Chapter 20
THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE FIT IN RELATION TO THE STATE.
_The State's ideal in relation to the fertility of its subjects_.--_Keen competition means great effort and great waste of life_.--_If in the minds of the citizens space and food are ample multiplication works automatically_.--_To New Zealanders food now includes the luxuries as well as the necessities of life_.--_Men are driven to the alternative of supporting a family of their own or a degenerate family of defectives_.--_The State enforces the one but cannot enforce the other_.--_New Zealand taxation_.--_The burden of the bread-winner_.--_As the State lightens this burden it encourages fertility_.--_The survival of the unfit makes the burden of the fit_.
The multiplication of the fit is of the first importance to the State. It supplies competent producers and courageous defenders, and the more of these, consistent with space and food (using these terms in their fullest significance), the better off the State.
If healthy happy citizens are the State's ideal, then limitation of population well within the space and food will be encouraged. If national wealth and prosperity in its material aspect are the State's ideal, the harder the population presses on the means of subsistence the sooner will that ideal be realised. For it cannot be denied, that the greater the stress and hardship in life, the more strenuous the effort put forth to obtain a foothold. The greater the competition the keener the effort, and the higher the accomplishment; while to ensure an adequate supply of labour in time of great demand there must always be a surplus.
The waste of life must always be greater; but what of that! National wealth is the ideal--the maximum amount of production. Child labour, and women labour, are called in to fill the national granaries, though misery and death attend the process.
If this be the ideal of the State, life is of less value than the product of labour, for it can be more easily and readily replaced.
But the ideal of the perfect state is not wealth but the robust happiness of its members.
The happiness of its members is best promoted by the maximum increase in its numbers, consistent with ample space and food. With ample space and food multiplication works automatically, being kept up to the limit of space and food by the procreative instinct.
If it can be shown that multiplication is not sufficiently stimulated by this instinct, then it must be concluded that, _in the minds of the citizens_ the space and food are not ample.
In New Zealand the procreative impulse does not keep multiplication at an equal pace with the apparent supply of food and space, and this is due, as has been shown, to the fact that our citizens are not satisfied that the supply _is_ ample.
They have come to enlarge the definition of "food," and this term now includes luxuries easily obtainable for themselves and their families.
But the luxuries of life and living can only be easily obtained when individual effort to obtain them is unhampered. Every burden which a man has to bear (only the best are here referred to,--the fit members of the State) limits his power to provide for himself, and any he may bring into the world.
If the State decrees that a citizen shall support himself, his mate, and his progeny, well and good,--if he has no other burden to bear, no other responsibility, he knows exactly where he is and what he has to do, and directs his energies and controls his impulses, and enlarges his desires to suit his tastes and purposes.
But if the State decrees that a citizen shall not only support all for whose existence he is responsible, but also all those unable to support themselves, born into the world in increasing numbers as congenital defectives, and manufactured in the world by legalised drinking saloons, and by pauperising charitable aid and benevolent institutions, then our self-respecting right-respecting citizen must decide whether he will forego the luxury and ease that he may enjoy, and rear the normal family, or curtail his own progeny, and support the army of defectives thrown upon society by the State-encouraged fertility of the unfit.
It has already been shown, that in this colony the best fit to multiply are ceasing to do so, because of a desire to attain a social and financial stability that will protect them and their dependents from want or the prospect of want. There is every reason to believe, that when this stability is assured the normal family soon follows.
The love of luxurious idleness and a passion for excitement, which were typical of the voluntarily barren women of ancient Rome, have little place with us, as a cause of limited nativity.
Men and women reason out, that they cannot bear all the burdens that the State imposes upon them, support an increasing army of paupers, and lunatics and defectives, and non-producers, and that luxuriously, and at the same time incur the additional burden of rearing a large family.
Let us examine these burdens, and see if the complaint of our best stock is justified.
