CHAPTER VIII

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EUGENICS

This little volume would sadly fail to convey its author's meaning if dogmatism stood in the way of persuasion, or authority seemed to be claimed for the tentative suggestions herein outlined. There is no immediate danger that Eugenic principles will suddenly rush society into extreme action. The probabilities are quite in the opposite direction. We shall continue to see what has always been observed by thinkers, namely, "Decency and custom starving truth, and blind authority beating with his staff the child which might have led him." Valuable experiments are delayed by prejudice, and Eugenists have only too good ground for complaint that the scientific spirit is thwarted by prejudiced opposition to new ideas. The very absence of dogmatism which characterises the genuine thinker serves as the basis of opposition in his experiments. Because he does not glibly guarantee universal success like a patent-pill advertiser nothing whatever is done to obtain a criterion of judging how far his reasonable proposals can succeed. The failure of all other attempts to improve the race may force upon the public the necessity of Eugenic experiments. As has been said more than once, philanthropy has failed, politics has failed, rescue work has failed, perhaps Eugenics may not fail, for it is based on the impregnable rock of science, it proceeds on the sound lines of prevention, it aims to start at the beginning of things, to build up a new race if not of supermen at least of sound healthy human beings.

The lethal chamber is _not_ a Eugenic remedy. It is the last heart-broken despairing cry of the old unscientific system. It is the only final alternative to Eugenics. It means that man has failed. It has neither sense, sentiment, nor science for its justification. It substitutes murder for moral method. Eugenics on the other hand starts out with the principle that there is nothing so sacred as life. That the lethal chamber for the aged, diseased, infirm, and unfit is barbarous and immoral, that it is utterly indefensible, and would be absolutely ineffective if not ridiculously impracticable. There is not much need to waste further consideration on a project from which every healthy citizen naturally revolts. It has to be categorically repudiated lest it should be mistakenly regarded as a Eugenic proposal.

Abortion and infanticide are equally condemned by Eugenists, although on different grounds. Infanticide is murder. It destroys the life of an actual human being. Infanticide, though doubtless less reprehensible in degree than the lethal chamber idea, is in principle indistinguishable therefrom. It is the antithesis to the idea of Eugenics. The state which can contemplate child-murder without horror is far indeed from being a humane State. Sensitiveness to suffering is a sign of civilisation. Wherever we find a live human being, however hopeless its condition may appear, universal experience has shown us that man's advance from savagedom depends on his using all his resources to save the final spark of life which remains. "While there's life there's hope" is a maxim which is based on the greatest need of mankind. Eugenics deplores waste of effort that this entails, but there can be no doubt about its rightness or its justification by the universal consensus of progressive races. Abortion may be condemned on religious and moral grounds, but the overwhelming weight of medical opinion against it is based on physiological reasons. No woman can be guilty of this practice without the greatest risks of physical damage. She jeopardises her life immediately and she generally deteriorates her capacity for future usefulness. Eugenics will find a sphere of usefulness in the spread of this piece of saving knowledge. Unmarried mothers and mothers in all spheres of society are terribly ignorant of the dangers of this common death-trap. The mere fact that the sale and procuration of drugs and use of means for purposes of abortion are criminal acts is not sufficient. The idea is prevalent that it is only the police who have to be evaded. Our laws are not empiric, but their reason is seldom apparent to those who are expected to obey them. A few drugs, or a few pills--how easy it all seems--and how fatal. Eugenists do not want the law altered, but they want the added deterrent of reason. There may be a chance of evading the law, there is none of evading the bodily injury which inevitably accompanies abortion.

