But if it is admitted that men differ widely, and always must differ, in ability and worth, then eugenics can be in accord with the socialistic desire for distribution of wealth according to merit, for this will make it possible to favor and help perpetuate the valuable strains in the community and to discourage the inferior strains. T. N. Carver sums up the argument[177] concisely:

"Distribution according to worth, usefulness or service is the system which would most facilitate the progress of human adaptation. It would, in the first place, stimulate each individual by an appeal to his own self-interest, to make himself as useful as possible to the community. In the second place, it would leave him perfectly free to labor in the service of the community for altruistic reasons, if there was any altruism in his nature. In the third place it would exercise a beneficial selective influence upon the stock or race, because the useful members would survive and perpetuate their kind and the useless and criminal members would be exterminated."

In so far as socialists rid themselves of their sentimental and Utopian equalitarianism, the eugenist will join them willingly in a demand that the distribution of wealth be made to depend as far as feasible on the value of the individual to society.[178] As to the means by which this distribution can be made, there will of course be differences of opinion, to discuss which would be outside the province of this volume. Fundamentally, eugenics is anti-individualistic and in so far a socialistic movement, since it seeks a social end involving some degree of individual subordination, and this fact would be more frequently recognized if the movement which claims the name of socialist did not so often allow the wish to believe that a man's environmental change could eliminate natural inequalities to warp its attitude.

CHILD LABOR

It is often alleged that the abolition of child labor would be a great eugenic accomplishment; but as is the case with nearly all such proposals, the actual results are both complex and far-reaching.

The selective effects of child labor obviously operate directly on two generations: (1) the parental generation and (2) the filial generation, the children who are at work. The results of these two forms of selection must be considered separately.

1. On the parental generation. The children who labor mostly come from poor families, where every child up to the age of economic productivity is an economic burden. If the children go to work at an early age, the parents can afford to have more children and probably will, since the children soon become to some extent an asset rather than a liability. Child labor thus leads to a higher birth-rate of this class, abolition of child labor would lead to a lower birth-rate, since the parents could no longer afford to have so many children.

Karl Pearson has found reason to believe that this result can be statistically traced in the birth-rate of English working people,—that a considerable decline in their fecundity, due to voluntary restriction, began after the passage of each of the laws which restricted child labor and made children an expense from which no return could be expected.

If the abolition of child labor leads to the production of fewer children in a certain section of the population the value of the result to society, in this phase, will depend on whether or not society wants that strain proportionately increased. If it is an inferior stock, this one effect of the abolition of child labor would be eugenic.

Comparing the families whose children work with those whose children do not, one is likely to conclude that the former are on the average inferior to the latter. If so, child labor is in this one particular aspect dysgenic, and its abolition, leading to a lower birth-rate in this class of the population, will be an advantage.

2. On the filial generation. The obvious result of the abolition of child labor will be, as is often and graphically told, to give children a better chance of development. If they are of superior stock, and will be better parents for not having worked as children (a proviso which requires substantiation) the abolition of their labor will be of direct eugenic benefit. Otherwise, its results will be at most indirect; or, possibly, dysgenic, if they are of undesirable stock, and are enabled to survive in greater numbers and reproduce. In necessarily passing over the social and economic aspects of the question, we do not wish it thought that we advocate child labor for the purpose of killing off an undesirable stock prematurely. We are only concerned in pointing out that the effects of child labor are many and various.

The effect of its abolition within a single family further depends on whether the children who go to work are superior to those who stay at home. If the strongest and most intelligent children are sent to work and crippled or killed prematurely, while the weaklings and feeble-minded are kept at home, brought up on the earnings of the strong, and enabled to reach maturity and reproduce, then this aspect of child labor is distinctly dysgenic.

The desirability of prohibiting child labor is generally conceded on euthenic grounds, and we conclude that its results will on the whole be eugenic as well, but that they are more complex than is usually recognized.

COMPULSORY EDUCATION

Whether one favors or rejects compulsory education will probably be determined by other arguments than those derived from eugenics; nevertheless there are eugenic aspects of the problem which deserve to be recognized.

One of the effects of compulsory education is similar to that which follows the abolition of child labor—namely, that the child is made a source of expense, not of revenue, to the parent. Not only is the child unable to work, while at school, but to send him to school involves in practice dressing him better than would be necessary if he stayed at home. While it might fit the child to work more gainfully in later years, yet the years of gain are so long postponed that the parent can expect to share in but little of it.

These arguments would not affect the well-to-do parent, or the high-minded parent who was willing or able to make some sacrifice in order that his children might get as good a start as possible. But they may well affect the opposite type of parent, with low efficiency and low ideals.[179] This type of parent, finding that the system of compulsory education made children a liability, not an immediate asset, would thereby be led to reduce the size of his family, just as he seems to have done when child labor was prohibited in England and children ceased to be a source of revenue. Compulsory education has here, then, a eugenic effect, in discouraging the reproduction of parents with the least efficiency and altruism.

If this belief be well founded, it is likely that any measure tending to decrease the cost of schooling for children will tend to diminish this effect of compulsory education. Such measures as the free distribution of text-books, the provision of free lunches at noon, or the extension to school children of a reduced car-fare, make it easier for the selfish or inefficient parent to raise children; they cost him less and therefore he may tend to have more of them. If such were the case, the measures referred to, despite the euthenic considerations, must be classified as dysgenic.

In another and quite different way, compulsory education is of service to eugenics. The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of the country are passed,—or more accurately, a series of sieves, which will enable the teacher to determine just how far it is profitable to educate each child so that he may lead a life of the greatest possible usefulness to the state and happiness to himself. Obviously such a function would be inadequately discharged, if the sieve failed to get all the available material; and compulsory education makes it certain that none will be omitted.

It is very desirable that no child escape inspection, because of the importance of discovering every individual of exceptional ability or inability. Since the public educational system has not yet risen to the need of this systematic mental diagnosis, private philanthropy should for the present be alert to get appropriate treatment for the unusually promising individual. In Pittsburgh, a committee of the Civic Club is seeking youths of this type, who might be obliged to leave school prematurely for economic reasons, and is aiding them to appropriate opportunities. Such discriminating selection will probably become much more widespread and we may hope a recognized function of the schools, owing to the great public demonstration of psychometry now being conducted at the cantonments for the mental classification of recruits. Compulsory education is necessary for this selection.

We conclude that compulsory education, as such, is not only of service to eugenics through the selection it makes possible, but may serve in a more unsuspected way by cutting down the birth-rate of inferior families.

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE AND TRAINING

In arguments for vocational guidance and education of youth, one does not often hear eugenics mentioned; yet these measures, if effectively carried out, seem likely to be of real eugenic value.

The need for as perfect a correlation as possible between income and eugenic worth, has been already emphasized. It is evident that if a man gets into the wrong job, a job for which he is not well fitted, he may make a very poor showing in life, while if properly trained in something suited to him, his income would have been considerably greater. It will be a distinct advantage to have superior young people get established earlier, and this can be done if they are directly taught efficiency in what they can do best, the boys being fitted for gainful occupations, and the girls for wifehood and motherhood in addition.

As to the details of vocational guidance, the eugenist is perhaps not entitled to give much advice; yet it seems likely that a more thorough study of the inheritance of ability would be of value to the educator. It was pointed out in Chapter IV that inheritance often seems to be highly specialized,—a fact which leads to the inference that the son might often do best in his father's calling or vocation, especially if his mother comes from a family marked by similar capacities. It is difficult to say how far the occupation of the son is, in modern conditions, determined by heredity and how far it is the result of chance, or the need of taking the first job open, the lack of any special qualifications for any particular work, or some similar environmental influence. Miss Perrin investigated 1,550 pairs of fathers and sons in the English Dictionary of National Biography and an equal number in the English Who's Who. "It seems clear," she concluded, "that whether we take the present or the long period of the past embraced by the Dictionary, the environmental influences which induce a man in this country to follow his father's occupation must have remained very steady." She found the coefficient of contingency[180] between occupation of father and occupation of son in Who's Who to be .75 and in the Dictionary of National Biography .76. For the inheritance of physical and mental characters, in general, the coefficient would be about .5. She thinks, "therefore, we may say that in the choice of a profession inherited taste counts for about 2/3 and environmental conditions for about 1/3."

