Chapter 21

THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE UNFIT IN RELATION TO THE STATE.

_Ancient methods of preventing the fertility of the unfit.--Christian sentiment suppressed inhuman practices--Christian care brings many defectives to the child-bearing period of life.--The association of mental and physical defects.--Who are the unfit.--The tendency of relatives to cast their degenerate kinsfolk on the State.--Our social conditions manufacture defectives and foster their fertility.--The only moral force that limits families is inhibition with prudence.--Defective self-control transmitted hereditarily. Dr. Mac Gregorys cases.--The transmission of insanity.--Celibacy of the insane is the prophylaxis of insanity in the race.--The environment of the unfit.--Defectives snatched from Nature's clutch.--At the age of maturity they are left to propogate their kind_.

THE humanitarian spirit, born 1900 years ago, effectually checked all inhuman practices for disposal of the unfit. Christ is the Author of this spirit. The noisy triumph of His persecutors had scarcely died away before His conception of the sanctity of human life found expression in the mission of those Roman maidens who in His name devoted their lives to collecting exposed infants from the environs of their city--that they might rear and educate them and bring them to the Church.

Not only has it done this, but it has taught society that its first and highest duty is to its weaker brethren, who constitute the unfit. All our modern institutions are based on this sentiment, and what is the result? Weaklings are born into the world and the weaker they are the more carefully are they tended and nursed. The law of the struggle for existence, _i.e._, the law of Justice is suspended or modified, and the unfit are allowed to live, or at least allowed to live a little longer, long enough indeed to propagate their kind.

Hospitals and Homes and Charitable institutions all combine their energies, and direct their efforts to nurture those whom the laws of nature decree should die.

Sympathy and not indignation is aroused when a defective is born, and the result of all the effort which that sympathy evokes is that the little weakling and thousands such are safely led and tended all the way to the child-bearing period of life, only to repeat their history, in others.

Not only do defects "run in families," but they run in groups, and a physical defect such as club-foot, cleft palate, or any arrested development, is apt to be associated with some mental defect, and it is the mental more than the physical defects of individuals that prevent them being self-supporting helpful members of society.

In the "North American Review" for August, 1903, Sir John Gorst declares that:--

"The condition of disease, debility, and defective sight and hearing, in the public elementary schools in poorer districts, is appalling. The research of a recent Royal Commission has disclosed that of the children in the public schools of Edinburgh, 70 per cent, are suffering from disease of some kind, more than half from defective vision, nearly half from defective hearing, and 30 per cent, from starvation. The physical deterioration of the recruits who offer themselves for the army is a subject of increasing concern. There are grounds for at least suspecting a growing degeneracy of the population of the United Kingdom, particularly in the great towns."

The following table gives the charges before Magistrates in our Courts:--

Year. Proportion per thousand of mean population.

1894 24.76

1897 26.87

1898 29.42

1899 29.48

1900 31.54

1901 33.20

1902 35.19

Now who are the unfit? Are they more fertile than the fit? and do they propagate their kind?

The following defects constitute their victims members of that great class of degenerates who are unfit to procreate healthy normal offspring. Many of these conditions are partly congenital and partly acquired, but in the majority of defectives a transmitted taint is present.

I. Congenital defects:--

1. Idiocy. 2. Imbecility. 3. Criminal Taint. 4. Insanity. 5. Inebriate Taint. 6. Pauperism. 7. Deaf Mutism. 8. Epilepsy.

II. Acquired defects:--

1. Crime. 2. Insanity. 3. Epilepsy. 4. Inebrity. 5. Confirmed Pauperism.

With the exception of the very young and the very old, all members of society, who have to be supported by others, constitute the unfit. Many are supported by friends and relatives, but year by year, it is becoming more noticeable, that the moral guardians of the unfit are shirking their responsibility and handing their defective relatives over to the State and demanding their gratuitous support as a right.

Dr. MacGregor, Inspector of Asylums and Hospitals, N.Z., in his report for 1898, p. 5, says:--

"As if the State had a vested interest in the degradation of its people, I find that they, as fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, are responding to our efforts to sap their self-respect by doing their utmost to throw the cost of maintaining their relatives on the ratepayers. I constantly hear the plea urged that as taxpayers and old colonists they have a right to send their relatives to State institutions."

Our social conditions manufacture defectives, and foster their fertility. The strain and stress of modern competition excite an anxiety and nervous tension under which many break down, and much of the insanity that exists to-day is attributable to nervous strain in the struggle of life.

The strong attractive force of one social stratum upon the next below, excites in the latter a nervous tension which predisposes to a breakdown in the face of some adversity.

The passion for ease and luxury, and the dread of poverty tend to overstrain the nervous system, and numberless neurotic defectives fall back upon society, and give themselves up to the propagation of their kind.

Our charitable aid institutions tend largely to swell the numbers of the great unfit.

