Part 9

We may have a good object lesson in the elimination of the unfit going on about us constantly. In New York City, for 1891, the deaths of children under five years of age was 18,112; for 1892 it was 17,577, or slightly less. This is more than one-third, but not quite one-half, of the total deaths at all ages for these years. A very large proportion of these deaths occurred in the tenement house districts, and a very natural question arises in the mind: Are the children of those who live in tenement houses more unfit to survive than those who live in houses in which only one family dwells. No doubt in most cases the children of those are most fit who are most able to provide them with hygienic surroundings, the better food and most suitable care; such are usually the prudent and the capable. The love of children is usually stronger in them. The intelligent affection of parents for their young is one of the incentives to their best training. It certainly is not nearly so strong among the residents of the crowded quarters of a city as among the more prosperous. Any one may observe this by going with a company of mothers on the excursions of some fresh air society, which may be seen in most cities. It is hard to find one of these mothers who shows what we may call intelligent affection or intelligent care of her young. Some pathetic instances illustrating this might be mentioned.

When it comes to the question of their physical or mental inferiority, a cursory inspection is all that is required to show they are far below the average. There is a great want of symmetry of body and mind--evidence of degeneration. In order to test the strength of constitution, which is a good way to get at one form of physical fitness for survival, it seems to me, I made a study of the blood of a considerable number of these children and found the amount of protoplasm in the colorless blood corpuscles deficient. This shows that their power to resist disease is slight. It must be borne in mind, however, that a strong constitution alone is not evidence of fitness for survival. A strong person may not have prudence, foresight, keenness of perception, judgment, and many other qualities equally important. The characters just mentioned may constitute fitness when there is only a moderately vigorous body. Mr. Darwin recognized this when he said: "We should bear in mind that an animal possessing great size, strength and ferocity, and which, like the gorilla, could defend itself from all enemies would not, perhaps, have become sufficiently social, and this would effectually have checked the acquirement of the higher mental qualities, such as the sympathy and love of his fellows. Hence, _it might have been of immense advantage to men to have sprung from some comparatively weak but social creature_."

Fitness is a complicated condition and not a simple one. It depends upon so many external conditions. Fitness in one place would be unfitness in another. Still, other things being equal, strength of constitution is a very important factor, and must not be left out of consideration. With it there is a surplus of material in the body beyond what is required for digestion, assimilation, circulation and other bodily functions, to enable the parents not only to do hard labor, but also to endow their offspring with vigor equal to their own, often greater vigor. The feeble individuals will have a small amount of stored up material in their bodies which we may designate as physiological capital to give continuous food, warmth and protection to their young; they will not be so well adjusted to their environment, and, consequently, natural selection will cause their non-survival--or their offspring, if not immediately, at no distant period.

This doctrine of natural selection has been designated as cruel, harsh, inexorable, and under the influence of the human feeling every effort is in our time being made to prevent this wholesome check upon the processes of nature from having its due influence upon evolution and race progress. Modern hygiene undertakes to put an end to disease, to save all who are born, to surround them with every influence which can favor their health and development. It would stamp out diphtheria, scarlet fever, summer complaint, consumption and a host of other diseases which now decimate the ranks of the unfit, and often, no doubt, of the comparatively fit. This would perpetuate a type of feeble, unhealthy persons. There would not be much hope of more perfect health for the race if our hygienists could carry out this daring scheme along the lines now working. There seems an antagonism between nature's methods of bettering the physical condition of the race and the efforts of man himself, acting under the guidance of his moral feelings, to prevent the action of natural law. Mr. Darwin recognized this, and referred to it in his great work, "The Descent of Man," where he says: "With savages, the weak in body and mind are soon eliminated, and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbeciles, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment."

"There is," says he, "reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who from a weak constitution would have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized communities propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt but this must be highly injurious to the human race. Excepting in the case of man himself hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

Other evolutionists, in more recent times, have taken a still more somber view of this danger of race deterioration through the prevention of the full action of the law of natural selection.