I have already shown that Malthusian arguments do not appeal to Eugenists. This is not to say that Malthusian methods are also condemned. Malthusian prognostications have not been fulfilled, its statistics have been superseded, and its conclusions modified by the process of the suns. The world does not contain too many people, it only contains too many of the wrong sort of people. Production has not only kept pace with population, it has raced it. Intensive cultivation, new treatments of the soil, scientific rotation of crops and scientific agriculture rendering rotation unnecessary, new economic inducements to cultivate hitherto waste lands, discoveries and inventions of all kinds have taken away from Malthusianism the unduly pessimistic philosophy with which it once tried to frighten the race. Malthusianism will always be remembered with gratitude, however, for its practical methods and for its refusing to confuse marriage with procreation. That distinction still needs to be borne in mind because otherwise half our Eugenic efforts will be wasted by directing ourselves to a problem which does not exist. It is impossible to assail the proposition that a moral married life is consistent with a prudential check on increased population. This prudential check need not necessarily be a material one. Even a Tolstoyan may be a married man. Abstinence in due season in the case of normal adults is or may be Nature's plan for increasing virility at other seasons. The most prolific parents may be pardoned for resting occasionally from their protracted persistency of race-production. Eugenists object to weakening virility by sacrificing fitness for mere numbers, but it is in the essence of their demand that the race shall, "increase and multiply and replenish the earth." The objection (which Eugenists share with the majority of the American public) to anything remotely resembling infanticide must have some definite proof of its sincerity. Eugenists denounce the New Decalogue of current morality which says:

"Thou shalt not kill,--but needs not strive Officiously to keep alive."

The Eugenist does not desire to detract from the responsibility of parenthood, but rather to increase it. On the other hand whatever steps may be taken against neglectful, vicious or unnatural parents, the race interests demand that the child shall not suffer. A new responsibility must be added to parentage--the parent of the race is the State, which must be vigilant to protect the child from the faults and follies of fathers who fail in their most essential duties. A child should be guaranteed loving parents or failing these a never failing foster-parent, in a paternal State.

In the recognition of its duties as Step-mother, the State will in self-defence protect its maternal arms from the influx of undesirables. The universal endowment of Motherhood may be a socialist dream rather than a Eugenic practical proposal, but even the Eugenists' demand for the State to act as step-mother involves an expenditure which will probably amount to the cost of a national war. It is part of our case that the money spent is an investment certain to pay big dividends in the shape of increased national efficiency. It is in any case inevitable. Public sentiment cannot tolerate this idiotic waste of the noblest of all raw material. It will be not the least of its advantages that the State will at length be directly interested, financially and therefore most deeply, in stopping the supply of the unfit--a bad investment at the best, requiring a maximum of trouble, and a continuous source of damage. The sterilisation of the unfit has become a regular experience in a number of States. It has outlived its detractors wherever it has been practised. It remains necessary now only to convert its objectors in other States, and to gradually extend its beneficent operation and the sphere of its activities. Naturally it begins with the habitual criminal. Of absolute success in the States where it has been tried it will be far more effective when it is applied in the more populous centres and when it becomes impossible for the permanently criminal to escape its attention. Sterilisation as now recommended and performed by our highest scientific authorities is in no sense cruel, it is not even painful. It must not be confounded with the mutilations of earlier centuries, it leaves the person operated on possessed of every faculty for use and capacity for happiness, it only takes away the power of reproduction. The first extension of the plan has been to the certified hopeless idiot. These two classes and the inmates of homes for incurable drunkards represent a very easy definition of those who should be treated to this operation. In the case of the criminal it will enable very great mercy to be extended. Sterilisation will not be a mere added infliction of a degrading punishment, it will substitute an awful warning for a long imprisonment. Only those criminals will be sterilised whose chronic criminality is proved after repeated convictions and form a study of what facts are ascertainable as to their hereditary history. They will leave the jail knowing that society regards them as unworthy to be parents, or if they themselves are also too dangerous to be let at large their close confinement will be rarely necessary.

The Eugenist does not propose to extend the operation of sterilisation beyond the classes above mentioned. It does not, however, regard these as exhausting the categories of undesirable procreators. Already there are numerous suffering and semi-cured adults whose children would inherit the diseases, weaknesses, and evil tendencies of their ancestors. Tuberculosis, syphilis and St. Vitus's Dance sufferers are specimens of this class. As Eugenics advances we may learn more of the racial poisons, and a scientific black-list may be drawn up of those hereditary taints which inflict most harm on the community. Doctors should have to notify the authorities of these diseases and the patient should be encouraged to frankness and helped to a cure. In all such cases kind but firm warning must be given against procreation. The failure to heed such warning should inevitably result in imprisonment--a very short term will suffice, for with Eugenics established as a rule of society, the State could afford to be patient. The elimination of the unfit would make rapid strides, and the offspring of tainted parents evading the law in one generation would be less and less likely to escape in the next generation.