An examination of 990 seventh and eighth grade boys in the public schools of St. Paul[181] showed that only 11% of them desired to enter the occupation of their fathers; there was a pronounced tendency to choose occupations of a more remunerative or intellectual and less manual sort than that followed by the father. That this preference would always determine the ultimate occupation is not to be expected, as a considerable per cent may fail to show the necessary ability.

While inherited tastes and aptitude for some calling probably should carry a good deal of weight in vocational guidance, we can not share the exaggerated view which some sociologists hold about the great waste of ability through the existence of round pegs in square holes. This attitude is often expressed in such words as those of E. B. Woods: "Ability receives its reward only when it is presented with the opportunities of a fairly favorable environment, its peculiarly indispensable sort of environment. Naval commanders are not likely to be developed in the Transvaal, nor literary men and artists in the soft coal fields of western Pennsylvania. For ten men who succeed as investigators, inventors, or diplomatists, there may be and probably are in some communities fifty more who would succeed better under the same circumstances."

While there is some truth in this view, it exaggerates the evil by ignoring the fact that good qualities frequently go together in an individual. The man of Transvaal who is by force of circumstances kept from a naval career is likely to distinguish himself as a successful colonist, and perhaps enrich the world even more than if he had been brought up in a maritime state and become a naval commander. It may be that his inherited talent fitted him to be a better naval commander than anything else; if so, it probably also fitted him to be better at many other things, than are the majority of men. "Intrinsically good traits have also good correlatives," physical, mental and moral.

F. A. Woods has brought together the best evidence of this, in his studies of the royal families of Europe. If the dozen best generals were selected from the men he has studied, they would of course surpass the average man enormously in military skill; but, as he points out, they would also surpass the average man to a very high degree as poets,—or doubtless as cooks or lawyers, had they given any time to those occupations.[182]

The above considerations lead to two suggestions for vocational guidance: (i) it is desirable to ascertain and make use of the child's inherited capacities as far as possible; but (2) it must not be supposed that every child inherits the ability to do one thing only, and will waste his life if he does not happen to get a chance to do that thing. It is easy to suppose that the man who makes a failure as a paperhanger might, if he had had the opportunity, have been a great electrical engineer; it is easy to cite a few cases, such as that of General U. S. Grant, which seem to lend some color to the theory, but statistical evidence would indicate it is not the rule. If a man makes a failure as a paperhanger, it is at least possible that he would have made a failure of very many things that he might try; and if a man makes a brilliant success as a paperhanger, or railway engineer, or school teacher, or chemist, he is a useful citizen who would probably have gained a fair measure of success in any one of several occupations that he might have taken up but not in all.

To sum up: vocational guidance and training are likely to be of much service to eugenics. They may derive direct help from heredity; and their exponents may also learn that a man who is really good in one thing is likely to be good in many things, and that a man who fails in one thing would not necessarily achieve success if he were put in some other career. One of their greatest services will probably be to put a lot of boys into skilled trades, for which they are adapted and where they will succeed, and thus prevent them from yielding to the desire for a more genteel clerical occupation, in which they will not do more than earn a bare living. This will assist in bringing about the high correlation between merit and income which is so much to be desired.

THE MINIMUM WAGE

Legal enactment of a minimum wage is often urged as a measure that would promote social welfare and race betterment. By minimum wage is to be understood, according to its advocates, not the wage that will support a single man, but one that will support a man, wife, and three or four children. In the United States, the sum necessary for this purpose can hardly be estimated at less than $2.50 a day.

A living wage is certainly desirable for every man, but the idea of giving every man a wage sufficient to support a family can not be considered eugenic. In the first place, it interferes with the adjustment of wages to ability, on the necessity of which we have often insisted. In the second place, it is not desirable that society should make it possible for every man to support a wife and three children; in many cases it is desirable that it be made impossible for him to do so. Eugenically, teaching methods of birth control to the married unskilled laborer is a sounder way of solving his problems, than subsidizing him so he can support a large family.

It must be frankly recognized that poverty is in many ways eugenic in its effect, and that with the spread of birth control among people below the poverty line, it is certain to be still more eugenic than at present. It represents an effective, even though a cruel, method of keeping down the net birth-rate of people who for one reason or another are not economically efficient; and the element of cruelty, involved in high infant mortality, will be largely mitigated by birth control. Free competition may be tempered to the extent of furnishing every man enough charity to feed him, if he requires charity for that purpose; and to feed his family, if he already has one; but charity which will allow him to increase his family, if he is too inefficient to support it by his own exertions, is rarely a benefit eugenically.

The minimum wage is admittedly not an attempt to pay a man what he is worth. It is an attempt to make it possible for every man, no matter what his economic or social value, to support a family. Therefore, in so far as it would encourage men of inferior quality to have or increase families, it is unquestionably dysgenic.

MOTHERS' PENSIONS

Half of the states of the Union have already adopted some form of pension for widowed mothers, and similar measures are being urged in nearly all remaining states. The earliest of these laws goes back only to 1911.

In general,[183] these laws apply to mothers who are widows, or in some cases to those who have lost their means of support through imprisonment or incapacity of the husband. The maximum age of the child on whose account allowance is made varies from 14 to 16, in a few cases to 17 or 18. The amount allowed for each child varies in each state, approximately between the limits of $100 and $200 a year. In most states the law demands that the mother be a fit person, physically, mentally and morally to bring up her children, and that it be to their interest that they remain with her at home instead of being placed at work or sent to some institution. In all cases considerable latitude is allowed the administrator of the law,—a juvenile court, or board of county commissioners, or some body with equivalent powers.

Laws of this character have often been described as being eugenic in effect, but examination shows little reason for such a characterization. Since the law applies for the most part to women who have lost their husbands, it is evident that it is not likely to affect the differential birth-rate which is of such concern to eugenics. On the whole, mothers' pensions must be put in the class of work which may be undertaken on humanitarian grounds, but they are probably slightly dysgenic rather than eugenic, since they favor the preservation of families which are, on the whole, of inferior quality, as shown by the lack of relatives with ability or willingness to help them. On the other hand, they are not likely to result in the production from these families of more children than those already in existence.

HOUSING

At present it is sometimes difficult, in the more fashionable quarters of large cities, to find apartments where families with children are admitted. In other parts of the city, this difficulty appears to be much less. Such a situation tends to discourage parenthood, on the part of young couples who come of good families and desire to live in the part of the city where their friends are to be found. It is at least likely to cause postponement of parenthood until they feel financially able to take a separate house. Here is an influence tending to lower the birth-rate of young couples who have social aspirations, at least to the extent of desiring to live in the pleasanter and more reputable part of their city. Such a hindrance exists to a much less extent, if at all, for those who have no reason for wanting to live in the fashionable part of the city. This discrimination of some apartment owners against families with children would therefore appear to be dysgenic in its effect.

Married people who wish to live in the more attractive part of a city should not be penalized. The remedy is to make it illegal to discriminate against children. It is gratifying to note that recently a number of apartment houses have been built in New York, especially with a view to the requirements of children. The movement deserves wide encouragement. Any apartment house is an unsatisfactory place in which to bring up children, but since under modern urban conditions it is inevitable that many children must be brought up in apartments, if they are brought up at all, the municipality should in its own interests take steps to ensure that conditions will be as good as possible for them. In a few cases of model tenements, the favored poor tenants are better off than the moderately well-to-do. It is essential that the latter be given a chance to have children and bring them up in comfortable surroundings, and the provision of suitable apartment houses would be a gain in every large city.