Dr. John Berry Haycraft, in a recent work entitled "Darwinism and Race Progress," has sounded the alarm in no uncertain tones. He says: "Races, therefore, subject to epidemics of a particular fever, suffer selections in the hands of the microbes of that fever, and those living are survivals, cast in the most resisting mould. It may not be flattering to our national vanity to look upon ourselves as the product of the selection of the micro-organism of measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, etc.; but the reasonableness of the conclusion seems to be forced upon us when we consider his immunity from these diseases as compared with the natives of the interior of Africa, or the wilds of America, whose races have never been so selected, and who, when attacked for the first time by these diseases, are ravaged almost to extinction. By exterminating these diseases we shall no doubt preserve countless lives to the community who will, in their turn, become race producers; but in as much as the individuals thus preserved will, in most cases, belong to the feebler and less resisting of the community, _the race will not become more robust_."

The same author concludes in these words: "In the meantime we may view, and not without inquietude, the probability that our statistics, as far as they go, indicate that race deterioration has already begun as a consequence of that care for the individual which has characterized the efforts of modern society. The biologist, from quite another group of facts, has independently arrived at conclusions which render this view in the highest degree probable."

"Thus, the great English race, once so hardy, so powerful," says this modern writer, "by hygiene and better physical conditions, is becoming weaker and weaker."

This view of the case is growing largely in England and, perhaps, other European countries. There is already some evidence of its truthfulness in statistics. The death rate for those in middle life is rather increasing than diminishing. This arises from the fact that the great number of children who formerly died in infancy have lived, but being of more feeble constitutions, they swell the death rate later on. It is felt, also, in many educational institutions in the larger number of youths who cannot stand the strain and stress of student life. They are, high medical authority says, the youth saved from early death by modern hygienic and medical care. Formerly, natural selection would have chosen them as unfit to survive, and there would have remained alive few besides the hardy ones with good constitutions, capable of great strain, with great powers of endurance.

It is also shown in the stress of modern competition, in which there are multitudes who cannot stand this strain. It is from these, in some degree, that we hear the cry for governmental aid. "We must make the conditions of life easier for them," say our social reformers, "or they will become 'a submerged class.'"

CONFLICT BETWEEN EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES AND OUR HUMANE SENTIMENTS.--And now I wish to consider another phase of my subject. Those who have followed closely what was said concerning natural selection will have seen that there appears to be a conflict between evolutionary theories and the humane sentiment of the age--a want of correspondence between what is being done by natural law and what man is trying to do under the inspiration of his loving heart. Can we reconcile this want of correspondence? To some extent no doubt we can.

In the first place, the growth of the moral nature has always been held in high esteem by every nation and every race. Our moral giants stand higher in the scale of being than our great generals or statesmen, even in an age when moral culture is at a low ebb. We draw our moral inspiration from Buddha, Socrates and Christ rather than from Aristotle; their science may be, yes, is, faulty, but their spirit is lofty.

And the moral nature is cultivated in laboring for the good of others, in trying to save for a better life the poor, the weak, the distressed. All that is required is that we do this work wisely, not unwisely, under the guidance of reason, not feelings. We want to prevent these calamities rather than cure them.

Another satisfaction arises from the fact that in learning how to perfect the lives of the feeble so that they may live longer, we also learn how to perfect, in a still higher degree, the lives of the strong, or those we call the fit, so that they also will not only live longer, but be able to live with much greater satisfaction the complex lives of our times.

The knowledge which helps the first may help the second even more than the first, for they have better opportunities and can take advantage of it. We may also comfort ourselves with the fact that a majority of those with feeble constitutions, whose lives have been for a time snatched from the operation of the laws of natural selection, will not, after all, contribute very extensively to the increase of the population. Great powers of generation and numerous offspring rarely go with physical weakness. If there are exceptions they are explainable. It is, I think, pretty certain that a great majority of such leave few, often no offspring. They find their way into places where work is light and the pay small, and they cannot afford to marry and care for families, and do not do it.

The law of natural selection will continue to work on them so long as its action is required, with little regard to the efforts of man to abrogate it. Nature works continuously for ages, and she works on every part of man, every organ, every function. We may almost say she is omnipotent; that she watches for every slight improvement; that she knows what to do under every circumstance. Foiled in one direction, she has other means, infinite means, for gaining her ends. Man can no more put a stop to the operation of natural law than he can put a stop to the flow of Niagara. He may turn off a trifle of its water to whirl wheels and spindles, but the mighty river flows on until nature makes some changes in the watersheds, that make its flow impossible. Man, on the other hand, acts on his own body in a finite way. He works mainly for immediate, not remote, ends. He changes his methods as his needs change, or his knowledge increases. Today he works with limited knowledge of hygiene, inspired by old ideas of philanthropy. Tomorrow he may have a vastly extended knowledge of this subject and an entirely new social science which will enable him to do more good and less harm.

