CHAPTER XLVIII

DELINQUENCY--CAUSES AND REMEDIES

=Purity, a nation’s strength.=--The strength and perpetuity of a nation consist not in its standing army, mighty navy, millions of population, strong fortifications, inexhaustible resources of wealth, but in the purity and strength of its manhood and womanhood. Babylon, Greece and Rome did not fall because of a shortage of men, weakness of fortifications, exhausted resources or lack of warships, but because of a degenerate manhood and womanhood.

=The home threatened.=--Are there agencies of degeneracy operating in our social fabric that threaten our nation’s strength and perpetuity? We shall see. The greatest social problems of the church and state must be solved in the home. Whatever agencies destroy the home will ultimately destroy society, the church and the nation.

=The divorce problem.=--That God-ordained and God-honored institution, the home--in its purity, strength, and influence, was never more in danger than now. The home is an organized institution, consisting of husband, wife and one or more children, bound by the most sacred vows, the purest love and harmony. The home, the basis of society, the church and the nation is in danger. Homes are being wrecked nearly as fast as they are being built. Divorce is on the increase; marriage and births are on the decrease. In 1870, we had one divorce to every thirty-eight marriages. In 1900, we had one divorce to every fourteen and one-quarter marriages. Now we are having one to every eleven marriages. Last year Canada had only seventeen divorces. An Ohio daily gave one county in that state the credit of one hundred and thirty-two divorces in twelve months. Canada has better social customs, better marriage and better divorce laws than we have. There, a girl rarely keeps company with a young man before she is eighteen and rarely gets married until after she is twenty. Here, she is often teased about sweethearts when she is five, taught to avoid being an old maid when she is seven, when ten she is making goo-goo eyes at the boys, when eleven she is passing notes to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the schoolroom, when twelve she is desperately in love, when thirteen she is engaged and goes buggy riding and roams the streets at late hours with boys, when fifteen she is in the divorce court, and six months later she has her second husband.

=Social dangers.=--A nation whose social customs encourage innocent, playful, fourteen-and fifteen-year-old girls to enter society and meet the temptations and dangers incident to matured womanhood need not be surprised when she finds that one-half of her 300,000 erring women fell before they were seventeen and that one-half of her divorces are among women who married before they were seventeen. Our social customs should be changed so as to safeguard the virtue of our boys and girls during the stormy period of early adolescence.

=New marriage laws needed.=--One of the best remedies for the present divorce evil would be a campaign of education and legislation on courtship and marriage. Marriage needs to be elevated in the public mind to a plane of dignity, honor and responsibility. To secure this we need uniform state laws requiring of all candidates for marriage a fair knowledge of heredity and prenatal culture, the duties and responsibilities of marriage and parentage and of marital rights. For this to be possible, all candidates for marriage should be required to register their proposed marriage with the county clerk two months before the license is issued, and their proposed marriage should be published in at least one paper during this time. This would prevent clandestine and bigamous marriages and would deprive the White Slave procurer of one of his chief methods of securing his victims. When a proposed marriage is registered, the state should furnish each with a book presenting in simple language such information as is indicated above. They should be required to give evidence of having a fair knowledge of the facts contained in the book and to present a certificate of good physical and mental health before the license is finally issued.

=How enforced.=--These rules and laws should be taught, required and enforced in a spirit that would lead the public to see, and the candidates for marriage to feel, that these young people are assuming responsibilities and that the state is conferring an honor and trust upon them far greater than a governor-elect assumes and the state confers on him when he takes the oath of office. The home builder is a nation builder. Such education and legislation would not only promote domestic harmony, reduce the divorce evil, give to children a good heredity, but it would check the growth of all forms of human degeneracy and add to our nation’s strength and life and make for greater domestic happiness.

=Effects of bad customs.=--I would not censure those who have married in childhood. The mistake has been made. Bad customs have led many good people to make mistakes. The custom of thrusting little girls into society, resulting in immature marriages, should be checked.

