worth noting that the number of offenders who are
feeble-minded is probably not less than one-fourth or one-third. If the
number of inebriates could be added, it would greatly increase the
total; and inebriacy or chronic alcoholism is generally recognized now
as indicating in a majority of cases either feeble-mindedness or some
other defect of the nervous system. The number of criminals who are in
some way neurotically tainted is placed by some psychologists at 50% or
more of the total prison population.
Add to these a number of epileptics, tramps, prostitutes, beggars, and
others whom the census enumerator finds it difficult to catch, and the
total number of possible undesirable parents becomes very large. It is
in fact much larger than appears in these figures, because of the fact
that many people carry defects that are latent and only appear in the
offspring of a marriage representing two tainted strains. Thus the
feeble-minded child usually if not always has feeble-mindedness in both
his father's and mother's ancestry, and for every one of the patent
feeble-minded above enumerated, there may be several dozen latent ones,
who are themselves probably normal in every way and yet carry the
dangerously tainted germ-plasm.
The estimate has frequently been made that the United States would be
much better off eugenically if it were deprived of the future racial
contributions of at least 10% of its citizens. While literally true this
estimate is too high for the group which could be considered for
attempts to directly control in a practical eugenics program.
Natural selection, in the early days of man's history, would have killed
off many of these people early in life. They would have been unable to
compete with their physically and mentally more vigorous fellows and
would have died miserably by starvation or violence. Natural selection's
use of the death-rate was a brutal one, but at least it prevented such
traits as these people show from increasing in each generation.
Eugenists hope to arrive at the same result, not by the death-rate but
by the birth-rate. If germinally anti-social persons are kept humanely
segregated during their lifetime, instead of being turned out after a
few years of institutional life and allowed to marry, they will leave no
descendants, and the number of congenital defectives in the community
will be notably diminished. If the same policy is followed through
succeeding generations, the number of defectives, of those incapable of
taking a useful part in society, will become smaller and smaller. One
who does not believe that these people hand on their traits to their
descendants may profitably consider the famous history of the so-called
Juke family, a strain originating among the "finger lakes" of New York,
whose history was published by R. L. Dugdale as far back as 1877 and
lately restudied by A. H. Estabrook.
"From one lazy vagabond nicknamed 'Juke,' born in 1720, whose two sons
married five degenerate sisters, six generations numbering about 1,200
persons of every grade of idleness, viciousness, lewdness, pauperism,
disease, idiocy, insanity and criminality were traced. Of the total
seven generations, 300 died in infancy; 310 were professional paupers,
kept in almshouses a total of 2,300 years; 440 were physically wrecked
by their own 'diseased wickedness'; more than half the women fell into
prostitution; 130 were convicted criminals; 60 were thieves; 7 were
murderers; only 20 learned a trade, 10 of these in state prison, and all
at a state cost of over $1,250,000. "[74]
How heredity works both ways, is shown by the history of the Kallikak
family, published by H. H. Goddard a few years ago.
"At the beginning of the Revolutionary War a young man, known in the
history as Martin Kallikak, had a son by a nameless, feeble-minded girl,
from whom there have descended in the direct line four hundred and
eighty individuals. One hundred and forty-three of these are known to
have been feeble-minded, and only forty-six are known to have been
normal.
letter dated March 16, 1916, the leader told of the discovery of the
remains of the tribe of Pikipitanges, a once populous tribe of which a
chief, six women and two boys alone are left. The tribe had been almost
wiped out, Dr. Farabee reported, by an epidemic of _influenza_!
If the aborigines of the New World succumb to the diseases of the
European, it is not less true that the European succumbs to diseases
against which his race has not been selected. The deadliness of yellow
fever to Americans in the tropics, and the relative immunity of Negroes,
is familiar; so too is the frequently fatal result of the African
tropical fevers on the white man, while the natives suffer from them
much less, having been made more resistant by centuries of natural
selection.
This long discussion may now be summarized. We dealt with lethal
selection, that form of natural selection which operates by prematurely
killing off the less fit and leaving the more fit to survive and
reproduce their kind. It is of course understood that the word "fit" in
this connection does not necessarily mean morally or mentally superior,
but merely fit for the particular environment. In a community of
rascals, the greatest rascal might be the fittest to survive. In the
slums of a modern city the Jewish type, stringently selected through
centuries of ghetto life, is particularly fit to survive, although it
may not be the physical ideal of an anthropologist.
Two forms of lethal selection were distinguished, one depending on
starvation and the other on causes not connected with the food supply.
Direct starvation is not a factor of importance in the survival of most
races during most of the time at the present day so far as the civilized
portion of the world is concerned. But disease and the other lethal
factors not connected with the food-supply, through which natural
selection acts, are still of great importance. From a half to two-thirds
of all deaths are of a selective character, even under favorable
conditions.
It is also to be noted, however, that with the progress of medicine, and
the diminution of unfit material, this kind of natural selection will
tend to become less and less widespread. For a long time, natural
selection in man has probably done little to cause marked change in his
physical or mental characteristics. Man's interference has prevented. In
recent centuries natural selection has probably done no more on the
whole than keep the race where it was: it is to be feared that it has
not even done that. It is doubtful if there is any race to-day which
attains the physical and mental average of the Athenians of 2,500 years
ago.
Lethal natural selection, then, has been and still is a factor of great
importance in the evolution of the race, but at present it is doing
little or nothing that promises to further the ideal of eugenics--race
betterment.
But lethal natural selection is only half the story. It is obvious that
if the constitution of a race can be altered by excess of deaths in a
certain class, it can equally be altered by excess of births in a
certain class. This is reproductive selection, which may appear in
either one of two forms. If the individual leaves few or no progeny
because of his failure to mate at the proper time, it is called sexual
selection; if, however, he mates, yet leaves few or no progeny (as
compared with other individuals), it is called fecundal selection.
