Chapter 19

WHO PREVENT.

_Desire for family limitation result of our social system._--_Desire and practice not uniform through all classes._--_The best limit, the worst do not._--_Early marriages and large families._--_N.Z. marriage rates. Those who delay, and those who abstain from marriage._--_Good motives mostly actuate._--_All limitation implies restraint._--_Birth-rates vary inversely with prudence and self-control._--_The limited family usually born in early married life when progeny is less likely to be well developed._--_Our worst citizens most prolific._--_Effect of poverty on fecundity._--_Effect of alcoholic intemperance._--_Effect of mental and physical defects._--_Defectives propagate their kind._--_The intermittent inhabitants of Asylums and Gaols constitute the greatest danger to society._--_Character the resultant of two forces--motor impulse and inhibition._--_Chief criminal characteristic is defective inhibition._--_This defect is strongly hereditary._--_It expresses itself in unrestrained fertility._

It has been sufficiently demonstrated in preceding chapters, that the birth-rate has been, and is still rapidly declining. It has been sought to prove that this decline is chiefly due to voluntary means taken by married people to limit their families, and that the desire for this limitation is the result of our social system.

The important question now arises. Is the desire uniform through all classes of Society, and is the practice of prevention uniform through all classes?

In other words, is the decline in the birth-rate due to prevention in one class more than in another, and if so which?

Experience and statistics force us to the startling conclusion, that the birth-rate is declining amongst the best classes of citizens, and remains undisturbed amongst the worst.

Now the first-class responsible for the decline includes those who do not marry, and those who marry late. The Michigan vital statistics for 1894 (p. 125) show that the mean number of children to each marriage at the age of 15-19 years is 6.75, at the age of 20-25 years it is 5.32, a difference of 1.44 in favour of delayed marriage for a period of five years.

In New Zealand the marriage rate has gone up from 5.97 per thousand persons living in 1888 to 7.67 in 1900.

This class includes clerks with an income of £100 and under,--a large number with £150, and all misogynists with higher incomes.

It includes labourers with £75 a year and under, and many who receive £100.

Their motives for avoiding marriage are mostly prudential.

Those who abstain from marriage for prudential reasons are as a rule good citizens. They are workers who realise their responsibilities in life, and shrink from undertaking duties which they feel they cannot adequately perform. By far the largest class who practice prevention, consists of those who marry, and have one or two children, and limit their families to that number, for prudential, health, or selfish reasons.

These too are as a rule good citizens, and there are two qualities that so distinguish them. First, their prudence; they have no wish to burden the State with the care or support of their children. Their fixed determination is to support and educate them themselves, and they set themselves to the work with thriftiness and forethought.

In order to do this, however, it is essential that the family is limited to one, two, or three, as the case may be, and before it is too late, preventive measures are resorted to.

The second quality that distinguishes them as good citizens is their self-control. Every preventive measure in normal individuals implies a certain amount of self-restraint, and in proportion as prudential motives are strong is the self-imposed restraint easy and effective.

The existence of these two qualities, prudence and self-control, is a very important factor in human character, and upon their presence and prevalence in its units depend the progress and stability of society. But the birth-rate varies in an inverse ratio with these qualities. In those communities or sections of communities, where these qualities are conspicuous, will the birth-rate be correspondingly low.

There is another class of people that has strong desires to keep free from the cares and expense of a large family. These are, too, good citizens and belong to good stock. They are those possessed of ambition to rise socially, politically, or financially, and they are a numerous body in New Zealand.

They are quite able to support and educate a fairly large family, but as children are hindrances, and increase the anxieties, the responsibilities and the expense, they must be limited to one or two.

There is still another class that consists of the purely selfish and luxurious members of society, who find children a bother, who have to sacrifice some of the pleasures of life in order to rear them.

Now all those who prevent have some rational ground for prevention, and at least are possessed of sufficient self-control to give effect to their wish. They include the best citizens and the best stock, and from them would issue, if the reproductive faculty were unrestrained, the best progeny.

One grave aspect of this limitation is that, as a rule, the family is limited after the first one or two are born. The small families, say of two, are born when the parents are both young, and carefully compiled statistics prove that these are not the best offspring a couple can produce. Those born first in wedlock, are shorter and not so well developed as those born later in married life, when parents are more matured.

If it is substantially true, that the decline in the birth-rate is due to voluntary prevention, and that prevention implies prudence and self-control, it is safe to conclude that those in whom these qualities are absent or least conspicuous, will be the most prolific.