=Chief cause of homicide and suicide.=--There are one and a half million children born in the United States annually. It is estimated that there are 250,000 abortions that come to medical attention. If this number require medical attention then there must be 100,000 who succeed without medical attention. One thousand prenatal murders a day. Then there must be 100,000 attempts to destroy unwelcome life which fail. Children born under these conditions cannot receive a good heredity. Many will be born with suicidal and homicidal tendencies. This is no doubt the chief cause of homicides and suicides. There were 172,000 illegal murders last year and nearly half that number of suicides. One homicide every thirty seconds and one suicide every seventy seconds is our criminal record. Crime has increased 300 per cent. above the normal increase of population in the last twenty years. Crime has increased two and one-half times faster among children than among adults. This last is due in part to a lack of moral training in the home and school, to the vivid and attractive portrayal of crime in the cheap shows, and at the same time it is largely due to the increase of abortion among mothers. The causes of crime among adults are as follows: fifteen per cent. of our foreign born population commit thirty-five per cent. of our crime, drunkenness, non-enforcement of law and criminal abortion. Some leading students of heredity believe that efforts to destroy unwelcome life is the principal cause of crime.

=A doctor’s testimony.=--At the close of a lecture in St. Louis, one of the doctors present told me of a lady in good standing in society and the church, who came to his office and requested his services in producing abortion. Her reason was that she had three children and her husband’s income was not sufficient to support four children. He suggested that if the presence of four children in the home would lead to the death of the whole family by starvation, that she return home and kill one of the three. She was horrified at the doctor’s suggestion that she murder one of the children. The doctor explained that if she followed his suggestion her health would be protected and there would be but one guilty of murder, while, if he followed her wish, her health would be injured and there would be two responsible for the murder of her unborn child. “But, doctor,” she replied, “that would not be murder, would it? I have not felt its movements.” The doctor explained to her how life began at the moment of conception, how the little embryo was as much a living human being as when it had become strong enough to make its movements known. The true mother-love triumphed and she returned home resolving to protect, love, welcome and toil for four instead of three.

=Men as guilty as women.=--Ignorance concerning sex, the rights of marriage and the double standard of marriage are responsible for this crime which exists in the church as well as on the outside. Men are fully as responsible for race suicide as women are.

Social and economic conditions are largely responsible for families shrinking from an average of eight children to two in less than a century. If these conditions were normal large families would be commendable. A large family of fourteen children will always be more honorable than an imitation consisting of a husband, wife and a poodle dog.

Sensible women are convinced that a family of from four to six children well born and well environed is wiser than double this number poorly born and poorly environed. They will, if necessary, prefer going through life childless to bearing defective children.

=Two kinds of race suicide.=--Criminal prevention and willful abortion. This is the only form of race suicide the public recognizes. This cannot be too severely condemned by the press, platform and pulpit. But there is another form of “race suicide,” equally great, but largely overlooked.

Defective children born of enslaved motherhood. Sensual men are largely responsible for this form. Which would be the greater crime, for a nation to pass out of existence because children are not born, or to have a dense population of paupers, idiots, imbeciles, thieves, suicides and homicides--the children of drunken, feeble-minded, criminal and otherwise defective parents, born of stupid ignorance and blind chance? Multiple child-bearing produces invalid wives and kills many loving mothers and fills our penitentiaries and asylums with delinquents.

=The rights of motherhood.=--Let us instill into every heart a desire for pure, perfect parenthood. Let the wife who must bear and rear the children decide when she can perform this sacred duty perfectly. Let every child be well born and “race suicide” will become a thing of the past.

=What shall be done?=--What shall we do with the dependent classes? This is one of the great problems to be solved. Taxpayers, philanthropists, lawmakers, doctors and Christian workers are all deeply interested in a wise adjustment of this problem because of their interest in these classes and also because we have found our present methods inadequate. Paupers, idiots, imbeciles, the insane and criminals appeal to our pity, charity and love. A practical demonstration of this is found in the millions of dollars annually appropriated from our taxes and the gifts of charity, and from thousands of healthy, normal people whose lives are devoted to ministering to the needs of these social unfortunates.

=Many degenerates are diseased.=--The degenerate criminals, imbeciles and insane are now understood to be diseased. A very large per cent. have inherited this condition. Some were even foredoomed to their fate. Perhaps twenty per cent. of the inmates of our penal institutions are serving their second, third and fourth terms. Son, father and grandfather are to be found side by side in our prisons. The daily mail received by the inmates of the asylums, reform schools and penitentiaries, coming so largely from relatives in similar institutions, proves that these conditions run in families. There are nearly 350,000 imbeciles, insane and epileptic people in the United States. Our asylums are overflowing with inmates. Many states have doubled the capacity of these institutions in the last ten years and still they are unable to accommodate all the worthy applicants.