Even in man, the importance of the role of reproductive selection is
insufficiently understood; in the lower animals scientists have tended
still more to undervalue it. As a fact, no species ordinarily multiplies
in such numbers as to exhaust all the food available, despite the
teaching of Malthus and Darwin to the contrary. The rate of reproduction
is the crux of natural selection; each species normally has such a
reproduction rate as will suffice to withstand the premature deaths and
sterility of some individuals, and yet not so large as to press unduly
upon the food supply. The problem of natural selection is a problem of
the adjustment between reproductive rate and death-rate, and the
struggle for subsistence is only one of several factors.
While the reproductive rate must be looked upon as a characteristic
which has its adaptations like other characteristics, it has one
peculiarity--its increase is always opposed by lethal selection. The
chances of life are reduced by reproducing, inasmuch as more danger is
entailed by the extra activities of courtship, and later, in bearing and
caring for the young, since these duties reduce the normal wariness of
individual life. The reproductive rate, therefore, always remains at the
lowest point which will suffice for the reproductive needs of the
species. For this reason alone the non-sustentative form of selection
might be expected to be the predominant kind.
J. T. Gulick and Karl Pearson have pointed out that there is a normal
conflict between natural selection and fecundal selection. Fecundal
selection is said by them to be constantly tending to increase the
reproductive rate, because fecundity is partly a matter of heredity, and
the fecund parents leave more offspring with the same characteristic.
Lethal selection, on the contrary, constantly asserts its power to
reduce the reproductive rate, because the reproductive demands on the
parents reduce their chances of life by interference with their natural
ability of self-protection. This is quite true, but the analysis is
incomplete, for an increased number of progeny not only decreases the
life chances of the parents, but also of the young, by reducing the
amount of care they receive.
In short, lethal selection and reproductive selection accomplish the
same end--a change in the constitution of the species--by different
means; but they are so closely linked together and balanced that any
change in the operation of one is likely to cause a change in the
operation of the other. This will be clearer when the effect of
reproductive selection is studied in man.
Recalling the truism that most human characters have a hereditary basis,
it is evident that the constitution of society will remain stable from
generation to generation, only if each section of society is reproducing
at the same rate as every other (and assuming, for the moment, that the
death-rate remains constant). Then if the birth-rate of one part of the
population is altered, if it is decreased, for example, the next
generation will contain proportionately fewer representatives of this
class, the succeeding generation fewer still, and so on
indefinitely--unless a selective death-rate is operating at the same
time. It is well known not only that the death-rate varies widely in
different parts of the population, as was pointed out in the earlier
part of this chapter, but that the birth-rate is rarely the same in any
two sections of the population. Evidently, therefore, the make-up of
society must necessarily be changing from generation to generation. It
will be the object of the rest of this chapter to investigate the ways
in which it is changing, while in the latter half of the book we shall
point out some of the ways in which it might be changed to better
advantage than it is at present.
Sexual selection, or differential success in marrying, will be discussed
at some length in Chapter XI; here it may be pointed out that the number
who fail to marry is very much greater than one often realizes. It has
already been noted that a large part of the population dies before it
reaches the age of marriage. Of 1,000 babies born in the United States,
only 750 will reach the average age of marriage; in some countries half
of the thousand will have fallen by that time. These dead certainly will
leave no descendants; but even of the survivors, part will fail to
marry. The returns of the thirteenth U. S. census showed that of the
males 45-64 years of age, 10% were single, while 11% of the females,
35-44 years old, were single. Few marriages will take place after those
ages. Add the number who died unmarried previous to those ages, but
after the age of 20, and it is safe to say that at least one-third of
the persons born in the United States die (early or late) without having
married.
The consideration of those who died before the age of marriage properly
comes under the head of lethal selection, but if attention is confined
to those who, though reaching the age of marriage, fail to marry, sexual
selection still has importance. For instance, it is generally known (and
some statistical proof will be given in Chapter XI) that beauty is
directly associated with the chance of marriage. The pretty girls in
general marry earlier as well in larger percentage; many of the ugly
ones will never find mates. Herbert Spencer argued ingeniously that
beauty is associated with general mental and moral superiority, and the
more exact studies of recent years have tended to confirm his
generalization. A recent, but not conclusive, investigation[65] showed
beauty to be correlated with intelligence to the extent of . 34. If this
is confirmed, it offers a good illustration of the action of sexual
selection in furthering the progressive evolution of the race. Miss
Gilmore, studying a group of normal school graduates, found a direct
correlation between intelligence (as judged by class marks) and early
marriage after graduation. Anyone who would take the trouble could
easily investigate numerous cases of this sort, which would show the
effect of sexual selection in perpetuating desirable qualities.
But sexual selection no longer has the importance that it once had, for
nowadays the mere fact of marriage is not a measure of fecundity, to the
extent that it once was. In the old days of unlimited fecundity, the
early marriage of a beautiful, or intelligent, woman meant a probable
perpetuation of her endowments; but at present, when artificial
restraint of fertility is so widespread, the result does not follow as a
matter of course: and it is evident that the race is little or not at
all helped by the early marriage of an attractive woman, if she has too
few or no children.
Fecundal selection, then, is becoming the important phase of
reproductive selection, in the evolution of civilized races. The
differential birth-rate is, as we have often insisted, the all-important
factor of eugenics, and it merits careful consideration from all sides.