The growing use of the automobile, which permits a family to live under pleasant surroundings in the suburbs and yet reach the city daily, alleviates the housing problem slightly. Increased facilities for rapid transit are of the utmost importance in placing the city population (a selected class, it will be remembered) under more favorable conditions for bringing up their children. Zone rates should be designed to effect this dispersal of population.

FEMINISM

The word "feminism" might be supposed to characterize a movement which sought to emphasize the distinction between woman's nature and that of man to provide for women's special needs. It was so used in early days on the continent. But at present in England and America it denotes a movement which is practically the reverse of this; which seeks to minimize the difference between the two sexes. It may be broadly described as a movement which seeks to remove all discrimination based on sex. It is a movement to secure recognition of an equality of the two sexes. The feminists variously demand that woman be recognized as the equal of man (1) biologically, (2) politically, (3) economically.

1. Whether or not woman is to be regarded as biologically equal to man depends on how one uses the word "equal." If it is meant that woman is as well adapted to her own particular kind of work as is man to his, the statement will readily be accepted. Unfortunately, feminists show a tendency to go beyond this and to minimize differentiation in their claims of equality. An attempt is made to show that women do not differ materially from men in the nature of their capacity of mental or physical achievement. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman makes the logical application by demanding that little girls' hair be cut short and that they be prevented from playing with dolls in order that differences fostered in this way be reduced.

In forming a judgment on this proposition, it must be remembered that civilization covers not more than 10,000 years out of man's history of half a million or more. During 490,000 out of the 500,000 years, man was the hunter and warrior; while woman stayed at home of necessity to bear and rear the young, to skin the prey, to prepare the food and clothing. He must have a small knowledge of biology who could suppose that this long history would not lead to any differentiation of the two sexes; and the biologist knows that man and woman in some respects differ in every cell of their bodies: that, as Jacques Loeb says, "Man and woman are, physiologically, different species."

But the biologist also knows that sex is a quantitative character. It is impossible to draw a sharp line and say that those on one side are in every respect men, and those on the other side in every respect women, as one might draw a line between goats and sheep. Many women have a considerable amount of "maleness"; numerous men have distinct feminine characteristics, physical and mental. There is thus an ill-defined "intermediate sex," as Edward Carpenter called it, whose size has been kept down by sexual selection; or better stated there is so much overlapping that it is a question of different averages with many individuals of each sex beyond the average of the other sex.

A perusal of Havelock Ellis' book, Man and Woman, will leave little doubt about the fact of sex differentiation, just as it will leave little doubt that one sex is, in its way, quite as good as the other, and that to talk of one sex as being inferior is absurd.

It is worth noting that the spread of feminism will reinforce the action of sexual selection in keeping down the numbers of this "intermediate sex." In the past, women who lacked femininity or maternal instinct have often married because the pressure of public opinion and economic conditions made it uncomfortable for any woman to remain unmarried. And they have had children because they could not help it, transmitting to their daughters their own lack of maternal instinct. Under the new regime a large proportion of such women do not marry, and accordingly have few if any children to inherit their defects. Hence the average level of maternal instinct of the women of America is likely steadily to rise.

We conclude that any claim of biological equality of the two sexes must use the word in a figurative sense, not ignoring the differentiation of the two sexes, as extreme feminists are inclined to do. To this differentiation we shall return later.

2. Political equality includes the demand for the vote and for the removal of various legal restrictions, such as have sometimes prevented a wife from disposing of her own property without the consent of her husband or such as have made her citizenship follow that of her husband. In the United States, these legal restrictions are rapidly being removed, at such a rate that in some states it is now the husband who has a right to complain of certain legal discriminations.

Equal suffrage is also gaining steadily, but its eugenic aspect is not wholly clear. Theoretically much is to be said for it, as making use of woman's large social sympathies and responsibilities and interest in the family; but in the states where it has been tried, its effects have not been all that was hoped. Beneficial results are to be expected unless an objectionably extreme feminism finds support.

In general, the demand for political equality, in a broad sense, seems to the eugenist to be the most praiseworthy part of the feminist program. The abolition of those laws, which now discharge women from positions if they marry or have children, promises to be in principle a particularly valuable gain.

3. Economic equality is often summed up in the catch phrase "equal pay for equal work." If the phrase refers to jobs where women are competing on piecework with men, no one will object to it. In practice it applies particularly to two distinct but interlocking demands: (a) that women should receive the same pay as men for any given occupation—as, stenography, for example; and (b) that child-bearing should be recognized as just as much worthy of remuneration as any occupation which men enter, and should be paid for (by the state) on the same basis.

At present, there is almost universally a discrimination against women in commerce and industry. They sometimes get no more than half as much pay as men for similar grades of employment. But there is for this one good reason. An employer needs experienced help, and he expects a man to remain with him and become more valuable. He is, therefore, willing to pay more because of this anticipation. In hiring a woman, he knows that she will probably soon leave to marry. But whatever may be the origin of this discrimination, it is justified in the last analysis by the fact that a man is paid as the head of a family, a woman only as an individual who ordinarily has fewer or no dependents to support. Indeed, it is largely this feature which, under the law of supply and demand, has caused women to work for low wages.

It is evident that real economic equality between men and women must be impossible, if the women are to leave their work for long periods of time, in order to bear and rear children. It is normally impossible for a woman to earn her living by competitive labor, at the same time that she is bearing and rearing children. Either the doctrine of economic equality is largely illusory, therefore, or else it must be extended to making motherhood a salaried occupation just as much as mill work or stenography.

The feminists have almost universally adopted the latter alternative. They say that the woman who is capable of earning money, and who abandons wage-earning for motherhood, ought to receive from the state as nearly as possible what she would have received if she had not had children; or else they declare that the expense of children should be borne wholly by the community.

This proposal must be tested by asking whether it would tend to strengthen and perpetuate the race or not. It is, in effect, a proposal to have the state pay so much a head for babies. The fundamental question is whether or not the quality of the babies would be taken into account. Doubtless the babies of obviously feeble-minded women would be excluded, but would it be possible for the state to pay liberally for babies who would grow up to be productive citizens, and to refuse to pay for babies that would doubtless grow up to be incompetents, dolts, dullards, laggards or wasters? The scheme would work, eugenically, in proportion as it is discriminatory and graded.

But the example of legislation in France and England, and the main trend of popular thought in America, make it quite certain that at present, and for many years to come, it will be impossible to have babies valued on the basis of quality rather than mere numbers. It is sometimes possible to get indirect measures of a eugenic nature passed, and it has been found possible to secure the passage of direct measures which prevent reproduction of those who are actually defective. But even the most optimistic eugenist must feel that, short of the remote future, any attempt to have the state grade and pay for babies on the basis of their quality is certain to fail to pass.

The recent action of the municipality of Schoenberg, Berlin, is typical. It is now paying baby bounties at the rate of $12.50 a head for the first born, $2.50 a head for all later born, and no questions asked. It is to be feared that any success which the feminists may gain in securing state aid for mothers in America will secure, as in Schoenberg, in England, in France, and in Australia, merely a small uniform sum. This acts dysgenically because it is a stimulus to married people to have large families in inverse proportion to their income, and is felt most by those whose purpose in having children is least approvable.

The married woman of good stock ought to bear four children. For many reasons these ought to be spaced well apart, preferably not much less than three years. She must have oversight of these children until they all reach adolescence. This means a period of about 12 + 13 = 25 years during which her primary, though by no means her only, concern will be mothercraft. It is hardly possible and certainly not desirable that she should support herself outside of the home during this period. As state support would pretty certainly be indiscriminate and dangerously dysgenic, it therefore appears that the present custom of having the father responsible for the support of the family is not only unavoidable but desirable. If so, it is desirable to avoid reducing the wages of married men too much by the competition of single women.