But those in whom these qualities are absent or least conspicuous are our worst citizens, and, therefore, our worst citizens are the most prolific. Observation and statistics lead to the same conclusion.

Amongst the very poor in crowded localities, the passion for marriage early asserts itself.

Its natural enemies are prudence and a consciousness of responsibility, and these suggest restraint. But prudence and restraint are not the common attributes of the very poor. Poverty makes people reckless, they live from hour to hour as the lower animals do. They satisfy their desires as they arise, whether it be the desire for food or the desire of sex.

The very poor includes amongst its numbers, the drunkard, the criminal, the professional pauper, and the physically and mentally defective.

The drunkard is not distinguished by his prudence, nor by his self-restraint. In fact the alcohol which he imbibes paralyses what self-control he has, and excites through an increased circulation in his lower brain-centres an unnatural sexual desire. What hope is there of the drunkard curtailing his family by self-restraint?

Dr. Billings says, (Forum, June 1893) "So far as we have data with regard to the use of intoxicating liquors, fertility seems greatest in those countries and amongst those classes where they are most freely used."

Neither is the criminal blessed with the important attributes of prudence and self-control. They are conspicuous by their absence in him.

In all defectives, in epileptics, idiots, the physical deformed, the insane, and the criminal, the prudence and self-restraint necessary to the limitation of families is either partially or entirely absent.

To the poor in crowded localities, with limited room-space and insanitary surroundings, effective self-restraint is more difficult than in any other class of society.

In all defectives the sexual instinct is as strong, if not stronger, than in the normal, and they have not that interest in life, and regard for the future that suggest restraint, nor have they the power to practise it though prudence were to guide them.

The higher checks to population, as they exist among the better classes of people, do not obtain amongst the defectives taken as a class.

Vice and misery are more active checks amongst the very poor, and abortion is practised to a very considerable extent, but the appalling fact remains, that the birth-rate of the unfit goes on undisturbed, while the introduction of higher checks amongst the normal classes has led to a marked decline, more marked than at first sight appears. The worst feature of the problem, however, is not so much the disproportion in the numbers born to the normal and the abnormal respectively, but the fact that the defectives propagate their kind.

The defectives, whose existence and whose liberty constitute the greatest danger to the State, are the intermittent inhabitants of our lunatic asylums, prisons, and reformatories.

There is one defect common to all these, and that is defective inhibition.

All human activity is the result of two forces, motor impulses tending to action, and inhibition tending to inertia.

The lower animals have strong motor impulses constantly exploding and expressing themselves in great activity, offensive, defensive, self-preservative, and procreative, being restrained only by the inhibitive forces of their conditions and environment.

Children have strong motor impulses, which are at first little controlled. Inhibition is a late development and is largely a result of education.

If the motor impulses remain strong, or become stronger in the presence of development with exercise, while inhibition remains weak, we have a criminal.

Inhibition is the function performed by the highest and last-formed brain-cells. These brain cells may be undeveloped either from want of exercise, that is, education, or from hereditary weakness, or, having been developed may have undergone degeneration, under the influence of alcohol, or from hereditary or acquired disease.

Motor impulses, as the springs of action, are common to all animals. In the lower animals inhibition is external, and never internal or subjective. In man it may be internal or external.

It is internal or subjective in those whose higher brain centres are well developed and normal. Their auto-inhibition is such that all their motor impulses are controlled and directed in the best interests of society.

It is external only in those whose higher brain centres are either undeveloped or diseased. These constitute the criminal classes. Their motor impulses are unrestrained. They offer a low or reduced resistance to temptation.

Weak or absent resistance in the face of a normal motor impulse whose expression injuriously affects another, is crime, and a criminal is one whose power of resistance to motor impulses has been reduced by disease, hereditary or acquired, or is absent through arrested development.

A confirmed criminal is one in whom the frequent recurrence of an unrestrained impulse injurious to others has induced habit.

Auto-inhibition is defective or absent, and society must in her own interest provide external restraint, and this we call law.

Criminals are, therefore, mental defectives, and may be defined for sociological purposes as those in whom legal punishment for the second time, for the same offence, has failed to act as a deterrent.

M. Boies, in "Prisoners and Paupers," says that conviction for the third time for an offence, is proof of hereditary criminal taint.

The existence of motor impulses in the human animal is normal. They vary in strength and force. We cannot eradicate, we can only control them.