Such consideration is made difficult by the inadequate vital statistics
of the United States (which ranks with Turkey and China in this
respect); but there is no doubt that the birth-rate as a whole is low,
as compared with that of other countries; although as a whole it is not
dangerously low and there is, of course, no necessary evil in a low
birth-rate, of itself, if the quality be satisfactory. The U. S. Census
tabulation for 1915 gives the following comparison of the number of
babies born alive each year, per 1,000 population, in various countries:
Russia in Europe (1909) 44. 0
Japan (1911) 34. 1
Italy (1913) 31. 7
Austria (1912) 31. 3
Spain (1913) 30. 4
Austria (1913) 28. 3
German Empire (1912) 28. 3
Holland (1913) 28. 1
Denmark (1913) 25. 6
Norway (1913) 25. 3
United States (registration area only, 1915) 24. 9
England and Wales (1913) 24. 1
Sweden (1912) 23. 8
Switzerland (1913) 23. 1
Belgium (1912) 22. 6
France (1912) 19. 0
The United States birth-rate may, on its face, appear high enough; but
its face does not show that this height is due largely to the fecundity
of immigrant women. Statistics to prove this are given in Chapter XIII,
but may be supplemented here by some figures from Pittsburgh.
Ward 7, in that city, contains the homes of many well-to-do, and
contains more representatives of the old American stock than any other
ward in the city, having 56. 4% of residents who are native born of
native parents while the majority of the residents in nearly all the
other wards in the city are either themselves foreign-born, or the
offspring of foreign-born parents.
Ward 7 has the lowest birth-rate and the lowest rate of net increase of
any ward in the city.
With this may be contrasted the sixth ward, which runs along the south
bank of the Allegheny river. It is one of the great factory districts of
the city, but also contains a large number of homes. Nearly 3,000 of its
14,817 males of voting age are illiterate. Its death-rate is the highest
in the city. Almost nine-tenths of its residents are either foreigners
or the children of foreigners. Its birth-rate is three times that of the
seventh ward.
Taking into account all the wards of the city, it is found that the
birth-rate _rises_ as one considers the wards which are marked by a
large foreign population, illiteracy, poverty and a high death-rate. On
the other hand, the birth-rate _falls_ as one passes to the wards that
have most native-born residents, most education, most prosperity--and,
to some extent, education and prosperity denote efficiency and eugenic
value. For 27 wards there is a high negative correlation (-. 673),
between birth-rate and percentage of native-born of native parents in
the population. The correlation between illiteracy and net increase[66]
is +. 731.
The net increase of Pittsburgh's population, therefore, is greatest
where the percentage of foreign-born and of illiterates is greatest.
The significance of such figures in natural selection must be evident.
Pittsburgh, like probably all large cities in civilized countries,
breeds from the bottom. The lower a class is in the scale of
intelligence, the greater is its reproductive contribution. Recalling
that intelligence is inherited, that like begets like in this respect,
one can hardly feel encouraged over the quality of the population of
Pittsburgh, a few generations hence.
Of course these illiterate foreign laborers are, from a eugenic point of
view, not wholly bad. The picture should not be painted any blacker than
the original. Some of these ignorant stocks, in another generation and
with decent surroundings, will furnish excellent citizens.
But taken as a whole, it can hardly be supposed that the fecund stocks
of Pittsburgh, with their illiteracy, squalor and tuberculosis, their
high death-rates, their economic straits, are as good eugenic material
as the families that are dying out in the more substantial residence
section which their fathers created in the eastern part of the city.
And it can hardly be supposed that the city, and the nation, of the
future, would not benefit by a change in the distribution of births,
whereby more would come from the seventh ward and its like, and fewer
from the sixth and its like.
Evidently, there is no difficulty about seeing this form of natural
selection at work, and at work in such a way as greatly to change the
character of one section of the species. For comparison, some figures
are presented from European sources. In the French war budget of 1911 it
appears that from 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 50, in
different districts of Paris, the number of yearly births was as
follows:
Very poor 108
Poor 99
Well-to-do 72
Very prosperous 65
Rich 53
Very rich 35
Disregarding the last class altogether, it is yet evident that while the
mother in a wealthy home bears two children, the mother in the slums
bears four. It is evident then that in Paris at the present time
reproductive selection is changing the mental and moral composition of
the population at a rapid rate, which can not be very materially reduced
even if it is found that the death-rate in the poorer districts is
considerably greater than it is on the more fashionable boulevards.
J. Bertillon has brought together[67] in a similar way data from a
number of cities, showing the following birth-rates:
_Berlin_ _Vienna_ _London_
Very poor quarters 157 200 147
Poor quarters 129 164 140
Comfortable quarters 114 155 107
Very comfortable 96 153 107
Rich 63 107 87
Very rich 47 81 63
--- --- ---
Average 102 153 109
Obviously, in all these cases reproductive selection will soon bring
about such a change in the character of the population, that a much
larger part of it than at present will have the hereditary
characteristics of the poorer classes and a much smaller part of it than
at present the hereditary characteristics of the well-to-do classes.
David Heron and others have recently studied[68] the relation which the
birth-rate in different boroughs of London bears to their social and
economic conditions. Using the correlation method, they found "that in
London the birth-rate per 1,000 married women, aged 15 to 54, is
highest where the conditions show the greatest poverty--namely, in
quarters where pawnbrokers abound, where unskilled labor is the
principal source of income, where consumption is most common and most
deadly, where pauperism is most rife, and, finally, where the greatest
proportion of the children born die in infancy. The correlation
coefficients show that the association of these evil conditions with the
relative number of children born is a very close one; and if the
question is put in another way, and the calculations are based on
measures of prosperity instead of on measures of poverty, a high degree
of correlation is found between prosperity and a low birth-rate.
"It must not be supposed that a high rate of infant mortality, which
almost invariably accompanies a high birth-rate, either in London or
elsewhere, goes far toward counteracting the effects of the differential
birth-rate. Where infant mortality is highest the average number of
children above the age of two for each married woman is highest also,
and although the chances of death at all ages are greater among the
inhabitants of the poorer quarters, their rate of natural increase
remains considerably higher than that of the inhabitants of the richer.