=Two causes of degeneracy.=--There are two chief agencies of degeneracy, strong drink and the violation of the laws of sex. In one state penitentiary I found seventy-two per cent. of the inmates had a drunken father, mother, or both. It was found in a certain reformatory for women that seventy-five per cent. had a drunken father, mother, or both. In one penitentiary I found that more than three out of four had venereal disease requiring medical attention when they were admitted. Limited investigation indicates that twenty-two per cent. of the inmates of the asylums were conceived during a drunken debauch. Many of the inmates had the Hotchinson notched teeth, crowfoot tracks in the palate and throat, conclusive proof of a syphilitic ancestor.

=Spitzka= the great neurologist of New York, says, “The birth-rate of the high grade and low grade imbecile is double that of the normal population.” Not only do these classes contribute more than double their proportion to the annual birth-rate, but they are a source of moral corruption to society, as many of their offspring become paupers, insane and criminals.

=The solution.=--With crime, imbecility and insanity increasing at the rate of 200 to 300 per cent. every twenty years, thinking people are beginning to see that the only reasonable solution to the problem that confronts us is to stop the production among all undesirable classes. This can be done by the application of laws of heredity, the enactment of adequate laws regulating the marriage of certain classes and depriving the hereditary degenerates of the creative function.

=Protected, inspected, neglected.=--Our government is not slow in the enactment of suitable laws favorable to the protection of the forests and the inspection of the hog, cow and horse, and in making splendid appropriations for the improvement of different breeds, but it has made no law to prevent the

constantly increasing production of intellectual and moral degenerates. Millions are willingly appropriated to aid in the invention and purchase of deadly weapons with which the human family may be destroyed. Thousands of the healthiest young men are called to the army and the criminal and idiotic are left to keep up the work of propagation. All our states maintain a Health Board, the duty of which is to prevent the spread of smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, etc. We have state officers to inspect cattle and to use measures to prevent Texas fever. Our state fairs give large premiums to the fastest trotter, the best Durhams, Southdowns and Poland Chinas. Mothers and children are neglected.

=Marriage of the feeble-minded.=--Our laws are such that the county clerk must grant marriage license to criminals, paupers, drunkards, prostitutes and the feeble-minded, if they are of the proper age, or have their parents’ consent. Where a couple of this class have secured their legal right to marry, they hunt up a preacher who, standing before them with civil and ecclesiastical authority, says, “Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” Such is a crime against society, an insult to the holy estate of marriage, a curse to future generations, and a libel on God. I don’t believe that God ever sanctions such unions. When the states make laws prohibiting such marriages they will hasten the millennium of marriage.

=More dangerous than smallpox.=--If I carelessly expose others to smallpox; if I refuse to remove filth from my premises, dangerous to the community’s health; if I knowingly sell diseased meat to my customers, I shall be arrested and punished. But a man may live a fast life, acquire a disease that will poison his wife, also his children to the third and fourth generations; in this way he can worse than murder his wife and children and go unwhipped and unpunished.

=Effects of alcoholic fathers.=--If statistics can be relied on, drunkards produce one hundred per cent. more of the alcoholics, criminals, and mental defectives than do the sober men. In justice to overtaxed citizens and the demands of the coming generation we should enact a law preventing the marriage of habitual drunkards. The periodic drunkard should be required to remain sober for a considerable time before his marriage and give reasonable evidence that his reformation is permanent.

=Property qualification.=--A property qualification, or its equivalent in an established remunerative calling, profession or occupation, should be required as a condition for marriage license. It is a known fact that pauper families furnish more than their proportion of criminals and other classes of dependents.