To attain this end, without working any injustice to women, it seems wise to modify their education in general in such a way as to prepare women for the kinds of work best adapted to her capacities and needs. Women were long excluded from a higher education, and when they secured it, they not unnaturally wanted the kind of education men were receiving,—partly in order to demonstrate that they were not intellectually inferior to men. Since this demonstration is now complete, the continuation of duplicate curricula is uncalled for. The coeducational colleges of the west are already turning away from the old single curriculum and are providing for the election of more differentiated courses for women. The separate women's colleges of the east will doubtless do so eventually, since their own graduates and students are increasingly discontented with the present narrow and obsolete ideals. If the higher education of women, and much of the elementary education, is directed toward differentiating them from men and giving them distinct occupations (including primarily marriage and motherhood) instead of training them so the only thing they are capable of doing is to compete with men for men's jobs, the demand of "equal pay for equal work" will be less difficult to reconcile with the interests of the race. In this direction the feminists might find a large and profitable field for the employment of their energies.

There is good ground for the feminist contention that women should be liberally educated, that they should not be regarded by men as inferior creatures, that they should have the opportunity of self-expression in a richer, freer life than they have had in the past. All these gains can be made without sacrificing any racial interests; and they must be so made. The unrest of intelligent women is not to be lessened or removed by educating them in the belief that they are not different from men and setting them to work as men in the work of the world. Except where the work is peculiarly adapted to women or there is a special individual aptitude, such work will, for the reasons we have set forth, operate dysgenically and therefore bring about the decadence of the race which practices it.

The true solution is rather to be sought in recognizing the natural differentiation of the two sexes and in emphasizing this differentiation by education. Boys will be taught the nobility of being productive and of establishing families; girls will have similar ideals held up to them but will be taught to reach them in a different way, through cultivation of the intellectual and emotional characters most useful to that division of labor for which they are supremely adapted, as well as those that are common to both sexes. The home must not be made a subordinate interest, as some feminists desire, but it must be made a much richer, deeper, more satisfying interest than it is too frequently at present.

OLD AGE PENSIONS

Pensions for aged people form an important part of the modern program of social legislation. What their merits may be in relieving poverty will not be discussed here. But beyond the direct effect, it is important to inquire what indirect eugenic effect they would have, as compared with the present system where the aged are most frequently supported by their own children when they have failed through lack of thrift or for other reasons to make provision for their old age.

The ordinary man, dependent on his daily work for a livelihood, can not easily support his parents and his offspring at the same time. Aid given to the one must be in some degree at the expense of the other. The eugenic consequences will depend on what class of man is required to contribute thus to parental support.

It is at once obvious that superior families will rarely encounter this problem. The parents will, by their superior earning capacity and the exercise of thrift and foresight, have provided for the wants of their old age. A superior man will therefore seldom be under economic pressure to limit the number of his own children because of the necessity of supporting his parents. In inferior families, on the other hand, the parents will have made no adequate provision for their old age. A son will have to assume their support, and thus reduce the number of his own children,—a eugenic result. With old age pensions from the state, the economic pressure would be taken off these inferior families and the children would thus be encouraged to marry earlier and have more children,—a dysgenic result.

From this point of view, the most eugenic course would perhaps be to make the support of parents by children compulsory, in cases where any support was needed. Such a step would not handicap superior families, but would hold back the inferior. A contributory system of old age pensions, for which the money was provided out of the individual's earnings, and laid aside for his old age, would also be satisfactory. A system which led to the payment of old age pensions by the state would be harmful.

The latter system would be evil in still another way because, as is the case with most social legislation of this type, the funds for carrying out such a scheme must naturally be furnished by the efficient members of the community. This adds to their financial burdens and encourages the young men to postpone marriage longer and to have fewer children when they do marry,—a dysgenic result.

It appears, therefore, that old age pensions paid by the state would be dysgenic in a number of ways, encouraging the increase of the inferior part of the population at the expense of the superior. If old age pensions are necessary, they should be contributory.

THE SEX HYGIENE MOVEMENT

Sexual morality is thought by some to be substantially synonymous with eugenics or to be included by it. One of the authors has protested previously[184] against this confusion of the meaning of the word "eugenics." The fallacy of believing that a campaign against sexual immorality is a campaign for eugenics will be apparent if the proposition is analyzed.

First, does sexual immorality increase or decrease the marriage rate of the offenders? We conclude that it reduces the marriage rate. Although it is true that some individuals might by sexual experience become so awakened as to be less satisfied with a continent life, and might thus in some cases be led to marriage, yet this is more than counterbalanced by the following considerations:

1. The mere consciousness of loss of virginity has led in some sensitive persons, especially women, to an unwillingness to marry from a sense of unworthiness. This is not common, yet such cases are known.

2. The loss of reputation has prevented the marriage of the desired mates. This is not at all uncommon.

3. Venereal infection has led to the abandonment of marriage. This is especially common.

4. Illicit experiences may have been so disillusioning, owing to the disaffecting nature of the consorts, that an attitude of pessimism and misanthropy or misogyny is built up. Such an attitude prevents marriage not only directly, but also indirectly, since persons with such an outlook are thereby less attractive to the opposite sex.

5. A taste for sexual variety is built up so that the individual is unwilling to commit himself to a monogamous union.

6. Occasionally, threat of blackmail by a jilted paramour prevents marriage by the inability to escape these importunities.

We consider next the relative birth-rate of the married and the incontinent unmarried. There can not be the slightest doubt that this is vastly greater in the case of the married. The unmarried have not only all the incentives of the married to keep down their birth-rate but also the obvious and powerful incentive of concealment as well.

Passing to the relative death-rate of the illegitimate and legitimate progeny, the actual data invariably indicate a decided advantage of the legitimately born. The reasons are too obvious to be retailed.

Now, then, knowing that the racial contribution of the sexually moral is greater than that of the sexually immoral, we may compare the quality of the sexually moral and immoral, to get the evolutionary effect.

For this purpose a distinction must be made between the individual who has been chaste till the normal time of marriage and whose sexual life is truly monogamous, and that abnormal group who remain chaste and celibate to an advanced age. These last are not moral in the last analysis, if they have valuable and needed traits and are fertile, because in the long run their failure to reproduce affects adversely the welfare of their group. While the race suffers through the failure of many of these individuals to contribute progeny, probably this does not happen, so far as males are concerned, as much as might be supposed, for such individuals are often innately defective in their instincts or, in the case of disappointed lovers, have a badly proportioned emotional equipment, since it leads them into a position so obviously opposed to race interests.

But, to pass to the essential comparison, that between the sexually immoral and the sexually moral as limited above, it is necessary first of all to decide whether monogamy is a desirable and presumably permanent feature of human society.

We conclude that it is:

1. Because it is spreading at the expense of polygamy even where not favored by legal interference. The change is most evident in China.

2. In monogamy, sexual selection puts a premium on valuable traits of character, rather than on mere personal beauty or ability to acquire wealth; and

3. The greatest amount of happiness is produced by a monogamous system, since in a polygamous society so many men must remain unmarried and so many women are dissatisfied with having to share their mates with others.

Assuming this, then adaptation to the condition of monogamous society represents race progress. Such a race profits if those who do not comply with its conditions make a deficient racial contribution. It follows then that sexual immorality is eugenic in its result for the species and that if all sexual immorality should cease, an important means of race progress might be lost. An illustration is the case of the Negro in America, whose failure to increase more rapidly in number is largely attributable to the widespread sterility resulting from venereal infection.[185] Should venereal diseases be eliminated, that race might be expected to increase in numbers very much faster than the whites.

It may be felt by some that this position would have an immoral effect upon youth if widely accepted. This need not be feared. On the contrary, we believe that one of the most powerful factors in ethical culture is pride due to the consciousness of being one who is fit and worthy.

The traditional view of sexual morality has been to ignore the selectional aspect here discussed and to stress the alleged deterioration of the germ-plasm by the direct action of the toxins of syphilis. The evidence relied upon to demonstrate this action seems to be vitiated by the possibility that there was, instead, a transmitted infection of the progeny. This "racial poison" action, since it is so highly improbable from analogy, can not be credited until it has been demonstrated in cases where the parents have been indubitably cured.