"From the detailed study of the figures made by Newsholme and Stevenson,
conclusions essentially the same as those of Heron can be drawn. . . .
Their first step was to divide the London boroughs into six groups
according to the average number of domestic servants for 100 families in
each. This is probably as good a measure of prosperity as any other.
They then determined the total birth-rate of the population in each
group, and arrived at the following figures:
_Group_
I. 10 domestic servants for 100 families 34. 97
II. 10-20 38. 32
III. 20-30 25. 99
IV. 30-40 25. 83
V. 40-60 25. 11
VI. Over 60 18. 24
"In order to find out how far the differences shown by these figures are
due to differences in the percentage of women who marry in each group
and the age at which they marry, they corrected the figures in such a
way as to make them represent what the birth-rates would be in each
group, if the proportion of wives of each age to the whole population
comprising the group was the same as it is in the whole of England and
Wales. The corrected birth-rates thus obtained were as follows:
_Group_
I 31. 56
II 25. 82
III 25. 63
IV 25. 50
V 25. 56
VI 20. 45
"It will readily be seen that the effect of the correction has been to
reduce the difference between the two extreme groups by about one-third,
showing that to this extent it is due to the way in which they differ as
to the average age and number of the women who marry. Further, Groups
II, III, IV and V have all been brought to about the same level, with a
corrected birth-rate about halfway between the highest and the lowest.
This shows that there is no gradual decrease in fertility associated
with a gradually increasing grade of prosperity, but that three sharply
divided classes may be distinguished: a very poor class with a high
degree of fertility, to which about a quarter of the population of
London belong, a rich class with a low degree of fertility, and a class
intermediate in both respects. "
"Eugenics is less directly concerned with this side of the question that
with the relative rate of increase of the different classes. This may be
found for the six groups in the usual way by deducting the death-rate
from the birth-rate. The following figures for the rate of natural
increase are then obtained:
_Group_
I 16. 56
II 13. 89
III 11. 43
IV 13. 81
V 10. 29
VI 5. 79
"The figures show in a manner which hardly admits of any doubt that in
London at any rate the inhabitants of the poorest quarters--over a
million in number--are reproducing themselves at a much greater rate
than the more well-to-do. "
A research on similar lines by S. R. Steinmetz[69] in Holland shows that
the average number of children in the lowest class families is 5. 44.
People in industry or small trade, skilled mechanics and professors of
theology have five children to the family; in other classes the number
is as follows:
Artists 4. 30
Well-to-do Commercial Classes 4. 27
High Officials 4. 00
University Professors (excluding theological) 3. 50
23 Scholars and Artists of the first rank 2. 60
It is not hard to see that the next generation in Holland is likely to
have proportionately fewer gifted individuals than has the present one.
Fortunately, it is very probable that the differential birth-rate is not
of such ominous import in rural districts as it is in cities, although
some of the tribes of degenerates which live in the country show
birth-rates of four to six children per wife. [70] But in the more highly
civilized nations now, something like a half of the population lives in
urban districts, and the startling extent to which these urban
populations breed from the bottom involves a disastrous change in the
balance of population within a few generations, unless it is in some way
checked.
Just how great the change may be, statistically, has been emphasized by
Karl Pearson, who points out that "50% of the married population provide
75% of the next generation," owing to the number of deaths before
maturity, the number of celibates and the number of childless
marriages. "The same rule may be expressed in another way: 50% of the
next generation is produced by 25% of the married population. " At this
rate in a few generations the less efficient and socially valuable, with
their large families, will overwhelm the more efficient and socially
valuable, and their small families.
Fecundal selection is at work to-day on a large scale, changing the
character of the population, and from a eugenic point of view changing
it for the worse. Fortunately, it is not impossible to arrest this
change.
But, it may be objected, is not this change merely "the survival of the
fittest? " In a sense, yes; and it is necessary that the more intelligent
classes should make themselves "fitter" to survive, by a change of
attitude toward reproduction. But the dying-out of the intellectually
superior part of the population is a pathological condition, not a part
of normal evolution; for barring artificial interference with the
birth-rate, fertility has been found to go hand in hand with general
superiority. This demonstration is due to F. A. Woods' study[71] of 608
members of the royal families of Europe, among whom, for reasons of
state, large families are desired, and among whom there has probably
been little restraint on the birth-rate. Averaging the ratings of his
individuals from grade 1, the mentally and physically very inferior, to
grade 10, the mentally and physically very superior, he found that the
number of children produced and brought to maturity increased in a
fairly direct ratio. His figures are as follows:
BOTH SEXES (AVERAGED)
Grades for virtues 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average number of
adult
children. 1. 66 2. 86 2. 99 2. 41 3. 44 3. 49 3. 05 3. 03 3. 93 3. 83
Investigations of Karl Pearson and Alexander Graham Bell[72] show that
fecundity and longevity are associated. It follows that the mentally
and morally superior, who are the most fecund, are also the
longest-lived; and as this longevity is largely due to inheritance it
follows that, under natural conditions, the standard of the stratum of
society under consideration would gradually rise, in respect to
longevity, in each generation.
Such is probably one of the methods by which the human race has
gradually increased its level of desirable characters in each
generation. The desirable characters were associated with each other,
and also with fecundity.
The desirable characters are still associated
with each other, but their association with fecundity is now negative.
It is in this change that eugenics finds justification for its existence
as a propaganda. Its object is to restore the positive correlation
between desirable characters and fecundity, on which the progressive
evolution of the race depends.
The bearing of natural selection on the present-day evolution of the
human race, particularly in the United States of America, must be
reviewed in a few closing paragraphs.