It may be that the State will be contented with the negative side of Eugenics. It may be that it is the more important because we are daily increasing the elements which if not checked will destroy our civilisation. Negative Eugenics is as imperative a necessity as the protection of our coasts from invasion or the destruction of potato blight.

Positive Eugenics represents the attempt to encourage breeding from every healthy stock. Its methods will vary with the views of society from time to time. Its machinery will be by State-interference or by private experimental enterprise according as socialist or individualist ideals are current. I do not wish to commit Eugenists who are by no means agreed on this point, but my personal view is that individual experiments cannot possibly go far beyond public opinion, whereas, "the State can do no wrong" if it endows, undertakes and is responsible for experiments limited in extent but far reaching in principle, so long as such experiments are based on scientific probabilities and are supported by enlightened competent judges and do not outrage the humane sentiment of the race. Drastic individual experiments, involving however few people, will always be subject to interference at critical moments by mobs, governments, vigilance societies, etc. It is not wise to ignore this factor; it is not necessary even to deprecate it; nay, it has its advantages. The omnipotence of the State rests not merely in its power of arms; a State experiment, even though not initiated by the people, can be stopped by the people. The electors' power ultimately to interfere makes for tolerance.

While drastic experiments must be left to democracy acting through its elected governors, there is ample scope for other features of positive Eugenics. One of these is the endowment of worthy young couples too poor otherwise to marry. The ideal of celibacy stands self-condemned. Where successful it means race-suicide, where unsuccessful it means hypocrisy and a thousand other horrors. What then can we think of the fact that millions of dollars have been spent in endowing monasteries, nunneries, brotherhoods and all the other ancient and modern forms of celibate stultification of probably perfectly potential parents. Add to these millions the other millions spent in endowing the worst and least capable in prisons, asylums and in often demoralising charities. Then bear in mind that the endowment of the healthy for Eugenic purposes, for the regeneration of mankind, is absolutely unknown. A millionaire who loves his kind could scarcely do better with his money than the establishment, under proper supervision, of a fund which would encourage human efficiency. There is no fame so lasting as the glory which would attach to such a fund. It would be greater than a Nobel name, its prizes would be more keenly competed for than for "Marathon" or "America" cups. Its winners would become a new aristocracy, and for the first time in the history of the world noble families would be founded on a blending of ancestral and personal merit, aristocratic, indeed, because the best become personally powerful, but absolutely democratic in that neither class, caste nor creed are allowed to count in the selection. From this aristocracy a new knighthood might be formed. Degeneration would mean exclusion. Improvement would mean increased honours. New standards of efficiency, mental, moral and physical, would be evolved for the guidance of the race. An American model of this kind would speedily find imitators abroad. The real struggle for race supremacy would be concentrated on the Eugenic groups. Competitions, challenges and contests between national groups might eclipse in interest all the other exhibits in future International Expositions.

The daily work of Eugenic education is independent of these short cuts to the Eugenics millennium. The dissemination of ascertained facts about heredity is urgently necessary. It may be news to many that there are hundreds of institutions throughout our land where accurate information has been carefully collected for many years. The antecedents of inmates of prisons, asylums and "homes" have been patiently scheduled, classified and studied. Only money and public interest are wanted to make this vital information known. Investigations of this kind need also to be made universal. It is not enough that institutions should relieve the present sufferers. They can only justify their existence by contributing to our desire for the eradication of suffering. It should be made a condition of public support that the most useful kind of inquiries should be made, and be placed at the disposal of all who are interested. It is useless throwing pages of undigested statistics at the public, this is mere waste of effort. With the facts and figures in existence and accessible, centres of scientific study such as a Eugenics laboratory should be, will be able to present to the public the living issues which those dead figures mean. It would, however, be contrary to the spirit of Eugenics to confine attention to the sadder side of statistics. It is of infinite importance that we should understand and cultivate fitness, and therefore we want the systematic collection of family histories relating to our noblest, best and worthiest. Here State-interference is out of place. Voluntary work on the part of enthusiastic Eugenists would soon succeed in obtaining information of great value. Few families would refuse to impart through private channels ancestral facts, particularly as the mere inquiry would imply a compliment. The Chinese worship of ancestors would have a modern scientific interpretation, in the honour which would be won by the founders of fine families, a study of whose history would be an inspiration and a help to the race.