Dr. MacGregor in one of his valuable and forcible reports upon our charitable aid institutions, says:--

"Our lavish and indiscriminate outdoor relief, whose evils I am tired of recapitulating,--our shameless abuse of the hospital system,--the crowding of our asylums by people in their dotage, kept there because there is no suitable place to send them to, and many of them sent by friends anxious only to be relieved of the duty of supporting and caring for them,--what is it all coming to?"...

"The practical outcome of our overlooking the continued accumulation of degenerates among our people by our fostering of all kinds of weakness will necessarily be, if it continues, that society will itself degenerate. Taxation will increase by leaps and bounds, and the industrious and self-respecting citizens will rebel, especially if taxation is expected to meet all the demands of a legislature that puts our humanitarian idea of justice in the place of charity."

It has already been urged that there is no evidence of any physiological defect in any class of society interfering with fertility. Sexual inhibition, from prudential motives is the real cause in New Zealand.

Sexual inhibition implies well-developed self-control, the very force in which almost all defectives are most deficient, and the absence of which makes them criminals, drunkards and paupers. In almost all defectives too, prudence is conspicuous by its absence.

The only moral force we know of, that has curtailed, or will curtail, the family within the limits of comfortable subsistence, is sexual inhibition with prudence. But this force is absolutely impossible amongst defectives.

It is not only a powerful force among the normal, but with us to-day it is powerfully operative. Amongst the defectives it does not and cannot exist.

Apart from observation and statistics, therefore, it can be shown that the birth-rate amongst the unfit is undisturbed. They marry and are given in marriage, free from all restraint save that of environment, and worst of all they propagate their kind.

Dr. Clouston says (Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases, 4th Ed., p. 330) "As we watch children grow up we see that some have the sense of right and wrong, the conscience, developed much sooner and much stronger than others; just as some have their eye teeth much sooner than others; and looking at adults, we see that some never have much of this sense developed at all. This is notoriously the case in some of those whose ancestors for several generations have been criminals, insane or drunkards." Again (p. 331) "We know that some of the children of many generations of thieves take to stealing, as a young wild duck among tame ones takes to hiding in holes, and that the children of savage races cannot copy at once our ethics nor our power of controlling our actions. It seems to take many generations to redevelop an atrophied conscience. There is no doubt that an organic lawlessness is transmitted hereditarily."

Mr. W. Bevan Lewis says (A text-book of Mental Disease, p. 203) "It is also notable, that in a large proportion of cases, we find the history of ancestral insanity attached to the grand-parents, or the collateral line of uncles and aunts, significant of a more remote origin for the neurosis. The actual proportion of cases revealing strongly-marked hereditary features (often involving several members of the subject's ancestry), amounts to 36 per cent;" while Mr. Briscoe declares (Journal of Mental Science, Oct. 1896) that 90% of the insane have a heredity of insanity.

The following table from Dr. MacGregor's reports gives an account of two families in New Zealand and their Asylum history.

Cost per head. Number. Name. Rate £1 Total Per week. Cost. Family of B (Brothers). £ s. d. £ s. d.

I. A.B. 80 0 0 II. C.B. 274 4 0 III. D.B. 230 2 0 IV. E.B. 8 2 0 V. F.B. 8 2 0 --------- 600 12 0

Family of C.

I. A.C. (wife) 472 2 0 II. B.C. (husband of A.C.) 418 0 0 III. D.C. (daughter of A.C.) 834 2 0 IV. E.C. (ditto) 1,318 2 0 V. F.C. (illegitimate daughter of E.C.) 169 8 0 VI. G.C. (husband of F.C. but no blood relation) 5 2 0 ------------ 3,216 16 0 ------------ £3,817 8 0

In his report for 1897, the same writer says:--"I know of a 'defective' half-imbecile girl, who has had already five illegitimate children by different fathers, all of whom are now being supported by the Charitable Aid Board, while, of course, the mother is maintained, and encouraged to propagate more;" while in an appendix to a pamphlet on "Some Aspects of the Charitable Aid question," he gives the following history of two defective cases:--

J.A. admitted to Lunatic Asylum, May, 1897.

Three medical men report on her as follows:--"She appears imbecile, but without delusions: natural imbecility, stupid, idiotic expression; baby one month old; age between 30 and 40. Suffering from dementia; lactational."

J.A., husband aged 69; labourer, average earnings 15s. week. He wishes to get admission into some Old Man's Home.

This couple have six children--four girls and one boy. A. aged 12; B. 10; C. 9; D. (boy) 5; and E. 3 years. These children are all in the Industrial School. There is also one baby, born April, 1897; has been put out to nurse by the County Council.

The sister of Mrs. J.A. in Salvation Army Home. There are two brothers, whereabouts not known. The police report on this case that the whole of the relatives of Mrs. J.A. were partly imbecile, always in a helpless condition and state of destitution, and have been for years supported partly by charity of neighbours and help from the Charitable Aid Boards.

J.J., the father, now dead, reported as a "lazy, drunken fellow."