The amount raised by taxation in New Zealand (including local rates) during the year 1902-03, amounted per head of population (excluding Maories) to £5 4s. 7d. The bread-winners in New Zealand number according to official returns, 340,230, and the total rates and taxes collected for the year 1902-03 amounted to £4,174,787 or £12 5s. 4d. for each bread-winner for the year.
On March 31st, 1901 (the last census date) there were 23.01 persons per thousand of population over 15 years of age, unable to work from sickness, accident and infirmity. Of these 12.72 were due to sickness and accident, and 10.29 to "specified infirmities."
The proportion of those suffering from sickness and accident in 1874 was 12.64 per 1000 over 15 years, practically the same as for 1901, while disability from "specified infirmities" (lunacy, idiocy, epilepsy, deformity, etc.)--degeneracies strongly hereditary--rose rapidly from 5.32 in 1874 to 10.29 in 1901, or taking the total sickness and infirmity, from 17.96 in 1874 to 23.01 in 1901.
On the last census date there were 340,230 bread-winners, and 12,747 persons suffering from sickness, accident, and infirmity, or 26 fit to work and earn for every one unfit.
The cost to the Colony per year of--
£ 1. Hospitals, year ended 31st March, 1903 138,027
2. Charitable Aid (expended by boards),
year ended 31st March, 1903 93,158
3. Lunatic Asylums, year ended 31st Dec,
1902 (gross) 85,238
Lunatic Asylums, year ended 31st Dec,
1902 (nett) 64,688
4. Industrial Schools, year ended 31st Dec,1902
Government Industrial Schools for
neglected and criminal children 21,708
Government Expenditure on Private
Denominational Industrial Schools 2,526
5. Police Force, year ended 31st March, 1903 123,804
6. Prisons, year ended 31st March, 1903 32,070
7. Criminal Courts (Criminal Prosecutions), year ended 31st March, 1903 16,813
8. Old Age Pensions (pensions only for persons over 65 years of age, who have been 25 years in the Colony, and who make a declaration of poverty, including departmental expenses) 212,962
A total of £705,756. This constitutes the burden due to defectives and defects in others, a handful of workers have to bear in a sparse population of 800,000 souls in one of the finest countries on which the sun of heaven ever shone.
The burden which the fit have to bear has often been referred to by Dr. MacGregor, who states in one of his reports, "Wives and husbands, parents of bastards, all alike are encouraged by lavish charity (falsely so called) to entirely shirk their responsibilities in the well grounded assurance that public money will be forth-coming to keep them and their families in quite as comfortable position as their hardworking and independent neighbours."
The state can not decree that men shall marry, or that women shall marry, or that women shall procreate. All it can do is to discover why its subjects are not fertile, and remove the causes so far as it is possible.
As people become educated they become conscious of their limitations, and endeavour to break through them and better their conditions.
The more difficult this process is, the less likely will men and women be to incur the burden of a large family. The more the conditions of existence are improved, the more completely is each man's wish realized, and the more readily will he undertake the responsibilities of a family.
If the State can and will lighten the burden of taxation and modify the strain and stress of life, it will indirectly encourage procreation.
No direct encouragement is possible. It was tried and it failed in Sparta, it was tried by Augustus and it failed in Rome, it must fail everywhere, for the most willing and the most ready to respond to any provision made to encourage increase, are the unfit, and it is the fertility of the unfit that is the very evil that has to be attacked.
It is the fertility of the unfit that makes the burden of the fit, and a tax on bachelors, or a bonus on families, would be responded to by the least fit, long before it affected those whose response was anticipated, and the problem sought to be solved would only be aggravated thereby.
No encouragement whatever can the State afford to give to the natural increase of population till it has successfully grappled with the propagation of defectives.
The burden of life would be lessened by nearly one-third if the fertility of defectives could be stopped.
The State would have to support only those who acquired defects, the scars of service more honourable than wealth, in their efforts to support themselves and families, and these would be few indeed, if inherited tendencies could be eliminated or reduced to a minimum.
It is the purpose of this work to attempt to describe a method that will help to bring about this end.