Part 7

The pedigree of the +family of Zero von Jorger+, figure C 21 (Archiv für Rassen & Gesellschafts biologie I.), shows in a convincing manner how very important for the protection of society is the prevention of the reproduction of the degenerate. In the course of time this family has burdened the sound and fit with taxation amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds. The author remarks: "The family Zero springs from good peasant stock intermarrying with homeless female tramps. Its history shows how alcohol (especially spirits) and bad environment (in this case always combined) may create a scourge to society which continues from generation to generation. The family has produced many criminals, lunatics and feeble-minded persons. The offspring of these are destined to die out. Their great fertility at times is counteracted by great infant mortality."

"In places regeneration is evident which invariably is inaugurated by marriage with a good woman and the consequent abandonment of the abuse of alcohol. As with the degeneration so with the regeneration the wife takes the leading part."

The question whether modern civilized races are degenerate in body and mind is much disputed. In some respects for instance in the increase of myopia and caries of the teeth it is generally admitted, but in others it is doubtful, though it may be considered an established fact that the general average of health among all civilized nations is unsatisfactory. We do not know for certain whether the general level of all or certain qualities is being lowered or not, and still less can we say what part is played by heredity.

The demand for the systematic collection of data on these points is the first which Race Hygiene has to make from Governments.

The examinations as to fitness for military service in Germany might offer an excellent index of the physique of the people, but for this purpose the physical condition of the conscripts would have to be recorded in a much more thorough manner than at present (S. Gruber Concordia, 1916). There appears, however, to be no doubt that in general the country and agricultural pursuits produce young men of better average health than do towns and other occupations. This agrees with the fact that the life of the inhabitants in rural districts and of those engaged in agriculture is longer than that of town dwellers.

[Sidenote: C 22]

Table C 22 +compares+ the+ duration of life+ of men living +in towns with+ those living in +rural districts in Prussia+. Beyond all doubt the peasant population is still constitutionally the most valuable part of the people, and the colonisation at home, such as the Prussian Government is pursuing to an increasing degree, may become of the very highest value for the improvement of the race.

[Sidenote: C 23, 24 & 25]

Dr. Walter Abelsdorff gives the following explanations to Table C 23, and figures C 24 and C 25. "They endeavour to show the number of +families brought 'back to the land' in North Germany+ in the years 1900-1910."

"The Royal Commission for settlement in West Prussia and Posen has achieved notable results since the beginning of its activity in 1886. This body has brought about from 1886 to 1910 the settlement in the country of 18,507 families, 18,127 in leaseholds and 305 in labourers' dwellings. For 1900 to 1910 the total number of families settled amount to 14,511."

"The Royal General Commission began its activity later, but since 1906 has been energetically pursuing the settlement of agricultural labourers. At Münster, in the years 1908 to 1910, 247 leasehold small holdings for artisans have been created."

"The results of the Royal District Administrations are as yet less considerable, those of private societies with State subvention, though irregular, are worthy of note."

"The total work of settlement is almost exclusively effected by the Commission for settlements and the General Commission."

"Counting five members to each family, 130,000 people have been brought into economically improved conditions. In how far this may benefit the second generation--the children of the settlers--cannot as yet be determined."

"These efforts, however, may be looked upon as a regenerative component among the measures for the improvement of the people."

[Sidenote: C 26 & 27]

Figure C 26 deals with the +fitness for military service in Germany in relation to the locality of birth+ and the +occupation+ of the individual or the parents. Table C 27 with +fitness for military service in town and country+ (both after Wellmann).

[Sidenote: C 28]

+Enlistments into the Army+ in Germany in 1907 and 1908, +according to size+ (number of inhabitants) +of native place+, are shown by Dr. Walter Abelsdorff in Figure C 28.

[Sidenote: C 29]

Figure C 29 shows +the percentage of those found fit in the final examination in Bavaria+ and +occupation of the parents+.

[Sidenote: C 30]

Table C 30 shows the total of all the +non-commissioned officers and privates in the German Army+ on December 1st, 1906, +classed according as they came from town or country+ and +according to the occupation or the parents+.

Attention is invited to the fact that according to Figure C 26 the percentage of those found fit for military service in Germany has diminished in recent years, but it is doubtful whether this is caused by a general lowering of physique. It may be due to the application of a higher standard in consequence of increased supply. The distinct increase in height, in Germany as well as in many other European countries, of those obliged to offer themselves for military service speaks against deterioration in the average of physique. Against the suggestion that with the increase in height may be coupled a greater disposition to tuberculosis must be set the fact that amongst the tall is found a percentage of fit higher than the average.

Abelsdorff remarks of Table C 27: "The results of recruiting for the years 1907 and 1908 have been grouped according to the size of the place of birth of the recruits.