The advocates of Eugenics are prepared for small beginnings but they have enormous faith in its future. There is no desire and no need to exaggerate the present tentative claims. To the many it is still necessary to ask for the intellectual hospitality of impartial consideration. Even to the convinced we only appeal for judicious experiment. To the religious our work comes as a harmonious exercise of the best with which the Eternal Will of the Universe has endowed us.

To the evolutionist Eugenics represents the study and expression of Nature's plan. To the humane our work appeals as it assures mankind of a curtailment of human suffering. We lay new laurels on graves of the honoured dead and write new epitaphs glorifying the ancestors of the worthy living. We reverence the cradle containing the hope of the race, we think of past and present as the womb of the future.

APPENDIX A

_Maternity Maintenance, or State Subventions to Mothers_

MEDICAL ATTENDANCE

First and foremost comes the need for qualified medical and nursing attendance on the mother and the newly born infant. At present many mothers go almost unattended in their hour of need; many tens of thousands more have attendance that comes too late, or is quite inadequately qualified; hundreds of thousands of others fail to get the nursing and home assistance that is required to prevent long-continued suffering and ill-health to mothers and children alike. The local health authorities ought to be required to provide within its area qualified medical attendance, including all necessary nursing, for all cases of child-birth of which it has received due notice. There is no reason why this should not be done as a measure of public health, free of charge to the patient, in the same way as vaccination is provided for all who do not object to that operation; and on the same principle that led to the gratuitous opening of the hospitals, to any person suffering from particular diseases quite irrespective of his means. What is, however, important is that the necessary medical attendance and nursing shall _always_ be provided. If the community prefers to recover the cost from such patients as can clearly afford to pay--say, for instance, those having incomes above a prescribed amount--instead of from everybody in the form of rates and taxes, this (as with the payment for admission to an isolation hospital) may be an intermediate stage. In one way or another, there must be no child-birth without adequate attendance and help to the mother.

_Pure Milk_

At present many tens of thousands of infants perish simply from inanition in the first few days or weeks after birth. In town and country alike many hundreds of thousands of families find the greatest difficulty, even when they can pay for it, in buying milk of reasonable purity and freshness, or in getting it just when they require it, or often indeed in getting it at all. The arguments in favour of the municipalisation of the milk supply are overwhelming in strength. But an even stronger case can be made out for the systematic provision by the Local Health Authority, to every household in which a birth has taken place, of the necessary quantity of pure, fresh milk, in sealed bottles, delivered every day. Whatever else is left undone, the necessary modicum of pure milk, whether taken by the mother or prepared for the child, might at any rate be supplied as the birth-right of every new-born citizen.

_Maternity Pensions._

The next step must be the establishment of a system of maternity pensions free, universal, and non-contributory. If they be not universal, they will come as of favour, and be open to the objections rightly urged against all doles, public or private. A contributory scheme could only exist as part of a universal sick fund. If the contributions were optional the poorest mothers would get no pension at all. If they were compulsory on a fixed scale, the scheme would still further impoverish those it is intended to benefit. If the contributions were on a sliding scale, the pension would be smallest just where it is most necessary. To work out a pension scheme on the basis of compensation for loss of the mother's earnings would at once involve a sliding scale such as is in force in Germany and Austria, which would be unfair in the working, and benefit the poorest least. Moreover, the theory is fallacious, inasmuch as it views the woman as a worker and not as a mother. Let the pension be regarded rather as the recompense due to the woman for a social service, second to none that can be rendered. The time will come when the community will set a far higher value on that service than it does at present. But at present the main point is to tide the mother over a time of crisis as best we may.

How long should the pension last? The average duration of a maternity case inside a hospital appears to be a fortnight. The normal period during which upper class mothers keep their beds is three weeks, but for some time after leaving bed, the mother is incapable of any active work without harm to herself. Many internal diseases and nervous complaints as well as a good deal of the drinking among women, have their origin in getting about too soon. For some weeks at least, whether the mother nurses her baby or not, she requires much more than ordinary rest and nourishment. These considerations apply also, though in a less degree, to the period preceding confinement.