IDEAL OF HEALTH.--Let me now consider some of the things necessary to give us a greater hope for the future of human health, of ourselves and for our children.

The first thing necessary is to get a higher ideal of bodily or physical perfection than we have today. Sir James Paget, in a lecture on National Health, in 1884, put this in the following words:

"We want," says he, "more ambition for health. _I should like to see a personal ambition for health as keen as that for bravery, for beauty, or for success in our athletic games or field sports. I wish there was such an ambition for the most perfect national health as there is for national renown in war, in art or in commerce._" Sir James then gives his own ideal. It is for man or woman to be so full of health as to be comparatively indifferent to the external conditions of life, and to make a ready self-adjustment to all its changes. He should not be deemed thoroughly healthy who is made better or worse, more fit or less fit, by every change of weather or food, or who is bound to observe exact rules of living. It is good to observe rules, and to some they are absolutely necessary; but it is better to need none but those of moderation, and, observing these, to be willing to live and work hard in the widest variations of food, air, climate, bathing and all other sustenances of life.

ADAPTATION TO ENVIRONMENT.--This sounds very much like saying that to be healthy one must be adjusted to his environment; and this is practically what Herbert Spencer long before said in his "Principles of Biology." Here are his words:

"As affording the simplest and most conclusive proof that the degree of life varies as the degree of correspondence, it remains to point out that perfect correspondence would be perfect life. Were there no changes in our environment but such as the organism had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which it met them, there would be eternal existence and universal knowledge. Death by natural decay occurs because in old age the relations between assimilation, oxidation, and the genesis of force going on in the body gradually fall out of correspondence with the relations between oxygen and the food and absorption of heat by the environment. Death from disease arises either when the organism is congenitally defective in its power to balance ordinary internal actions, or when there has taken place some unusual external action to which there was no answering internal action. Death by accident implies some neighboring mechanical changes of which the causes are either unobserved from inattention, or are so intricate their results cannot be foreseen, and, consequently, certain relations in the organism are not adjusted to the relations in the environment. Manifestly, if, to every outer co-existence and sequence by which it was ever in any degree affected, the organism presented an answering process or act, the simultaneous changes would be indefinitely numerous and complex, and the successive ones endless, the correspondence would be the greatest conceivable and the life the highest conceivable, both in degree and length."

KNOWLEDGE.--Another requirement to promote human health is a better knowledge of how the constitution of the body may be strengthened, and more certitude as to whether such improvements as it may receive by hygienic training will be transmitted to offspring. That human health may be improved by right training of the body, a better supply of fresh air, greater moderation in living, there is not a shadow of doubt; but is the constitution itself thus strengthened, or only its original vigor conserved and made effective? I have been working on the problem for some time by a series of studies on the blood, and especially the amount of living matter in the colorless corpuscles, and have satisfied myself, from some observations on individual cases, that the original constitution of feeble persons can be strengthened in early life, but the extent of this strengthening seems somewhat limited. Much original research is still required to get at important facts in this direction. If some of the study now given to micro-organisms could be devoted to this subject it would be most useful. The work might be done in connection with our numerous schools of physical culture, now happily multiplying, and also in our physiological laboratories.

That any gain to the vigor of the constitution can be transmitted to the offspring is very probable. While education and training do not seem to affect the germ cells in any marked degree, nutrition does affect them. Whether acquired characters in the form of skill, music, language or other like things are transmitted or not may still be an open question.

Strengthening the constitution seems to be best accomplished by increasing the resources of the body beyond its outgo, so that there shall be some gain; and this brings up a very important subject, that of the importance of living within the bodily income.

In our fast age we are likely to use up the physiological resources in excessive work or dissipation, and so rob our children of their just inheritance.