=The victim of venereal disease.=--Persons having a venereal disease, in a mild form, should be allowed to marry only when a competent health board, after careful examination, decides that they are entirely free from poison, then, and then only after a reasonable time has expired since being treated. If the applicant for marriage license has at one time had one of the worst forms of venereal disease, he should be forever debarred from the privilege of marriage. The need of these restrictive and prohibitory marriage laws will be better understood and appreciated by you when I give a few statements from the best obtainable authority. Eighty per cent, of the children born blind is due to gonorrhœal infection. (Education with Med. Prof.) This is nearly always due to the uncured condition of the father. Neiser tells us that there are over 30,000 blind persons in Germany whose blindness is due to gonorrhœal ophthalmia. Pinnard claims that sixty to seventy per cent. of hereditary syphilitics die at or before birth, and that those who survive are unfit to meet the battles of life; 20,000 children die every year in France from syphilitic conditions. Dr. Fournier states that in his practice seventy-five per cent. of the syphilis in married women could be traced to their husbands. Dr. Morrow puts it at seventy per cent. A large per cent. of the surgical operations of a sexual nature among married women is due to venereal disease contracted from their husbands.

=Sterilization a remedy.=--To prevent unsuitable marriages, by law, would in a measure bring relief, yet, the degenerate, criminals and imbeciles would, to a considerable extent, continue their propagation. This class cares but little for marriage. The ablest physicians of this country, the leaders in the great purity movement, and many advanced thinkers in other professions, are rapidly committing themselves to the opinion that all the worst cases of hereditary degeneracy should be deprived of the creative function. In females this operation is attended by only one-sixth the fatalities of child-birth. In males it is attended by no danger to life. The results would be absolutely effectual. The feeble-minded class would be much more easily managed and the degenerate criminal would settle down to the life of a peaceable citizen.

At first, one naturally opposes this measure as a solution to the problem. Later, all opposition to it vanishes and it then appears to be a most kind, benevolent and philanthropic solution of this vital problem.

=The drunkard’s home.=--More of our delinquent and dependent children are traceable to hereditary alcoholism than any other one cause save lust. The conditions and environments of a drunkard’s home are very unfavorable to normal hereditary influences. Seventy per cent. more of the drunkard’s children are defective from birth than those from sober parents.

In the average drunkard’s home, the wife is deprived of much or all that would be conducive to the best maternal conditions, such as plenty of nutritious food, good associations, wholesome recreation, good reading matter, freedom, cheerfulness, and proper attention and courtesy on the part of her husband. Instead of these conditions, she is poorly fed, surrounded by rough associations, lives in a rented shack without flowers or pictures, is overworked, timid, depressed and discouraged, deprived of a thousand little comforts a maternal heart longs for, and often tyrannized over by a rum-embruted husband.

=Defective offspring from alcoholics.=--Children born under these conditions cannot receive a good heredity. The children of drunken parents nearly always receive a bad heredity. This is especially true when the initial of a life takes place during or immediately following a drunken debauch. If the wives of drunkards had better environments during periods of gestation, they could more largely overcome the bad influences of their husbands upon their children. But, environed as they are, they cannot prevent their own unfortunate influence over their children, much less that of their husbands.

=Intemperance and crime, lust and idiocy.=--The mental and moral states of the drunkard are not only expressed in a desire for more drink; but at one time he is exceedingly lustful; at another time he is quite silly, idiotic and foolish; at still another time he is angry, cruel and dangerous. We often find all these morbid conditions strongly marked in his children. Some inherit alcoholic, some lustful, some epileptic, feeble-minded or insane criminal tendencies. His blood, being saturated with alcohol, is in a low state of vitality. This is proven by the drunkard’s inability to resist disease. The low state of vitality in the blood of the drunkard accounts for the defectiveness of a large per cent. of his children. More of the children of drunkards die before they are two years old than of any other class except the venerealized. Authorities from all civilized nations estimate that from forty to eighty per cent. of all crime is traceable to the use of alcoholic drink, and many of these criminals received a bad heredity from drunken parents; twenty-two per cent. of all insanity and eighty per cent. of epilepsy is traceable to drunken parents; seventy per cent. of all immoral women had drunken parents.