Under the law of Great Britain, the period of enforced cessation from factory work is four weeks. The same period is prescribed in Holland and Belgium. In Switzerland the period is eight weeks.

These laws, though of great value, are often cruel in the working, as they deprive the woman of wages without compensation just at the time she needs money most. The result is they are often evaded. Germany and Austria have recognised this. In Germany women are forbidden to work for six weeks after confinement. But the insurance law of Germany provides women with free medical attendance, midwife and medicine, and in addition with an allowance not exceeding seventy-five per cent of her customary wage for the six weeks. There is further a provision that pregnant women unable to work should be allowed the same amount for not more than six weeks previous to confinement. A similar insurance system exists in Austria and Hungary. In some parts of Germany, the municipality still goes further. In Cologne, the working mother is given a daily grant to stay at home and suckle her child, and visitors see that this condition is fulfilled. The Cologne system has been adopted by some municipalities in France. In Leipsic, every illegitimate child becomes a ward of the municipality, which puts it out to nurse with certified persons who must produce it for inspection on demand.

These provisions enable the government of Germany to enforce the law against the employment of women in the last period of pregnancy without hardship to them. The compensation given to German mothers is already felt to be insufficient, but there is a difficulty in making it more generous arising from the fact that the system is a scheme of insurance; the benefits cannot be increased without a rise in the contribution. In a free pension scheme, this difficulty will not occur. A small beginning might be made by way of experiment to familiarise the public with the advantage of caring for maternity, with a knowledge that its scope could be extended indefinitely without dislocation of the scheme. But the period like the amount must be substantial even at first. If the pension is to have any permanent value it should extend over a period of at least eight weeks: about two weeks before and six weeks after the date on which the birth is expected to take place.

The above is a brief resumé of the essential features of the British Fabian Society's scheme for the Endowment of Motherhood. In "Fabian Tract No. 149" (from which these extracts are made) $2.50 per week is suggested as a reasonable maternity allowance.

APPENDIX B.

_Sterilisation of the Unfit._

The State Legislatures of California, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Indiana and Connecticut have already passed measures to secure this object. On February 10th, 1907, Indiana passed the following act:--

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"An Act entitled an Act to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists--providing, that superintendents or boards of managers of institutions where such persons are confined shall have the authority, and are empowered to appoint a committee of experts, consisting of two physicians, to examine into the mental condition of such inmates.

"Whereas heredity plays an important part in the transmission of crime, idiocy, and imbecility, therefore, be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana, that on and after the passage of this act, it shall be compulsory for each and every institution in the State entrusted with the care of confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists, and imbeciles, to appoint upon its staff, in addition to the regular institution physician, two skilled surgeons of recognised ability, whose duty it shall be, in conjunction with the chief physician of the institution, to examine the mental and physical condition of such inmates as are recommended by the institutional physician and board of managers.

"If in the judgment of this committee procreation is inadvisable and there is no probability of improvement of the mental condition of the inmate, it shall be lawful for the surgeons to perform such operation for the prevention of procreation as shall be decided safest and most effective. But this operation shall not be performed except in cases that have been pronounced unimprovable."

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In August, 1909, the Connecticut State Legislature enacted the following:--

"An Act concerning operations for the prevention of Procreation.--Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened:

"Section 1.--The directors of the State prisons and the superintendents of State Hospitals for the insane at Middletown and Norwich are hereby authorised and directed to appoint for each of said institutions, respectively, two skilled surgeons, who, in conjunction with the physician or surgeon in charge at each of said institutions, shall examine such persons as are reported to them by the warden, superintendent, or the physician or surgeon in charge, to be persons by whom procreation would be inadvisable.

"Such board shall examine the physical and mental condition of such persons, and their record and family history so far as the same can be ascertained, and if in the judgment of the majority of said board, procreation by any such person would produce children with an inherited tendency to crime, insanity, feeble-mindedness, idiocy, or imbecility, and there is no probability that the condition of any such person so examined will improve to such an extent as to render procreation by such person advisable, or, if the physical or mental condition of any such person will be substantially improved thereby then the said board shall appoint one of its members to perform the operation of vasectomy or oöphorectomy, as the case may be, upon such person. Such operation shall be performed in a safe and humane manner, and the board making such examination, and the surgeon performing such operation, shall receive from the State such compensation, for services rendered, as the warden of the State prison or the superintendent of either of such hospitals shall deem reasonable.