EFFECTS OF LIVING AT HIGH PRESSURE.--One generation may, by living at high pressure and under specially unfavorable conditions, use up more than its share of the living matter of its bodies and draw a bill on posterity which the next generation cannot pay. Many of us now have the benefit of the calm, unexciting lives of our forefathers. They stored up physiological wealth for us; we are using it. The question is, Can we, working at high pressure, keep this up during our lives (which, in that case, will be on an average rather short), and transmit to the coming generation a large supply of living matter for their needs?

How often has it happened in the history of the world that people who for generations have exhibited no special genius, have blazed out in bursts of national greatness for a time, and then almost died out! We ought to take care that this does not happen to us. How often we see a quiet country family, whose members have for generations led calm, temperate lives, suddenly produce one or two great men and then relapse into obscurity. They had by their quiet, inexpensive living stored up energy for this purpose. On the other hand, how often have we seen the reverse--families whose energies have been used up in overwork or sensuality producing offspring below themselves in ability. The true rule, however, is neither to waste the bodily energy nor to keep too much of it lying idle and producing nothing.

GIRLS IN MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS.--We need also a new departure in our manufacturing centers. Manufacturing as now conducted is a far less healthy occupation than agriculture and horticulture. The reason for this is that workmen and workwomen and even children in most mills and factories are exposed for hours at a time to an atmosphere which is loaded with dust and the debris of cotton, of wool, and often to that worst of all dust which comes from shoddy and rags. They are also, in many cases, kept away from light, and in cramped positions, and this, continued for years, slowly deteriorates the constitution; and if, in case of a war, we were obliged to enlist a large army, we should find a far less number of able bodied men among the factory workers than among the farmers. Let me give you a picture, perhaps one of the very worst to be seen anywhere, of a visit to a New England paper mill.

"We left, with a company of ladies and gentlemen, the light of a mellow afternoon to climb some steep and dusty stairs under the courteous guidance of a superintendent. We had hoped to 'see it all,' 'but that was quite impossible,' said our guide, 'since the room where the rags are sorted is so dusty that the gowns of the ladies would be ruined.' So we contented ourselves with less dangerous rooms. But even about the stairway the dust cloud hung heavily, obscuring the sight and choking the breath. From the narrow landing the room, into which it was impossible to venture, was in full view. It was long and large. From end to end were ranged huge boxes, waist high. Fastened to each were two inverted swords on whose sharp blades the workers cut the piled-up masses of rags, shredding them for the bleaching boiler. All the floor was covered with rags, billows upon billows of soiled white pieces, in which the toilers stood, their feet buried deep beneath the dirty, tattered material.

"Not a word was spoken. Even where we stood speech was difficult, so completely did the thick dust fill eyes, mouth and nostrils, choking, blinding and exasperating. The effect of this perfect silence was oppressive. A certain solemnity hung over the place. Through the fog of dust the figures loomed unnaturally large. All the workers were white and hollow-cheeked, with great sunken eyes, emphasized by the circles underneath. Each woman had bound upon her head some rag, larger or finer than the rest, to protect her hair, and the gray-white bands folded straight across the forehead showed weirdly in the dim half-light.

"As they stood there in long, silent rows, cutting, _cutting_, CUTTING, they looked like the priestesses of some ancient and frightful ceremonial. We were glad to escape, to exchange the dust, the grime, the wan faces, and the burning eyes for the breath of cool wind, the full glow of the sunlight, and the face of nature herself, so many of whose human children have no time to know or learn her ways.

"It gave a tragic significance to the memory of those silent workers to know that they have but a few years to live."

The same unfortunate condition of things is complained of in Manchester, England, one of the greatest manufacturing centers in the world. "The heated air of the mills, the dust, lack of light, the employment of children," says the London _Lancet_, "are causing vast deterioration and a most disastrous effect on the morals of the people. Football is popular, but all the players are imported from Scotland. The natives simply look on and shout. If they want men for policemen or constables, they go to Scotland or Ireland for them. The women and girls are equally stunted and feeble." In the manufacturing towns the prospect for a strong, healthy race from such material is poor indeed.

CO-OPERATION: AN EXAMPLE.--It is difficult to see the remedy for this state of things. Probably the evolution of a higher standard of ethics, a higher sense of justice, and a more thorough belief that health is a duty, may do something. Meantime it is important that the working man should do all he can for himself; and perhaps I can do no better than to give here a picture of what some of them have done under the inspiration of co-operation, not only for their health but for their pockets.