The average for the whole empire in 1907 is 54.9, in 1908 54.5, fit in every 100 finally examined. The percentage of fitness has diminished 0.4% from 1907 to 1908. The numbers for 1904, 1905 and 1906 are respectively 56.4, 56.3, and 55.9%.

Towns with over 1,000,000 inhabitants show the smallest number of fit: 1907, 31.4%; 1908, 28.2%. The decline is 3.2%. Compared with the figure for the whole empire it shows 23.5% less fitness in 1907 and 26.3% in 1908.

For towns of 500,000 to 1,000,000 inhabitants the figures are slightly better; they reach 39.9% in 1907 and 44.0% in 1908; an improvement of 4.9% on the figures of the largest towns. The other three classes, viz., towns with 200,000 to 500,000; 100,000 to 200,000 and 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, show comparatively little variation in their figures for fitness for military service. They are 50.1% and 48.9%; 47.9 and 48.2%; 51.8 and 51.5%. The differences between the two years are not material. With the towns of from 200,000 to 500,000 and from 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants there has been a decrease against an increase in those of from 100,000 to 200,000 inhabitants. But the figures for all three classes remain behind the average figure for the empire and so do those of all towns, they show 50.4 and 50.1%.

The most favourable results are yielded by the country districts. Here there were fit in 1907 58%, in 1908 57.7%. A trifling decrease is shown even here. The figures, however, are higher by 3.1% in 1907 and 3.2% in 1908 than the average for the empire. The conclusion is that the fitness is highest in the smallest, and lowest in the largest places.

Taking the average for the Empire as 100, those found fit from country districts number 106, from towns 92, from towns of over 50,000 inhabitants 83, and from towns of over 100,000 only 80."

The tables showing the recruiting results amongst those qualified for the one year voluntary service are particularly interesting.

[Sidenote: C 31]

In Table C 31 Schwiening (Veröffentlichungen aus dem Militär Sanitatswesen. 40. Berlin, Hirschwald, 1909) gives the figures of those finally passed as +fit for military service in the Mittelschulen+ (secondary schools), +which are classified according to their nature+. The figures are too optimistic because no account has been taken of those who were found temporarily unfit. The Classical Schools (Gymnasium) give the least satisfactory results.

[Sidenote: C 32]

Table C 32 gives the +principal reasons for which students have been rejected as unfit for military service+.

[Sidenote: C 33]

Table C 33 is a +comparison of the frequency of the various causes of unfitness as between those qualified for the one year's voluntary service and the recruits in general+. This table is very remarkable, because it shows the preponderance of general weakness, diseases of the heart and large vessels, and pulmonary defects among the former.

[Sidenote: C 34]

It goes without saying that the schools are only responsible to a lesser degree for this; we have to deal here with a serious symptom of a bad constitution amongst the higher social grades which betrays itself also in the dying out of the socially prominent families. How badly their progeny comes off, in spite of the great care bestowed on it, is illustrated in Table C 34. In two Munich Regiments the percentage of fit among all those entitled to offer themselves for the one year's service from the most varied parts of Germany was only, according to Dieudonné, 21.6, 20.1, and 16.4.

[Sidenote: C 35 & 36]

Great anxiety is justly caused by the increasing number of those taken care of in public Lunatic Asylums. It remains doubtful to what degree this may be due to the greater use made of asylums and the decrease of the care of the mentally infirm in the family home; the deterioration of the nervous system nevertheless remains according to the general impression an incontestable fact. As a symptom of this may be interpreted the increasing +number of suicides in civilised countries+, demonstrated in Rüdin's Tables, C 35 and C 36, showing the number of suicides in every one million of inhabitants.

More serious still than the frequency of mental and nervous diseases is another phenomenon which demonstrates how unsatisfactory is the constitutional condition of large circle of our population of to-day.

This phenomenon which as yet has received much too little attention is +the large scale on which families die out+, at first in the male line. Apparently (sufficient observations for control are not available) those families which hold an eminent economical or social position (aristocracy, old county families, etc., etc.) are mainly concerned. Because exceptional endowment in one or more respects (intelligence, talent, will power, etc.) is generally required to secure or to maintain a leading position, and because such endowment is given to only a small fraction of the population, but is inherited largely by the progeny, this dying out of the leading families means a serious loss to the race.

The deficient fertility of the stock thus endowed results in a lower average of mental capacity in the population generally, and cannot in the long run be made up by the constant re-appearance of distinguished men appearing as variations, the smallest number of whom are "mutations."