Is it necessary, then, to retain sexual immorality in order to achieve race progress? No, because it is only one of many factors contributing to race progress. Society can mitigate this as well as alcoholism, disease, infant mortality—all powerful selective factors—without harm, provided increased efficiency of other selective factors is ensured, such as the segregation of defectives, more effective sexual selection, a better correlation of income and ability, and a more eugenic distribution of family limitation.

TRADES UNIONISM

A dysgenic feature often found in trades unionism will easily be understood after our discussion of the minimum wage. The union tends to standardize wages; it tends to fix a wage in a given industry, and demand that nearly all workers in that classification be paid that wage. It cannot be denied that some of these workers are much more capable than others. Artificial interference with a more exact adjustment of wages to ability therefore penalizes the better workmen and subsidizes the worse ones. Economic pressure is thereby put on the better men to have fewer children, and with the worse men encourages more children, than would be the case if their incomes more nearly represented their real worth. Payment according to the product, with prizes and bonuses so much opposed by the unions, is more in accord with the principles of eugenics.

PROHIBITION

It was shown in Chapter II that the attempt to ban alcoholic beverages on the ground of direct dysgenic effect is based on dubious evidence. But the prohibition of the use of liquors, at least those containing more than 5% alcohol, can be defended on indirect eugenic grounds, as well as on the familiar grounds of pathology and economics which are commonly cited.

1. Unless it is present to such a degree as to constitute a neurotic taint, the desire to be stimulated is not of itself necessarily a bad thing. This will be particularly clear if the distribution of the responsiveness to alcoholic stimulus is recalled. Some really valuable strains, marked by this susceptibility, may be eliminated through the death of some individuals from debauchery and the penalization of others in preferential mating; this would be avoided if narcotics were not available.

2. In selection for eugenic improvement, it is desirable not to have to select for too many traits at once. If alcoholism could, through prohibition, be eliminated from consideration, it would just so far simplify the problem of eugenics.

3. Drunkenness interferes with the effectiveness of means for family limitation, so that if his alcoholism is not extreme, the drunkard's family is sometimes larger than it would otherwise be.

On the other hand, prohibition is dysgenic and intemperance is eugenic in their effect on the species in so far as alcoholism is correlated with other undesirable characters and brings about the elimination of undesirable strains. But its action is not sufficiently discriminating nor decisive; and if the strains have many serious defects, they can probably be dealt with better in some other, more direct way.

We conclude, then, that, on the whole, prohibition is desirable for eugenic as well as for other reasons.

PEDAGOGICAL CELIBACY

Whether women are more efficient teachers than men, and whether single women are more efficient teachers than married women, are disputed questions which it is not proposed here to consider. Accepting the present fact, that most of the school teachers in the United States are unmarried women, it is proper to examine the eugenic consequences of this condition.

The withdrawal of this large body of women from the career of motherhood into a celibate career may be desirable if these women are below the average of the rest of the women of the population in eugenic quality. But it would hardly be possible to find enough eugenic inferiors to fill the ranks of teachers, without getting those who are inferior in actual ability, in patent as well as latent traits. And the idea of placing education in the hands of such inferior persons is not to be considered.

It is, therefore, inevitable that the teachers are, on the whole, superior persons eugenically. Their celibacy must be considered highly detrimental to racial welfare.

But, it may be said, there is a considerable number of women so deficient in sex feeling or emotional equipment that they are certain never to marry; they are, nevertheless, persons of intellectual ability. Let them be the school teachers. This solution is, however, not acceptable. Many women of the character described undoubtedly exist, but they are better placed in some other occupation. It is wholly undesirable that children should be reared under a neuter influence, which is probably too common already in education.

If women are to teach, then, it must be concluded that on eugenic grounds preference should be given to married rather than single teachers, and that the single ones should be encouraged to marry. This requires (1) that considerable change be made in the education of young women, so that they shall be fitted for motherhood rather than exclusively for school teaching as is often the case, and (2) that social devices be brought into play to aid them in mating—since undoubtedly a proportion of school teachers are single from the segregating character of their profession, not from choice, and (3) provision for employing some women on half-time and (4) increase of the number of male teachers in high schools.

It is, perhaps, unnecessary to mention a fifth change necessary: that school boards must be brought to see the undesirability of employing only unmarried women, and of discharging them, no matter how efficient, if they marry or have children. The courts must be enabled to uphold woman's right of marriage and motherhood, instead of, as in some cases at present, upholding school boards in their denial of this right. Contracts which prevent women teachers from marrying or discontinuing their work for marriage should be illegal, and talk about the "moral obligation" of normal school graduates to teach should be discountenanced.

Against the proposal to employ married school teachers, two objections are urged. It is said (1) that for most women school teaching is merely a temporary occupation, which they take up to pass the few years until they shall have married. To this it may be replied that the hope of marriage too often proves illusory to the young woman who enters on the pedagogical career, because of the lack of opportunities to meet men, and because the nature of her work is not such as to increase her attractiveness to men, nor her fitness for home-making. Pedagogy is too often a sterilizing institution, which takes young women who desire to marry and impairs their chance of marriage.

Again it will be said (2) that married teachers would lose too much time from their work; that their primary interests would be in their own homes instead of in the school; that they could not teach school without neglecting their own children. These objections fall in the realm of education, not eugenics, and it can only be said here that the reasons must be extraordinarily cogent, which will justify the enforcement of celibacy on so large a body of superior young women as is now engaged in school teaching.

The magnitude of the problem is not always realized. In 1914 the Commissioner of education reported that there were, in the United States, 169,929 men and 537,123 women engaged in teaching. Not less than half a million women, therefore, are potentially affected by the institution of pedagogical celibacy.



CHAPTER XIX

RELIGION AND EUGENICS

Man is the only animal with a religion. The conduct of the lower animals is guided by instinct,[186] and instinct normally works for the benefit of the species. Any action which is dictated by instinct is likely to result in the preservation of the species, even at the expense of the individual which acts, provided there has not been a recent change in the environment.

But in the human species reason appears, and conduct is no longer governed by instinct alone. A young man is impelled by instinct, for instance, to marry. It is to the interests of the species that he marry, and instinct therefore causes him to desire to marry and to act as he desires. A lower animal would obey the impulse of instinct without a moment's hesitation. Not so the man. Reason intervenes and asks, "Is this really the best thing for you to do now? Would you not better wait awhile and get a start in your business? Of course marriage would be agreeable, but you must not be short-sighted. You don't want to assume a handicap just now." There is a corresponding reaction among the married in respect to bearing additional children. The interests of self are immediate and easily seen, the interests of the species are not so pressing. In any such conflict between instinct and reason, one must win; and if reason wins it is in some cases for the immediate benefit of the individual but at the expense of the species' interests.

Now with reason dominant over instinct in man, there is a grave danger that with each man consulting his own interests instead of those of the species, some groups and even races will become exterminated. Along with reason, therefore, it is necessary that some other forces shall appear to control reason and give the interests of the species a chance to be heard along with the interests of the individual.

One such force is religion. Without insisting that this is the only view which may be taken of the origin of religion, or that this is the only function of religion, we may yet assert that one of the useful purposes served by religion is to cause men to adopt lines of conduct that will be for the good of the race, although it may sacrifice the immediate good of the individual.[187] Thus if a young Mohammedan be put in the situation just described, he may decide that it is to his material interest to postpone marriage. His religion then obtrudes itself, with quotations from the Prophet to the effect that Hell is peopled with bachelors. The young man is thereupon moved to marry, even if it does cause some inconvenience to his business plans. Religion, reinforcing instinct, has triumphed over reason and gained a victory for the larger interests of the species, when they conflict with the immediate interests of the individual.