Selection by death may result either from inadequate food supply, or
from some other lethal factor. The former type, although something of a
bugaboo ever since the time of Malthus, has in reality relatively little
effect on the human race at present. Non-sustentative lethal selection
in man is operating chiefly through zymotic diseases and the bad hygiene
of the mentally inferior.
Reproductive selection is increasingly effective and its action is such
as to cause grave alarm both through the failure of some to marry
properly (sexual selection) and the failure of some to bear enough
children, while others bear too many (fecundal selection). It is obvious
that the racial result of this process will depend on what kind of
people bear and rear the most children; and it has been shown that in
general the larger families are in the section of the population that
makes fewer contributions to human prosperity and happiness, while those
endowed with great gifts, who ought to be transmitting them to their
children, are in many cases not even reproducing their own number.
Natural selection raised man from apehood to his present estate. It is
still operating on him on a large scale, in several ways, but in none of
these ways is it now doing much actually to improve the race, and in
some ways, owing to man's own interference, it is rapidly hastening race
degeneracy.
CHAPTER VII
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE EUGENICS MOVEMENT
"Eugenics," wrote Francis Galton, who founded the science and coined the
name, "is the study of agencies under social control that may improve or
impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or
mentally. " The definition is universally accepted, but by its use of the
word "study" it defines a pure science, and the present book is
concerned rather with the application of such a science. Accepting
Galton's definition, we shall for our purposes slightly extend it by
saying that applied eugenics embraces all such measures, in use or
prospect either individually or collectively, as may improve or impair
the racial qualities of future generations of man, either physically or
mentally, whether or not this was the avowed purpose.
It is one of the newest of sciences. It was practically forced into
existence by logical necessity. It is certainly here to stay, and it
demands the right to speak, in many cases to cast the deciding vote, on
some of the most important questions that confront society.
The science of eugenics is the natural result of the spread and
acceptance of organic evolution, following the publication of Darwin's
work on _The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection_, in 1859.
It took a generation for his ideas to win the day; but then they
revolutionized the intellectual life of the civilized world. Man came to
realize that the course of nature is regular; that the observed
sequences of events can be described in formulas which are called
natural laws; he learned that he could achieve great results in plant
and animal breeding by working in harmony with these laws. Then the
question logically arose, "Is not man himself subject to these same
laws? Can he not use his knowledge of them to improve his own species,
as he has been more or less consciously improving the plants and animals
that were of most value to him, for many centuries? "
The evolutionist answered both these questions affirmatively. However
great may be the superiority of his mind, man is first of all an animal,
subject to the natural laws that govern other animals. He can learn to
comply with these laws; he can, therefore, take an active share in
furthering the process of evolution toward a higher life.
That, briefly, is the scope of the science of eugenics, as its founder,
Sir Francis Galton, conceived it. "Now that this new animal, man, finds
himself somehow in existence, endowed with a little power and
intelligence," Galton wrote 30 years ago, "he ought, I submit, to awake
to a fuller knowledge of his relatively great position, and begin to
assume a deliberate part in furthering the great work of evolution. He
may infer the course it is bound to pursue, from his observation of that
which it has already followed, and he might devote his modicum of power,
intelligence and kindly feeling to render its future progress less slow
and painful. Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half
consciously, and for his own personal advantages, but he has not yet
risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so,
deliberately and systematically. "
But, it may well be asked, how does this sudden need for eugenics arise,
when the world has gone along without it for hundreds of millions of
years in the past, and the human race has made the great ascent from an
ape-like condition in spite of the fact that such a science as eugenics
was never dreamed of?
For answer recall that natural selection, which is mainly responsible
for bringing man to his present situation, has worked chiefly through a
differential death-rate. The less fit die: the more fit survive. In the
earlier stages of society, man interfered little with natural selection.
But during the last century the increase of the philanthropic spirit and
the progress of medicine have done a great deal to interfere with the
selective process. In some ways, selection in the human race has almost
ceased; in many ways it is actually reversed, that is, it results in the
survival of the inferior rather than the superior. In the olden days the
criminal was summarily executed, the weakly child died soon after birth
through lack of proper care and medical attention, the insane were dealt
with so violently that if they were not killed by the treatment they
were at least left hopelessly "incurable" and had little chance of
becoming parents. Harsh measures, all of these, but they kept the
germ-plasm of the race reasonably purified.
To-day, how is it? The inefficients, the wastrels, the physical, mental,
and moral cripples are carefully preserved at public expense. The
criminal is turned out on parole after a few years, to become the father
of a family. The insane is discharged as "cured," again to take up the
duties of citizenship. The feeble-minded child is painfully "educated,"
often at the expense of his normal brother or sister. In short, the
undesirables of the race, with whom the bloody hand of natural selection
would have made short work early in life, are now nursed along to old
age.
Of course, one would not have it otherwise with respect to the
prolongation of life. To expose deformed children as the Spartans did
would outrage our moral sentiments; to chloroform the incurable is a
proposition that almost every one condemns.
But this philanthropic spirit, this zealous regard for the interests of
the unfortunate, which is rightly considered one of the highest
manifestations of Christian civilization, has in many cases benefited
the few at the expense of the many. The present generation, in making
its own life comfortable, is leaving a staggering bill to be paid by
posterity.