The tendency among town families to die out appears to be wide-spread. Professor S. Schott in Tables C 37-C 40 adds materially to our knowledge on this point, Professor Schott makes the following comment on his Tables:--

"S. Schott. Old Mannheim families, 4 tables."

"Source: 'Old Mannheim families. A contribution to the family statistics of the 19th Century by Professor Dr. Sigmund Schott, Mannheim and Leipzig, 1910. J. Rensheimer.' Statistical demonstration of the development, decline, and extinction of about 4,000 families which were in existence at Mannheim at the beginning of the 19th Century, based on permanently maintained family registers. This research, pursued on a basis of population statistics, lends itself only to a limited degree to application for biological purposes."

[Sidenote: C 37]

+Gradual extinction of the Mannheim families in the 19th Century.+ Only extinction by death in Mannheim and in the male line are taken into account. Families which have disappeared through emigration have been excluded. Branches of families which have become extinct at Mannheim may be flourishing elsewhere. Of 3,081 families, 2,538 have become extinct by death at Mannheim itself, 543 survive. The spiral curve shows the number of survivors in any year as so many per thousand of the original number.

[Sidenote: C 38]

+Average number of children in each generation; the families being grouped according to the number of generations they attained.+ The families of 1807 (original families) and their descendants were classed into five groups, according to the number of generations they attained in Mannheim. For each group is calculated the average number of children within one generation--for each separate family as well as for the entire family (_i.e._, the total of all the separate families which have sprung from the same "original family"). For instance: "Original families" which have lasted into the third generation, 464; the separate families show in the first generation, 464 families, 2,377 children; in the second generation, 718 families, with 3,645 children; in the third generation, 754 families, with 2,454 children. Accordingly, the total families show average numbers 5.1, 7.9, 5.3; the separate families, 5.1, 5.1, 3.3. All these averages are minimum figures, because it was impossible to eliminate the moderate number of couples who emigrated before the number of their offspring was completed.

In the generations up to the third inclusive, reproduction may be considered as terminated, but in the fourth, and especially the fifth and sixth, it still is in progress.

[Sidenote: C 39]

+Age intervals separating the various generations.+

Taking into account all the families investigated, the average length of time between the birth of the originator of the family and his first born son was 33-1/4 years, his first born grandchild 63-2/3 years, and his first born great grandchild 95-1/3 years. The curves become gradually flatter, because the possible difference between minimum and maximum age distance from one generation to another increases in arithmetical progression.

[Sidenote: C 40]

+Prolificness of first marriages in the 19th century.+ Taking the entire period from 1811 to 1890 together the percentage of large families (six children or more) and of small families (one-two children) produced by all first marriages, excluding childless ones, is indicated by the horizontal centreline. The positive or negative deviations from the average during each decade are entered respectively above and below this line. The note in Figure C 38 referring to the families which may have emigrated while still productive applies here also. The temporary increase in prolific marriages after 1870 may be in connection with the material decrease in the age of those contracting marriage for the first time, as compared with the preceding decade. (Men 28.65 in the earlier period as against 27.41 in the later, and women 25.92 against 24.68 years.)

The extinction of the families is undoubtedly due partly to other causes than the voluntary limitation of families--to a process of degeneration. A very remarkable proof of the degenerative character of the dying out of families is given by Pontus Fahlbeck in his book, "The Aristocracy of Sweden" (Fischer, Jena, 1903).

[Sidenote: C 41-43]

The six Figures C 38-43 give what is biologically of greatest interest in it. Note how the terribly +quick extinction+ of the +families+ of the nobility is +inaugurated by catastrophic changes+: rapid fall in the frequency of marriages, in the number of fertile marriages, and in the number of their progeny. The curves of the surviving families (red in the original tables) are for comparison. That we have to deal here with a natural and not a voluntary process is shown by the rapid increase in the mortality of male youth in the last generations; also by the extraordinary change in the proportion of the sexes of the children--which, of course, is beyond any control, marked preponderance of girls amongst the survivors (possibly also by the frequency of still-born male children).

+A disturbance in the normal proportion of the sexes as a symptom of abnormal germ production+ may also assert itself in the opposite direction. O. Lorenz has pointed out the frequent occurrence of an extraordinary increase of male children immediately before the extinction of a family in the male line. One of the most celebrated of these cases is the one of the family of the Emperor Max II. He had six sons and two daughters, who all reached the age of maturity, but not a single male grandchild in the legitimate male line.

[Sidenote: C 44]

Fresh evidence is exhibited by von den Velden in Figure C 44. With the families described by von Riffel, who have died out in the male line, there is still a great preponderance of boys in the last generation in which boys have reached the age of sexual maturity, whereas there is a preponderance of females amongst the brothers and sisters of the wives of the last male issue of the family.

[Sidenote: C 45]