From this point of view we may, paraphrasing Matthew Arnold, define religion as motivated ethics. Ethics is a knowledge of right conduct, religion is an agency to produce right conduct. And its working is more like that of instinct than it is like that of reason. The irreligious man, testing a proposition by reason alone, may decide that it is to the interests of all concerned that he should not utter blasphemy. The orthodox Christian never considers the pros and cons of the question; he has the Ten Commandments and the teachings of his youth in his mind, and he refrains from blasphemy in almost the instinctive way that he refrains from putting his hand on a hot stove.

This chapter proposes primarily to consider how eugenics can be linked with religion, and specifically the Christian religion; but the problem is not a simple one, because Christianity is made of diverse elements. Not only has it undergone some change during the last 1900 years, but it was founded upon Judaism, which itself involved diverse elements. We shall undertake to show that eugenics fits in well with Christianity; but it must fit in with different elements in different ways.

We can distinguish four phases of religion:

1. Charm and taboo, or reward and punishment in the present life. The believer in these processes thinks that certain acts possess particular efficacies beyond those evident to his observation and reason; and that peculiar malignities are to be expected as the consequence of certain other acts. Perhaps no one in the memory of the tribe has ever tested one of these acts to find whether the expected result would appear; it is held as a matter of religious belief that the result would appear, and the act is therefore avoided.

2. Reward and punishment in a future life after death. Whereas the first system was supposed to bring immediate reward and punishment as the result of certain acts, this second system postpones the result to an after-life. There is in nature a system of reward and punishment which everyone must have observed because it is part of the universal sequence of cause and effect; but these two phases of religion carry the idea still farther; they postulate rewards and punishments of a supernatural character, over and above those which naturally occur. It is important to note that in neither of these systems is God essentially involved. They are in reality independent of the idea of God, since that is called "luck" in some cases which in others is called the favor or wrath of God. And again in some cases, one may be damned by a human curse, although in others this curse of damnation is reserved for divine power.

3. Theistic religion. In essence this consists of the satisfaction derived from doing that which pleases God, or "getting into harmony with the underlying plan of the universe," as some put it. It is idealistic and somewhat mystic. It should be distinguished from the idea of doing or believing certain things to insure salvation, which is not essentially theistic but belongs under (2). The true theist desires to conform to the will of God, wholly apart from whether he will be rewarded or punished for so doing.

4. Humanistic religion. This is a willingness to make the end of ethics the totality of happiness of all men, or some large group of men, rather than to judge conduct solely by its effects on some one individual. At its highest, it is a sort of loyalty to the species.

It must be noted that most cults include more than one of these elements—usually all of them at various stages. As a race rises in intelligence, it tends to progress from the first two toward the last two, but usually keeping parts of the earlier attitude, more or less clearly expressed. And individual adherents of a religion usually have different ideas of its scope; thus the religious ideas of many Christians embrace all four of the above elements; others who equally consider themselves Christians may be influenced by little more than (4) alone, or (3) alone, or even (2) alone.

There is no reason to believe that any one of these types of religion is the only one adapted to promoting sound ethics in all individuals, nor that a similar culture can bring about uniformity in the near future, since the religion of a race corresponds to some extent to the inherent nature of the mind of its individuals. Up to a certain point, each type of religion has a distinct appeal to a certain temperament or type of mind. With increasing intelligence, it is probable that a religion tends to emphasize the interests of all rather than the benefits to be derived by one; such has been clearly the case in the history of the Christian religion. The diverse elements of retribution, damnation, "communion with God" and social service still exist, but in America the last-named one is yearly being more emphasized. Emphasis upon it is the marked characteristic of Jesus' teaching.

With this rough sketch of religious ideas in mind, the part religion can play at the present day in advancing the eugenic interests of the race or species may be considered. Each religion can serve eugenics just as well as it can serve any other field of ethics, and by the very same devices. We shall run over our four types again and note what appeals eugenics can make to each one.

1. Reward and punishment in this life. Here the value of children, emotionally and economically, to their parents in their later life can be shown, and the dissatisfaction that is felt by the childless. The emotions may be reached (as they have been reached in past centuries) by the painting of Madonnas, the singing of lullabies, by the care of the baby sister, by the laurel wreath of the victorious son, by the great choruses of white-robed girls, by the happiness of the bride, and by the sentiment of the home. Here are some of the noblest subjects for the arts, which in the past have unconsciously served eugenics well. In a less emotional way, a deep desire for that "terrestrial immortality" involved in posterity should be fostered. The doctrine of the continuity of germ-plasm might play a large part in religion. It should at least be brought home to everyone at some point in his education. Man should have a much stronger feeling of identity with his forebears and his progeny. Is it not a loss to Christians that they have so much less of this feeling than the Chinese?

It may be urged in opposition that such conceptions are dangerously static and have thereby harmed China. But that can be avoided by shifting the balance a little from progenitors to posterity. If people should live more in their children than they now do, they would be not only anxious to give them a sound heredity, but all the more eager to improve the conditions of their children's environment by modifying their own.

It may be objected that this sort of propaganda is indiscriminate,—that it may further the reproduction of the inferior just as much as the superior. We think not. Such steps appeal more to the superior type of mind and will be little heeded by the inferior. They will be ultimately, if not directly, discriminative.

In so far as the foregoing appeals to reason alone it is not religion. The appeal to reason must either be emotionalized or colored with the supernatural to be religion.

2. Reward and punishment in a future life. Here the belief in the absolute, verbal inspiration of sacred writings and the doctrine of salvation by faith alone are rapidly passing, and it is therefore the easier to bring eugenics into this type of religion. Even where salvation by faith is still held as an article of creed, it is accompanied by the concession that he who truly believes will manifest his belief by works. Altruism can be found in the sacred writings of probably all religions, and the modern tendency is to make much of such passages, in which it is easy for the eugenist to find a warrant. What is needed here, then, is to impress upon the leaders in this field that eugenic conduct is a "good work" and as such they may properly include it along with other modern virtues, such as honest voting and abstinence from graft as a key to heaven. Dysgenic conduct should equally be taught to be an obstacle to salvation.

3. Theism. The man who is most influenced by the desire to be at one with God naturally wants to act in accordance with God's plan. But God being omnibeneficent, he necessarily believes that God's plan is that which is for the best interests of His children—unless he is one of those happily rare individuals who still believe that the end of man is to glorify God by voice, not by means of human betterment.

This type of religion (and the other types in different degrees) is a great motive power. It both creates energy in its adherents, and directs that energy into definite outlets. It need only be made convincingly evident that eugenics is truly a work of human betterment,—really the greatest work of human betterment, and a partnership with God—to have it taken up by this type of religion with all the enthusiasm which it brings to its work.

4. The task of enlisting the humanist appears to be even simpler. It is merely necessary to show him that eugenics increases the totality of happiness of the human species. Since the keynote of his devotion is loyalty, we might make this plea: "Can we not make every superior man or woman ashamed to accept existence as a gift from his or her ancestors, only to extinguish this torch instead of handing it on?"

Eugenics is in some ways akin to the movement for the conservation of natural resources. In pioneer days a race uses up its resources without hesitation. They seem inexhaustible. Some day it is recognized that they are not inexhaustible, and then such members of the race as are guided by good ethics begin to consider the interests of the future.

No system of ethics is worth the name which does not make provision for the future. It is right here that the ethics of present-day America is too often found wanting. As this fault is corrected, eugenics will be more clearly seen as an integral part of ethics.

Provision for the future of the individual leads, in a very low state of civilization, to the accumulation of wealth. Even the ants and squirrels have so much ethics! Higher in the evolutionary scale comes provision for the future of children; their interests lead to the foundation of the family and, at a much later date, a man looks not only to his immediate children but to future generations of heirs, when he entails his estates and tries to establish a notable family line. Provision for the future is the essence of his actions. But so far only the individual or those related closely to him have been taken into consideration. With a growth of altruism, man begins to recognize that he must make provision for the future of the race; that he should apply to all superior families the same anxiety which he feels that his children shall not tarnish the family name by foolish marriages; that they shall grow up strong and intelligent. This feeling interpreted by science is eugenics, an important element of which is religion: for religion more than any other influence leads one to look ahead, and to realize that immediate benefits are not the greatest values that man can secure in life,—that there is something beyond and superior to eating, drinking and being merry.