It is at this point that eugenics comes in and demands that a
distinction be made between the interests of the individual and the
interests of the race. It does not yield to any one in its solicitude
for the individual unfortunate; but it says, "His happiness in life does
not need to include leaving a family of children, inheritors of his
defects, who if they were able to think might curse him for begetting
them and curse society for allowing them to be born. " And looking at the
other side of the problem, eugenics says to the young man and young
woman, "You should enjoy the greatest happiness that love can bring to
a life. But something more is expected of you than a selfish,
short-sighted indifference to all except yourselves in the world. When
you understand the relation of the individual to the race, you will find
your greatest happiness only in a marriage which will result in a family
of worthy children. You are temporarily a custodian of the inheritance
of the whole past; it is far more disgraceful for you to squander or
ruin this heritage, or to regard it as intended solely for your
individual, selfish gratification, than it would be for you to dissipate
a fortune in money which you had received, or to betray any trust which
had been confided to you by one of your fellow men. "
Such is the teaching of eugenics. It is not wholly new. The early Greeks
gave much thought to it, and with the insight which characterized them,
they rightly put the emphasis on the constructive side; they sought to
breed better men and women, not merely to accomplish a work of hygiene,
to lessen taxes, and reduce suffering, by reducing the number of
unfortunates among them. As early as the first half of the sixth century
B. C. the Greek poet Theognis of Megara wrote: "We look for rams and
asses and stallions of good stock, and one believes that good will come
from good; yet a good man minds not to wed an evil daughter of an evil
sire, if he but give her much wealth. . . . Wealth confounds our stock.
Marvel not that the stock of our folk is tarnished, for the good is
mingling with the base. " A century later eugenics was discussed in some
detail by Plato, who suggested that the state intervene to mate the best
with the best, and the worst with the worst; the former should be
encouraged to have large families, and their children should be reared
by the government, while the children of the unfit were to be, as he
says, "put away in some mysterious, unknown places, as they should be. "
Aristotle developed the idea on political lines, being more interested
in the economic than the biological aspects of marriage; but he held
firmly to the doctrine that the state should feel free to intervene in
the interests of reproductive selection.
For nearly two thousand years after this, conscious eugenic ideals were
largely ignored. Constant war reversed natural selection, as it is doing
to-day, by killing off the physically fit and leaving the relatively
unfit to reproduce the race; while monasticism and the enforced celibacy
of the priesthood performed a similar office for many of the mentally
superior, attracting them to a career in which they could leave no
posterity. At the beginning of the last century a germ of modern
eugenics is visible in Malthus' famous essay on population, in which he
directed attention to the importance of the birth-rate for human
welfare, since this essay led Darwin and Wallace to enunciate the theory
of natural selection, and to point out clearly the effects of artificial
selection. It is really on Darwin's work that the modern science of
eugenics is based, and it owes its beginning to Darwin's cousin, Francis
Galton.
Galton was born in 1822, studied mathematics and medicine, traveled
widely, attained fame as an explorer in South Africa, and after
inheriting sufficient income to make him independent, settled down in
London and gave his time to pioneering experiments in many branches of
science. He contributed largely to founding the science of meteorology,
opened new paths in experimental psychology, introduced the system of
finger prints to anthropology, and took up the study of heredity,
publishing in 1865 a series of articles under the title of "Hereditary
Talent and Genius," which contained his first utterances on eugenics.
The present generation can hardly understand what a new field Galton
broke. Even Darwin had supposed that men do not differ very much in
intellectual endowment, and that their differences in achievement are
principally the result of differences in zeal and industry. Galton's
articles, whose thesis was that better men could be bred by conscious
selection, attracted much attention from the scientific world and were
expanded in 1869 in his book _Hereditary Genius_.
This was an elaborate and painstaking study of the biographies of 977
men who would rank, according to Galton's estimate, as about 1 to 4,000
of the general population, in respect to achievement. The number of
families found to contain more than one eminent man was 300, divided as
follows: Judges, 85; Statesmen, 39; Commanders, 27; Literary, 33;
Scientific, 43; Poets, 20; Artists, 28; Divines, 25. The close groupings
of the interrelated eminence led to the conclusion that heredity plays a
very important part in achievement. The greater success of real sons of
great men as compared with adopted sons of great men likewise indicated,
he thought, that success is due to actual biological heredity rather
than to the good opportunities afforded the scion of the illustrious
family. Galton's conclusion was that by selecting from strains that
produced eminence, a superior human stock could be bred.
In 1874 he published a similar study of the heredity of 180 eminent
English scientists, reemphasizing the claims of nature over nurture, to
use his familiar antithesis. In 1883 he published "Inquiries into the
Human Faculty and Its Development," a collection of evolutionary and
anthropometric essays where the word Eugenics was first used in a new
exposition of the author's views. "Natural Inheritance" appeared in
1889, being the essence of various memoirs published since "Hereditary
Genius," dealing with the general biological principles underlying the
study of heredity and continuing the study of resemblances between
individuals in respect to stature, eye color, artistic faculty and
morbid conditions.
Galton's interest in eugenics was not lessened by the abundant criticism
he received, and in 1901 he defended "The Possible Improvement of the
Human Breed under Existing Conditions of Law and Sentiment" before the
Anthropological Society. Three years later he read a paper entitled
"Eugenics; Its Definition, Scope and Aims," to the Sociological Society.
His program, in brief, was as follows:
1. Disseminate knowledge of hereditary laws as far as surely known and
promote their further study.
2. Inquire into birth rates of various strata of society (classified
according to civic usefulness) in ancient and modern nations.
3. Collect reliable data showing how large and thriving families have
most frequently originated.
4. Study the influences affecting marriage.
5. Persistently set forth the national importance of Eugenics.
The following year, Galton again read a paper before the Society,
suggesting the award of certificates of quality to the eugenically fit.
He also maintained that marriage customs which are largely controlled by
public opinion could be modified for racial welfare through a molding of
public sentiment.
In 1904 he founded a Research Fellowship at the University of London to
determine, if possible, what the standard of fitness is, and in 1905 a
Scholarship was added. Edgar Schuster and Miss E. M. Elderton held these
posts until 1907, when Professor Karl Pearson took charge of the
research work and, at the resignation of Mr. Schuster, David Heron was
appointed Fellow. On Galton's death, January 17, 1911, it became known
that through the terms of his will a professorship was founded and
Professor Pearson was invited to hold it. His corps of workers
constitutes the Galton Eugenics Laboratory staff.