A.J., the mother, "a drunken prostitute" (police report 1886). "Makes a precarious living at nursing" (police report 1897); in destitute circumstances, living with a man known as a thief.

This couple had seven children--six boys and one girl:--

A., committed to Industrial School, 1877; discharged from there 1890; aged 18. Sentenced in 1896 to three years for burglary.

B., committed to Industrial school for larceny in 1883; discharged from there, 1887; aged 17.

C., committed to Industrial School for breaking into and stealing, 1886; aged 16; discharged, 1890.

D., aged 14; E. 9½; and F., 7 years; were sent to Industrial School in 1891 by the Charitable Aid Board, the father being dead and the mother in gaol.

D. was discharged last year, aged 18. F. is in hospital for removal of nasal growth, and defective eyesight. E. was admitted to a lunatic Asylum, September, 1897. Four medical men report on him as follows:--"A case of satyriasis from congenital defect." "His depraved habits result of bad bringing up by his mother." "Probably hereditary." "A case of moral depravity associated with mental deficiency, and cretinism." The youngest of the family, a girl aged 11, is said to be dependent on her mother.

With regard to the hereditary nature of Insanity, John Charles Bucknill and Daniel Hack Tuke, M.D.'s, in "A Manual of Psychological Medicine," 4th Ed., p. 65, says:--

"Certainly, if in ever so small degree there is to be a stamping out of insanity, we must act on the principle, better let the individual suffer than run the risk of bequeathing a legacy of insanity to the next generation.... With regard to males, marriage would no doubt be highly beneficial in many instances, _and if the risk of progeny is not run, may well be encouraged_."

Esquirol, quoted by Bucknill and Tuke, p. 58, says:--"Of all diseases Insanity is the most hereditary."

Bucknill and Tuke, p. 647, say:--

"Of marriage it may be said that the celibacy of the insane is the prophylaxis of Insanity in the race, and although a well chosen mate and a happy marriage may sometimes postpone or even prevent the development of insanity in the individual, still no medical man, having regard to the health of the community, or even of that of the family, can possibly feel himself justified in recommending the marriage of any person of either sex in whom the insane diathesis is well marked."

Again (pp. 647 and 648) "It is thus that the seeds of mental diseases and of moral evils are sown broadcast through the land; and other new defects and diseases are multiplied and varied with imbecilities, and idiocies, and suicidal and other propensities and dispositions, leading to all manner of vice and crime. The marriage of hereditary lunatics is a veritable Pandora's box of physical and moral evil."

The least fit, then, are the most fertile, and the most fertile are subject to the common law of heredity, and the defects are transmitted to their offspring, often accentuated by the intermarriage which their circumstances favour or even necessitate.

But this is not all. The least fit have the worst environment, and in the worst possible surroundings the progeny of the unfit multiply and develop. They are born into conditions, well described by Dr. Alice Vicery, in a paper on "The food supplies of the next generation." "Conditions in which the food, warmth, and clothing which are necessary for the mere maintenance of the functions of the body in their normal state, cannot be obtained; in which men, women, and children are forced to crowd into dens wherein decency is abolished, and the most ordinary conditions of healthful existence are impossible of attainment; in which the pleasures within reach are reduced to bestiality and drunkenness; in which the pains accumulate at compound interest in the shape of starvation, disease, stunted development, and moral degradation in which the prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's grave."

What possible hope can there be for the progeny of defectives born with vicious, criminal, drunken or pauper tendencies, into an environment whose whole influence from infancy to maturity tends to accentuate and develop these inherited defects?

In this pitiable stratum of human society, vice and misery, as checks to increase, reign supreme, but as no other check exists, fertility is at its maximum, and keeps close up on the heels of the positive checks.

The State in her humanitarian sympathy, and in New Zealand it is extravagant, puts forth every effort to improve the conditions of its "submerged tenth." Insanitary conditions are improved, the rooms by law enlarged, the air is sweetened, the water is purified, the homes are drained. The delicate and diseased are taken to our hospitals, the deaf and blind to our deaf-mute institutions, the deformed and the fatherless to our orphan homes. And all are carefully nursed as tender precious plants. They are snatched from Nature's clutch and reared as prize stock are reared and kept in clover, till they can propagate their kind.

We feed and clothe the unfit, however unfit, and then encourage their procreation, and as soon as they are matured we foster their fertility.

No want of human sympathy for the poor unfortunates of our race is in these words expressed,--a statement simply of the inevitable consequences of unscientific and anti-social methods of dealing with the degenerate.

No State can afford to shut its eyes to the magnitude of this problem. The procreation of the unfit must be faced and grappled with. And the greater the decline in the birth-rate of our best stock, the more urgent does the solution of the problem become. For is not the proportion of the unfit to the fit yearly increasing!

It has become the most pressing duty of the State, in face of the great change that has so rapidly come over our natural increase, to declare that the procreation of the unfit shall cease, or at least, that it shall be considerably curtailed and placed among the vanishing evils, with a view to its final extinction.