If the criterion of ethical action is the provision it makes for the future, then the ethics of the eugenist must rank high, for he not only looks far to the future, but takes direct and effective steps to safeguard the future.

Theoretically, then, there is a place for eugenics in every type of religion. In practice, it will probably make an impression only on the dynamic religions,—those that are actually accomplishing something. Buddhism, for example, is perhaps too contemplative to do anything. But Christianity, above any other, would seem to be the natural ally of the eugenist. Christianity itself is undergoing a rapid change in ideals at present, and it seems impossible that this evolution should leave its adherents as ignorant of and indifferent to eugenics as they have been in the past—even during the last generation.

Followers of other religions, as this chapter has attempted to show, can also make eugenics a part of their respective religions. If they do not, then it bodes ill for the future of their religion and of their race.

It is not difficult to get people to see the value of eugenics,—to give an intellectual adhesion to it. But as eugenics sometimes calls for seeming sacrifices, it is much more difficult to get people to act eugenically. We have at numerous points in this book emphasized the necessity of making the eugenic appeal emotional, though it is based fundamentally on sound reasoning from facts of biology.

The great value of religion in this connection is that it provides a driving power,[188] a source of action, which the intellect alone can rarely furnish. Reason itself is usually an inhibitor of action. It is the emotions that impel one to do things. The utilization of the emotions in affecting conduct is by no means always a part of religion, yet it is the essence of religion. Without abandoning the appeal to reason, eugenists must make every effort to enlist potent emotional forces on their side. There is none so strong and available as religion, and the eugenist may turn to it with confidence of finding an effective ally, if he can once gain its sanction.

The task, as this chapter was intended to show, is a complex one, yet we see no insuperable obstacles to it. Eugenics may not become a part of the Christian religion, as a whole, until scientific education is much more widespread than at present, but it is not too soon to make a start, by identifying the interests of the two wherever such identification is justified and profitable.

We have endeavored to point out that as a race rises, and instinct becomes less important in guiding the conduct of its members, religion has often put a restraint on reason, guiding the individual in racially profitable paths. What is to happen when religion gives way? Unbridled selfishness too often takes the reins, and the interests of the species are disregarded. Religion, therefore, appears to be a necessity for the perpetuation of any race. It is essential to racial welfare that the national religion should be of such a character as to appeal to the emotions effectively and yet conciliate the reason. We believe that the religion of the future is likely to acquire this character, in proportion as it adheres to eugenics. There is no room in the civilized world now for a dysgenic religion. Science will progress. The idea of evolution will be more firmly grasped. Religion itself evolves, and any religion which does not embrace eugenics will embrace death.



CHAPTER XX

EUGENICS AND EUTHENICS

Emphasis has been given, in several of the foregoing chapters, to the desirability of inheriting a good constitution and a high degree of vigor and disease-resistance. It has been asserted that no measures of hygiene and sanitation can take the place of such inheritance. It is now desirable to ascertain the limits within which good inheritance is effective, and this may be conveniently done by a study of the lives of a group of people who inherited exceptionally strong physical constitutions.

The people referred to are taken from a collection of histories of long life made by the Genealogical Record Office of Washington.[189] One hundred individuals were picked out at random, each of whom had died at the age of 90 or more, and with the record of each individual were placed those of all his brothers and sisters. Any family was rejected in which there was a record of wholly accidental death (e.g., families of which a member had been killed in the Civil War). The 100 families, or more correctly fraternities or sibships, were classified by the number of children per fraternity, as follows:

Number of Total number Number of children per of children fraternities fraternity in group

1 2 2 11 3 33 8 4 32 17 5 85 13 6 78 14 7 98 9 8 72 11 9 99 10 10 100 3 11 33 2 12 24 1 13 13 —- —- 100 669

The average at death of these 669 persons was 64.7 years. The child mortality (first 4 years of life) was 7.5% of the total mortality, 69 families showing no deaths of that kind. The group is as a whole, therefore, long-lived.

The problem was to measure the resemblance between brothers and sisters in respect of longevity,—to find whether knowledge of the age at which one died would justify a prediction as to the age at death of the others,—or technically, it was to measure the fraternal correlation of longevity. A zero coefficient here would show that there is no association; that from the age at which one dies, nothing whatever can be predicted as to the age at which the others will die. Since it is known that heredity is a large factor in longevity, such a finding would mean that all deaths were due to some accident which made the inheritance of no account.

In an ordinary population it has been found that the age at death of brothers and sisters furnishes a coefficient of correlation of the order of .3, which shows that heredity does determine the age at which one shall die to considerable extent, but not absolutely.[190]

The index of correlation[191] between the lengths of life within the fraternity in these 100 selected families, furnished a coefficient of-.0163+-.0672, practically zero. In other words, if the age is known at which a member of one of these families died, whether it be one month or 100 years, nothing whatever can be predicted about the age at which his brothers and sisters died.

Remembering that longevity is in general inherited, and that it is found in the families of all the people of this study (since one in each fraternity lived to be 90 or over) how is one to interpret this zero coefficient? Evidently it means that although these people had inherited a high degree of longevity, their deaths were brought about by causes which prevented the heredity from getting full expression. As far as hereditary potentialities are concerned, it can be said that all their deaths were due to accident, using that word in a broad sense to include all non-selective deaths by disease. If they had all been able to get the full benefit of their heredity, it would appear that each of these persons might have lived to 90 or more, as did the one in each family who was recorded by the Genealogical Record Office. Genetically, these other deaths may be spoken of as premature.

In an ordinary population, the age of death is determined to the extent of probably 50% by heredity. In this selected long-lived population, heredity appears not to be responsible in any measurable degree whatsoever for the differences in age at death.

The result may be expressed in another, and perhaps more striking, way. Of the 669 individuals studied, a hundred—namely, one child in each family—lived beyond 90; and there were a few others who did. But some 550 of the group, though they had inherited the potentiality of reaching the average age of 90, actually died somewhere around 60; they failed by at least one-third to live up to the promise of their inheritance. If we were to generalize from this single case, we would have to say that five-sixths of the population does not make the most of its physical inheritance.

This is certainly a fact that discourages fatalistic optimism. The man who tells himself that, because of his magnificent inherited constitution, he can safely take any risk, is pretty sure to take too many risks and meet with a non-selective—i.e., genetically, a premature—death, when he might in the nature of things have lived almost a generation longer.

It should be remarked that most of the members of this group seem to have lived in a hard environment. They appear to belong predominantly to the lower strata of society; many of them are immigrants and only a very few of them, to judge by a cursory inspection of the records, possessed more than moderate means. This necessitated a frugal and industrious life which in many ways was doubtless favorable to longevity but which may often have led to overexposure, overwork, lack of proper medical treatment, or other causes of a non-selective death. We would not push the conclusion too far, but we can not doubt that this investigation shows the folly of ignoring the environment,—shows that the best inherited constitution must have a fair chance. And what has here been found for a physical character, would probably hold good in even greater degree for a mental character. All that man inherits is the capacity to develop along a certain line under the influence of proper stimuli,—food and exercise. The object of eugenics is to see that the inherent capacity is there. Given that, the educational system is next needed to furnish the stimuli. The consistent eugenist is therefore an ardent euthenist. He not only works for a better human stock but, because he does not want to see his efforts wasted, he always works to provide the best possible environment for this better stock.

In so far, then, as euthenics is actually providing man with more favorable surroundings,—not with ostensibly more favorable surroundings which, in reality, are unfavorable—there can be no antagonism between it and eugenics. Eugenics is, in fact, a prerequisite of euthenics, for it is only the capable and altruistic man who can contribute to social progress; and such a man can only be produced through eugenics.