To spread throughout the British Empire such knowledge of eugenics as
might be gathered by specialists, the Eugenics Education Society was
formed in 1908 with Galton as honorary president. Its field comprises:
(1) Biology in so far as it concerns hereditary selection; (2)
Anthropology as related to race and marriage; (3) Politics, where it
bears on parenthood in relation to civic worth; (4) Ethics, in so far as
it promotes ideals that lead to the improvement of social quality; (5)
Religion, in so far as it strengthens and sanctifies eugenic duty.
In America the movement got an early start but developed slowly. The
first definite step was the formation of an Institute of Heredity in
Boston, shortly after 1880, by Loring Moody, who was assisted by the
poet Longfellow, Samuel E. Sewall, Mrs. Horace Mann, and other
well-known people. He proposed to work very much along the lines that
the Eugenics Record Office later adopted, but he was ahead of his time,
and his attempt seems to have come to nothing.
In 1883 Alexander Graham Bell, who may be considered the first
scientific worker in eugenics in the United States, published a paper on
the danger of the formation of a deaf variety of the human race in this
country, in which he gave the result of researches he had made at
Martha's Vineyard and other localities during preceding years, on the
pedigrees of congenitally deaf persons--deaf mutes, as they were then
called. He showed clearly that congenital deafness is largely due to
heredity, that it is much increased by consanguineous marriages, and
that it is of great importance to prevent the marriage of persons, in
both of whose families congenital deafness is present. About five years
later he founded the Volta Bureau in Washington, D. C. , for the study of
deafness, and this has fostered a great deal of research work on this
particular phase of heredity.
In 1903 the American Breeders' Association was founded at St. Louis by
plant and animals breeders who desired to keep in touch with the new
subject of genetics, the science of breeding, which was rapidly coming
to have great practical importance. From the outset, the members
realized that the changes which they could produce in races of animals
and plants might also be produced in man, and the science of eugenics
was thus recognized on a sound biological basis. Soon a definite
eugenics section was formed, and as the importance of this section
increased, and it was realized that the name of Breeders' Association
was too narrowly construed by the public, the association changed its
name (1913) to the American Genetic Association, and the name of its
organ from the _American Breeders' Magazine_ to the _Journal of
Heredity_.
Under the auspices of this association, the Eugenics Record Office was
established at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, by Dr. C. B. Davenport.
It has been mainly supported by Mrs. E. H. Harriman, but has since been
taken over by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. It is gathering
pedigrees in many parts of the United States, analyzing them and
publishing the results in a series of bulletins.
In the last few years, the public has come to take a keen interest in
the possibilities of eugenics. This has led some sex hygienists, child
welfare workers, and persons similarly engaged, to attempt to capitalize
the interest in eugenics by appropriating the name for their own use. We
strongly object to any such misuse of the word, which should designate
the application of genetics to the human race. Sex hygiene, child
welfare, and other sanitary and sociological movements should stand on
their own feet and leave to eugenics the scope which its Greek
derivation indicates for it,--the science of good breeding. [73]
In all parts of Europe, the ideas of eugenics have gradually spread. In
1912 the first International Eugenics Congress was held at London, under
auspices of the Eugenics Education Society; more than 700 delegates were
in attendance.
Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria are united in an International
Eugenics Society and the war led to the formation of a number of
separate societies in Germany. Hungary has formed an organization of its
own, France has its society in Paris, and the Italian Anthropological
Society has given much attention to the subject. The Anthropological
Society of Denmark has similarly recognized eugenics by the formation of
a separate section. The Institut Solvay of Belgium, a foundation with
sociological aims, created a eugenics section several years ago; and in
Holland a strong committee has been formed. Last of all, Sweden has put
a large separate organization in the field.
In the United States the subject has interested many women's clubs,
college organizations and Young Men's Christian Associations, while the
periodical press has given it a large amount of attention. Public
enthusiasm, often ill-guided, has in a few cases outrun the facts, and
has secured legislation in some states, which by no means meets the
approval of most scientific eugenists.
When we speak of scientific eugenists, it may appear that we use the
word in an invidious way. We use it deliberately, and by using it we
mean to intimate that we do not think enthusiasm is an adequate
substitute for knowledge, in anyone who assumes to pass judgment upon a
measure as being eugenic or dysgenic--as likely to improve the race or
cause its deterioration. Eugenics is a biological science which, in its
application, must be interpreted with the help of the best scientific
method. Very few social workers, whose field eugenics touches, are
competent to understand its bearings without some study, and an
appreciation of eugenics is the more difficult for them, because an
understanding of it will show them that some of their work is based on
false premises. The average legislator is equally unlikely to understand
the full import of eugenics, unless he has made a definite effort to do
so. All the more honor, then, to the rapidly increasing number of social
workers and legislators who have grasped the full meaning of eugenics
and are now striving to put it in effect. The agriculturist, through his
experience with plants and animals, is probably better qualified than
anyone else to realize the practicability of eugenics, and it is
accordingly not a matter of mere chance that the science of eugenics in
America was built up by a breeders' association, and has found and still
finds hundreds of effective advocates in the graduates of the
agricultural colleges.
The program of eugenics naturally divides itself in two parts:
(1) Reducing the racial contribution of the least desirable part of the
population.
(2) Increasing the racial contribution of the superior part of the
population.
The first part of this program is the most pressing and the most easily
dealt with; it is no cause for surprise, then, that to many people it
has seemed to be the predominant aim of eugenics. Certainly the problem
is great enough to stagger anyone who looks it full in the face;
although for a variety of reasons, satisfactory statistical evidence of
racial degeneracy is hard to get.