=Effects of personal liberty.=--One day while campaigning a county in Missouri for local option, I called at a home to get directions to my next engagement to lecture. I rapped three times at the door. Three times a voice from within said, “Come in.” Finally, I opened the door and entered. A mother sat in a chair on the opposite side of the room holding in her arms a nine-year-old boy. I noticed that the boy was as helpless as a twenty-four-hour-old baby. While giving me directions she was feeding the boy with a spoon. I remarked, “Friend, I observe that you have in your arms an unfortunate child. I have studied many unfortunate cases, lectured a good deal on heredity and have written a book on heredity. If you do not object, I would like to ask you some questions about your child.” In tones of anguish, such as only a broken-hearted mother could utter, she said, “I guess that no poor mother has ever had to bear a greater burden than I have. This is my first child, on the bed is my fifth child, only six weeks old. When this boy was four years old, during a spell of whooping cough, he got into this condition. For five years I have cared for this boy as I would a helpless baby. During these five years I have become a mother three times and have buried three children who became as helpless as this one. The three that are dead were seemingly all right at birth, but became helpless during attacks of hives and teething. I don’t know whether we will be able to raise the baby or not.” No pen can portray, no tongue can tell, no imagination can conceive the heartaches of this unfortunate mother. I asked whether she and her husband were related by blood, or whether there had been intermarriage in the past on either side? She replied in the negative. I asked other questions and failed to locate the trouble. Finally, I asked, “Were there any drunkards on either side of your family?” “On my side of our family there were no drunkards; on the father’s side of my husband’s family one-half of the men were drunkards; on his mother’s side most of the men were drunkards,” was her reply. “Does your husband drink?” I enquired. With some embarrassment, she said, “He drinks, but never gets to where he can’t attend to business.” From other sources I found him to be a very heavy drinker. Such men often boast that they have a right to drink if they want to, get drunk if they want to, kill themselves if they want to. What right did that drunken father and his drunken ancestry have to inflame their minds and brutalize their passions and thereby burden that innocent woman with all that sacrifice, suffering and heartache and to bring these helpless little children into this world foredoomed to such defectiveness? I answer, they did not have the shadow of a right to indulge in a habit that would deprive their descendants from developing on the earth plane.

=Two more examples.=--In the town of M----, Illinois, is a young lady of twenty-six winters unbroken by a joyful spring or summer. The initial of her life took place during the drunken debauch of her worse than worthless drunken father. Many times a day and often several times an hour she has spells. I have witnessed her go through many of them. The approach of one of these spells would be first noticed by the enlarged eyes and the exposure of the white of the eye. Then the muscles in the eye, face, neck and body would contract and pull her face into her lap. After remaining in that tortuous position for some minutes, the muscles would relax and she would resume a normal one.

In that same town, just to the right of my tent, lived one of the wealthiest citizens. Three children had been born into his home. Each had died of epileptic fits before it was two years old. The family physician, who had made a life study of heredity, told me that to his own personal knowledge the initial of each child’s life took place during or immediately following a drunken debauch of the father.

=A visit to an asylum.=--Not as a means of punishment, but as a means of enlightenment and conviction, I wish every drinking man and every man who favors the maintenance of the saloon could spend a few days in the insane asylums of this country. Let them be taken through the wards of the feeble-minded and the insane and at the close of the day listen for one hour to a discussion of the causes of insanity among the inmates. In this lecture, let them learn that twenty-two out of every one hundred cases of insanity are due to drunkenness. Let them spend the next day in the epileptic wards and witness from ten to twenty of those unfortunates have epileptic fits, which usually last from thirty minutes to one hour. At the close of this day have them attend a lecture given by an eminent authority on epilepsy. After such an experience, I will guarantee that every honest man, when he is convinced that twenty-two per cent. of the insane and eighty-eight per cent. of the epileptics are the results of drunkenness, would be converted to the prohibition of the liquor traffic. You had just as well put the balance of that crowd in a reform school or in some ward of the asylum without further delay or expense. They are helpless cases.