"Section 2.--Except as authorised by this act, every person who shall perform, encourage, assist in or otherwise promote the performance of either of the operations described in Section 1 of this Act, for the purpose of destroying the power to procreate the human species: or any person who shall knowingly permit either of such operations to be performed upon such person--unless the same be a medical necessity--shall be fined not more than one thousand dollars, or imprisoned in the State prison not more than five years, or both."

In California, in 1909, the legislature passed a statute which provides that whenever in the opinion of the medical superintendent of any State hospital, or the superintendent of the California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble-minded Children, or of the resident physician in any State prison, it would be conducive to the benefit of the physical, mental or moral condition of any inmate of such home, hospital or state prison, to be asexualised, then such superintendent or resident physician shall call into consultation the General Superintendent of State Hospitals and the Secretary of the State Board of Health, and they shall jointly examine into all the particulars of the case, and if, in their opinion, or in the opinion of any two of them, asexualisation will be beneficial to such inmate, patient, or convict, they may perform the same.

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The British Commissioners in Lunacy in their 63rd Report to the Lord Chancellor, 1909, briefly reviewing the Report of the Royal Commission on the care and Control of the Feeble-minded, say:

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"The Royal Commission devoted much attention to the causation of mental defect, and arrived at the conclusion that feeble-mindedness is largely inherited; that prevention of mentally defective persons from becoming parents would tend to diminish the numbers of such persons in the population; and that, consequently, there are the strongest grounds for placing mental defectives of each sex in institutions where they will be detained and kept under effectual supervision as long as may be necessary. Public opinion would not, the Royal Commission think, sanction legislation directed to the prevention of hereditary transmission of mental defect by surgical or other artificial measures, and they regard restrictions on the marriage of persons of unsound mind as inadvisable, in view of the fact that this form of mental disability is often of a limited or temporary character. As respects, however, congenital and incurable forms of mental defect, no such considerations apply, and the only remedy is to place persons so suffering under such restrictions as to make procreation impossible. The Royal Commission were evidently much impressed by the evidence they received, which we can from our own experience amply corroborate, of the large number of weak-minded women and girls to be found in the work-houses throughout the country, who go there to be delivered of illegitimate children, and they invite your Lordship and the Secretary of State for the Home Department to consider whether the existing law provides adequate protection for mentally defective persons against sexual crime and immorality....

Sterilisation of men can be effectively achieved by simple vasectomy or section of the vas deferens, and of women by the almost equally simple and harmless method of ligature of the Fallopian tubes (Kehrer's method as advocated by Kisch). It would appear that both these operations may be effected by skilled hands in a few minutes with a minimum of pain and inconvenience, and they possess the immense advantage that the sexual glands are preserved, and no organ removed from the body.[1]

(1) It is probable, also, that the method of sterilisation by X-rays may some day acquire practical importance. In this case there is no operation at all, though the effects do not last for more than a few years. This might be an advantage in some cases. See _British Medical Journal_, August 13th, 1904; ib. March 11th, 1905; ib. July 6th, 1907; ib. August 21st, 1909."

[Footnote: 1] (Havelock Ellis in the "Eugenics Review," London, Eng.)

According to Dr. Havelock Ellis Swiss alienists are unanimously in favour of the sterilisation of the mentally degenerate classes and hold that this matter should be regulated by law. Switzerland is the first European State which has adopted sterilisation as an alternative to the "indeterminate sentence" in the case of confirmed abnormalities and prisoners convicted of serious sexual offences against children. At Wil in Berne, two women and two men were incarcerated in the cantonal asylum. All were defectives but not strictly speaking insane. Children had already been born in each case. To prevent further procreative degeneracy sterilisation was suggested and agreed to by the four persons who welcomed the operation as an alternative to detention. The result has justified the experiment. According to the _Eugenics Review_ there has actually been a marked change in the characters of the individuals and there is certainly no danger of their weaknesses being reproduced at the expense of the coming generation.

THE END

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Transcriber Notes

There is a quotation which begins on page 133 but there is no endquote in the text. It is assumed that the quotation ends on page 136 after the date August 21, 1909.