Considering only the "institutional population" of the United States,
one gets the following figures:
BLIND: total, 64,763 according to census of 1900. Of these,
35,645 were totally blind and 29,118 partly blind. The affection is
stated to have been congenital in 4,730 cases. Nineteen per cent of the
blind were found to have blind relatives; 4. 5% of them were returned as
the offspring of cousin marriages.
DEAF: total, 86,515, according to the census of 1900. More than
50,000 of them were deaf from childhood (under 20), 12,609 being deaf
from birth. At least 4. 5% of the deaf were stated to be offspring of
cousin marriages, and 32. 1% to have deaf relatives. The significance of
this can not be determined unless it is known how many normal persons
have deaf relatives (or blind relatives, in considering the preceding
paragraph), but it points to the existence of families that are
characterized by deafness (or blindness).
INSANE: the census of 1910 enumerated only the insane who were
in institutions; they numbered 187,791. The number outside of
institutions is doubtless considerable but can not be computed. The
institutional population is not a permanent, but mainly a transient one,
the number of persons discharged from institutions in 1910 being 29,304.
As the number and size of institutions does not increase very rapidly,
it would appear probable that 25,000 insane persons pass through and out
of institutions, and back into the general population, each year. From
this one can get some idea of the amount of neurotic weakness in the
population of the United States,--much of it congenital and heritable in
character.
FEEBLE-MINDED: the census (1910) lists only those in
institutions, who totaled about 40,000. The census experts believe that
200,000 would be a conservative estimate of the total number of
feeble-minded in the country, and many psychologists think that 300,000
would be more nearly accurate. The number of feeble-minded who are
receiving institutional care is almost certainly not more than 10% or
15% of the total, and many of these (about 15,000) are in almshouses,
not special institutions.
PAUPERS: There were 84,198 paupers enumerated in almshouses on
January 1, 1910, and 88,313 admitted during the year, which indicates
that the almshouse paupers are a rapidly shifting group. This
population, probably of several hundred thousand persons, who drift
into and out of almshouses, can hardly be characterized accurately, but
in large part it must be considered at least inefficient and probably of
mentally low grade.
CRIMINALS: The inmates of prisons, penitentiaries,
reformatories, and similar places of detention numbered 111,609 in 1910;
this does not include 25,000 juvenile delinquents. The jail population
is nearly all transient; one must be very cautious in inferring that
conviction for an offense against the law indicates lack of eugenic
value; but it is worth noting that the number of offenders who are
feeble-minded is probably not less than one-fourth or one-third. If the
number of inebriates could be added, it would greatly increase the
total; and inebriacy or chronic alcoholism is generally recognized now
as indicating in a majority of cases either feeble-mindedness or some
other defect of the nervous system. The number of criminals who are in
some way neurotically tainted is placed by some psychologists at 50% or
more of the total prison population.
Add to these a number of epileptics, tramps, prostitutes, beggars, and
others whom the census enumerator finds it difficult to catch, and the
total number of possible undesirable parents becomes very large. It is
in fact much larger than appears in these figures, because of the fact
that many people carry defects that are latent and only appear in the
offspring of a marriage representing two tainted strains. Thus the
feeble-minded child usually if not always has feeble-mindedness in both
his father's and mother's ancestry, and for every one of the patent
feeble-minded above enumerated, there may be several dozen latent ones,
who are themselves probably normal in every way and yet carry the
dangerously tainted germ-plasm.
The estimate has frequently been made that the United States would be
much better off eugenically if it were deprived of the future racial
contributions of at least 10% of its citizens. While literally true this
estimate is too high for the group which could be considered for
attempts to directly control in a practical eugenics program.
Natural selection, in the early days of man's history, would have killed
off many of these people early in life. They would have been unable to
compete with their physically and mentally more vigorous fellows and
would have died miserably by starvation or violence. Natural selection's
use of the death-rate was a brutal one, but at least it prevented such
traits as these people show from increasing in each generation.
Eugenists hope to arrive at the same result, not by the death-rate but
by the birth-rate. If germinally anti-social persons are kept humanely
segregated during their lifetime, instead of being turned out after a
few years of institutional life and allowed to marry, they will leave no
descendants, and the number of congenital defectives in the community
will be notably diminished. If the same policy is followed through
succeeding generations, the number of defectives, of those incapable of
taking a useful part in society, will become smaller and smaller. One
who does not believe that these people hand on their traits to their
descendants may profitably consider the famous history of the so-called
Juke family, a strain originating among the "finger lakes" of New York,
whose history was published by R. L. Dugdale as far back as 1877 and
lately restudied by A. H. Estabrook.
"From one lazy vagabond nicknamed 'Juke,' born in 1720, whose two sons
married five degenerate sisters, six generations numbering about 1,200
persons of every grade of idleness, viciousness, lewdness, pauperism,
disease, idiocy, insanity and criminality were traced. Of the total
seven generations, 300 died in infancy; 310 were professional paupers,
kept in almshouses a total of 2,300 years; 440 were physically wrecked
by their own 'diseased wickedness'; more than half the women fell into
prostitution; 130 were convicted criminals; 60 were thieves; 7 were
murderers; only 20 learned a trade, 10 of these in state prison, and all
at a state cost of over $1,250,000. "[74]
How heredity works both ways, is shown by the history of the Kallikak
family, published by H. H. Goddard a few years ago.
"At the beginning of the Revolutionary War a young man, known in the
history as Martin Kallikak, had a son by a nameless, feeble-minded girl,
from whom there have descended in the direct line four hundred and
eighty individuals. One hundred and forty-three of these are known to
have been feeble-minded, and only forty-six are known to have been
normal.