They may become less assertive under the constant control of a highly cultivated inhibition, but it is only in this way that they can be affected at all. They may be controlled, either by the individual himself or by the State. Our reformatories are peopled by young persons whose distinguishing characteristic is that inhibition is undeveloped or defective. This defect may be due to want of education, but it is more often hereditary.

Two things only can be done for them. This faculty of inhibition can be trained by education, or external restraint can be provided by law.

But the distinguishing characteristic of all defectives, within or without our public institutions, is defective inhibition,--they are unable to control the spontaneous impulses that continually arise, and which may indeed be normal.

Impulses may be abnormal from hereditary predisposition, as _e.g._ the impulse to drink, but only through strengthening inhibition can these impulses be controlled,--their existence must be accepted.

But whether the defect is an abnormal impulse, or a normal impulse abnormally strong, or an abnormally weak or defective inhibition, the condition is hereditary, and such defectives propagate their kind.

It has been shown that they are more fertile than any other classes because of the very defect that makes them a danger to society.

The defective restraint that allows them to commit offences against person and property, also allows their procreative impulse unrestrained activity.

Defectives, therefore, are not only fertile, but they propagate their kind, and a few examples will serve to show to some extent the fertility, and to an enormous extent the hereditary tendencies, of the unfit.

CASE NO. 1, p. 49. J. E----'s FAMILY.

M M F ----------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------- | | | A suicide, Aet. 56 Died of cancer of | Died in a fit, Married. No issue stomach, Aet. 66 | Aet. 54 | ----+---------+----------+----------+-----------+------+----+--------+ | | | | | | | M M F F F M M Died of Died of Died of Died of Died of Healthy, | cancer of convulsions consumption consumption, consumption, has | stomach, at | | Aet 16 seven | Aet. 58 13 weeks | | children | | | | | Left five Married several Married several M children years. years. Epiletic, twice No issue No issue insane, testes in abdomen. Married. No children

CASE NO. 2, p. 108. K. S----'s FAMILY.

M F -----------------------+------------------------- Epileptic | Had sister insane | ----+------------+---------+--+------------+--------------+------ | | | | | M F M F F Epileptic. Epileptic Idiot, Sane as yet. Insane. Suicidal, Dead. No and insane. impotent Nine children, incurable issue Dead. No some imbecile No issue issue

CASE No. 3, p. 125.

Father, a drunkard | Son | A drunkard, disgustingly | on his wedding day. | ----+----------+----------+----------+--+-------+-----------+--------+ | | | | | | | Died of Died of Idiot of Suicidal. Peculiar Repeatedly | convulsions convulsions 22 years A dement and insane | of age irritable | Nervous and depressed

CASE No. 4, p. 137.

M Died | mad | M__________M_____|_________M__________M | | | | Imbecile Irritable Died of brain disease ______________________|___________________________________ | | | | | | | | | | F. Imbecile Epileptic Epileptic 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 All seven died in convulsions

CASE No. 5, p. 137.

F. a suicide |_______________________________F____________________F M Insane | Insane ______________|________________________________________ | | | Excitable Dull Epileptic Imbecile

CASE No. 6, p. 166.

M________________F Mute | Normal ___________|__________ M| |F Mute. No issue Normal__________________M | Normal _________________________|______________________ F F M |F Mute Mute Normal Normal | M Mute

CASE No. 7, p. 231.

J.G. A----'s FAMILY HISTORY.

PATERNAL SIDE. MATERNAL SIDE. F / i | Grandfather, a drunkard Grandmother, "odd" r | Grandmother, normal Grandfather, normal s | G t \ e n S / Uncle, a drunkard Uncle, epileptic e e | Uncle, a drunkard Uncle, rheumatic, totally r c | crippled and his daughter also a o | Uncle, an epileptic Uncle, rheumatic t n | Aunt, rheumatic i d \ Father, excitable & irritable Mother, died in asylum o n T / Daughter, has had rheumatism and has had heart disease s h | Son, now insane i | Son, died a few days old of convulsions r | Son, now a chronic maniac in an asylum d | Daughter, suicidal, melancholic; died in an asylum. No issue. \ Family now extinct.

* * * * *

CASE No. 8, p. 303.

S. M----'s FAMILY.

M F ----------------------------------------- Asthmatic | Somewhat weak-minded | | --------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 23456 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 | | | | | | | | | Healthy Died in Drowned Epilepsy Healthy Idiot Died in Healthy | infancy infancy | in in Scrofulous convulsions convulsions

_The above diagrammatic histories of eight families are taken from Dr. Strahan's "Marriage and Disease."_