=Personal liberty versus the rights of others.=--I fully appreciate the value of personal liberty. One’s personal liberty to do right should never be infringed upon. One’s personal liberty is circumscribed by the welfare of others. His liberty to do as he pleases ends where the welfare of someone else begins. You can get mad at me if you wish, grit your teeth, clench your fist, swing your fist in a circle, vertically, horizontally and off at a tangent; anywhere you wish, just so you don’t strike my nose. But if you do, your personal liberty ends where my nose begins. You have the liberty to walk up and down these aisles, sidewalks, streets, public roads, up and down the railroad track, over these hills and hollows, put your old number “nines” down wherever you want to put them, but remember, when you put one of your number “nines” down on one of my corns, your personal liberty ends where my corn begins. Your personal liberty to drink, get drunk, inflame your mind, brutalize your passions ends right where the welfare of your unborn posterity begins. You have not the shadow of a right to indulge in any bad habit that will cause your children to receive from you some form of bad heredity. Your unborn descendants have the individual, inalienable, absolute right to inherit from you the best physical, mental and moral possibilities of manhood and womanhood. There is not a man but has the paternal instinct deeply impressed upon his very nature. God placed it there. It is to that principle of fatherhood, prospective or real, that I make my final appeal. Boys, men, don’t entertain thoughts, indulge in acts or form habits that you would not want to see reproduced in your offspring.

Owing to the prevalent use of tobacco among all classes, including doctors, teachers and ministers, many are inclined to doubt the hereditary influence of tobacco.

=Dr. Pidduck= in the London _Lancet_ says, “In no instance is a sin of the fathers more strikingly visited on the children than in the sin of tobacco-smoking. The enervation, the hypochondriasis, the hysteria, the insanity, the suffering lives and early deaths of the children of inveterate tobacco-smokers bear ample testimony to the feebleness and unsoundness of the constitution transmitted by the victims of this pernicious habit.”

=Effects of tobacco.=--The most eminent physicians of France tell us that the rapid decline in the birth-rate of that nation is due, in part, to the inveterate tobacco users, as shown by such a large number of this class being at the head of childless homes.

=Children of tobacco users.=--Just as drunkenness may not always manifest itself in a desire for alcohol, but may manifest itself in the form of insanity, idiocy, epilepsy, lasciviousness or criminal tendencies; so, in the children of the inveterate tobacco users the evil effects are often shown in one or more morbid conditions. One has but to study the children of a few excessive users of the weed to be convinced that they do not possess the physical endurance and strength of the fathers. The children of this class of fathers are usually puny, weak and nervous. It is not an easy thing to convince a robust, healthy man that his habit is laying the foundation for constitutional degeneracy in his children and grandchildren.

=Where both use tobacco.=--Where the husband and wife both use tobacco the injurious effects on the immediate children are very noticeable. This is because the mother has more hereditary influence over the children than does the father.

=Tobacco and degeneracy.=--You cannot always judge of the hereditary effects of bad habits in one generation. In the first generation the effects may not be noticeable. If the bad habits are continued for a few generations the defective descendants multiply. Suppose that a husband and wife are both heavy users of tobacco; that all their children follow their examples and marry companions addicted to the use of tobacco; that their grandchildren all follow the example of their ancestors and marry companions who are inveterate users; and suppose this continued until the fourth generation, who can estimate the resulting degeneracy? It is probable that in many cases degeneracy would be complete and there would be no fifth generation.

=Fathers transmit morbid tendencies more to their sons than to their daughters.=--Objectors to acquired characteristics being transmitted often ask why girls as well as boys do not inherit appetites for tobacco and whisky. Many girls are just as conscious of an abnormal appetite for stimulants as their brothers are. More women are addicted to the use of wine and the cigarette than is generally supposed. But for the companionship and protection of mother and a social law that would discard them from society, more would form these habits than do.

It is a recognized fact that where one sex acquires a characteristic that becomes fixed by continued custom, that this characteristic will be transmitted mostly along the line of that sex. That relic of savagery, the “double standard of morals,” temperance for woman and intemperance for man, purity for woman and impurity for man, do right for woman and do as you please for man, has, after centuries of practice, become to a considerable extent constitutional in the two sexes. Hence, girls inherit less of lasciviousness, less of tendency toward the use of tobacco and strong drink. This double standard of morals originated among the savage races who owned their wives and daughters. They sold, swapped, exchanged their daughters on the marriage markets as they would dispose of other property. A daughter’s value was largely based on her virtue. If she had forfeited this priceless gem of womanhood she was brutally stoned to death or forced into the most cruel servitude.

=A heroic struggle.=--There are thousands of brave, true men who advocate and live the white life. Thousands more are struggling heroically to win the laurels of a white life. Others are getting the vision and are falling into line. Gentle reader, if you are not one of us, we extend to you a warm welcome; if you are, we are glad of your fellowship.