Eugenic fatalism, a blind faith in the omnipotence of heredity regardless of the surroundings in which it is placed, has been shown by the study of long-lived families to be unjustified. It was found that even those who inherited exceptional longevity usually did not live as long as their inheritance gave them the right to expect. If they had had more euthenics, they should have lived longer.

But this illustration certainly gives no ground for a belief that euthenics is sufficient to prolong one's life beyond the inherited limit. A study of these long-lived families from another point of view will reveal that heredity is the primary factor and that good environment, euthenics, is the secondary one.

For this purpose we augment the 100 families of the preceding section by the addition of 240 more families like them, and we examine each family history to find how many of the children died before completing the fourth year of life. The data are summarized in the following table:

CHILD MORTALITY IN FAMILIES OF LONG-LIVED STOCK, GENEALOGICAL RECORD OFFICE DATA

Size of No. of families No. of families Total no. family investigated showing deaths of deaths under 5 years

1 child 6 0 0 2 children 6 0 0 3 " 38 4 5 4 " 40 6 7 5 " 38 4 4 6 " 44 12 13 7 " 34 8 11 8 " 46 13 18 9 " 31 14 20 10 " 27 14 14 11 " 13 6 9 12 " 13 9 16 13 " 1 0 0 14 " 2 0 0 17 " 1 1 2 —- —- —- 340 91 119

The addition of the new families (which were not subjected to any different selection than the first 100) has brought down the child mortality rate. For the first 100, it was found to be 7.5%. If in the above table the number of child deaths, 119, be divided by the total number of children represented, 2,259, the child mortality rate for this population is found to be 5.27%, or 53 per thousand.

The smallness of this figure may be seen by comparison with the statistics of the registration area, U. S. Census of 1880, when the child mortality (0-4 years) was 400 per thousand, as calculated by Alexander Graham Bell. A mortality of 53 for the first four years of life is smaller than any district known in the United States, even to-day, can show for the first year of life alone. If any city could bring the deaths of babies during their first twelve months down to 53 per 1,000, it would think it had achieved the impossible; but here is a population in which 53 per 1,000 covers the deaths, not only of the fatal first 12 months, but of the following three years in addition.

Now this population with an unprecedentedly low rate of child mortality is not one which had had the benefit of any Baby Saving Campaign, nor even the knowledge of modern science. Its mothers were mostly poor, many of them ignorant; they lived frequently under conditions of hardship; they were peasants and pioneers. Their babies grew up without doctors, without pasteurized milk, without ice, without many sanitary precautions, usually on rough food. But they had one advantage which no amount of applied science can give after birth—namely, good heredity. They had inherited exceptionally good constitutions.

It is not by accident that inherited longevity in a family is associated with low mortality of its children. The connection between the two facts was first discovered by Mary Beeton and Karl Pearson in their pioneer work on the inheritance of duration of life. They found that high infant mortality was associated with early death of parents, while the offspring of long-lived parents showed few deaths in childhood. The correlation of the two facts was quite regular, as will be evident from a glance at the following tables prepared by A. Ploetz:

LENGTH OF LIFE OF MOTHERS AND CHILD-MORTALITY OF THEIR DAUGHTERS. ENGLISH QUAKER FAMILIES, DATA OF BEETON AND PEARSON, ARRANGED BY PLOETZ

Year of life in which mothers died At all 0-38 39-53 54-68 69-83 84 up ages

No. of daughters 234 304 305 666 247 1846

No. of them who died in first 5 years 122 114 118 131 26 511

Per cent. of daughters who died 52.1 37.5 29.9 19.7 10.5 27.7

LENGTH OF LIFE OF FATHERS AND CHILD-MORTALITY OF THEIR DAUGHTERS

Year of life in which fathers died At 0-38 39-53 54-68 69-83 84 up all ages

No. of daughters 105 284 585 797 236 2009

No. of them who died in first 5 years 51 98 156 177 40 522

Per cent. of daughters who died 48.6 34.5 26.7 22.2 17.0 26.0

To save space, we do not show the relation between parent and son; it is similar to that of parent and daughter which is shown in the preceding tables. In making comparison with the 340 families from the Genealogical Record Office, above studied, it must be noted that Dr. Ploetz' tables include one year longer in the period of child mortality, being computed for the first five years of life instead of the first four. His percentages would therefore be somewhat lower if computed on the basis used in the American work.

These various data demonstrate the existence of a considerable correlation between short life (brachybioty, Karl Pearson calls it) in parent and short life in offspring. Not only is the tendency to live long inherited, but the tendency not to live long is likewise inherited.

But perhaps the reader may think they show nothing of the sort. He may fancy that the early death of a parent left the child without sufficient care, and that neglect, poverty, or some other factor of euthenics brought about the child's death. Perhaps it lacked a mother's loving attention, or perhaps the father's death removed the wage-earner of the family and the child thenceforth lacked the necessities of life.

Dr. Ploetz has pointed out[192] that this objection is not valid, because the influence of the parent's death is seen to hold good even to the point where the child was too old to require any assistance. If the facts applied only to cases of early death, the supposed objection might be weighty, but the correlation exists from one end of the age-scale to the other. It is not credible that a child is going to be deprived of any necessary maternal care when its mother dies at the age of 69; the child herself was probably married long before the death of the mother. Nor is it credible that the death of the father takes bread from the child's mouth, leaving it to starve to death in the absence of a pension for widowed mothers, if the father died at 83, when the "child" herself was getting to be an old woman. The early death of a parent may occasionally bring about the child's death for a reason wholly unconnected with heredity, but the facts just pointed out show that such cases are exceptional. The steady association of the child death-rate and parent death-rate at all ages demonstrates that heredity is a common cause.

But the reader may suspect another fallacy. The cause of this association is really environmental, he may think, and the same poverty or squalor which causes the child to die early may cause the parent to die early. They may both be of healthy, long-lived stock, but forced to live in a pestiferous slum which cuts both of them off prematurely and thereby creates a spurious correlation in the statistics.

We can dispose of this objection most effectively by bringing in new evidence. It will probably be admitted that in the royal families of Europe, the environment is as good as knowledge and wealth can make it. No child dies for lack of plenty of food and the best medical care, even if his father or mother died young. And the members of this caste are not exposed to any such unsanitary conditions, or such economic pressure as could possibly cause both parent and child to die prematurely. If the association between longevity of parent and child mortality holds for the royal families of Europe and their princely relatives, it can hardly be regarded as anything but the effect of heredity,—of the inheritance of a certain type of constitution.

Dr. Ploetz studied the deaths of 3,210 children in European royalty, from this viewpoint. The following table shows the relation between father and child:

LENGTH OF LIFE OF FATHERS AND CHILD-MORTALITY OF THEIR CHILDREN IN ROYAL AND PRINCELY FAMILIES, PLOETZ' DATA

At Year of life in which fathers died Years all ages 16-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56-65 66-75 76-85 86 up

No. of children. 23 90 367 545 725 983 444 33 3210

No. who died in first 5 years 12 29 115 171 200 254 105 1 887

Per cent. who died 52.2 32.2 31.3 31.4 27.6 25.8 23.6 3.0 27.6

Allowing for the smallness of some of the groups, it is evident that the amount of correlation is about the same here as among the English Quakers of the Beeton-Pearson investigation, whose mortality was shown in the two preceding tables. In the healthiest group from the royal families—the cases in which the father lived to old age—the amount of child mortality is about the same as that of the Hyde family in America, which Alexander Graham Bell has studied—namely, somewhere around 250 per 1,000. One may infer that the royal families are rather below par in soundness of constitution.[193]

All these studies agree perfectly in showing that the amount of child mortality is determined primarily by the physical constitution of the parents, as measured by their longevity. In the light of these facts, the nature of the extraordinarily low child mortality shown in the 340 families from the Genealogical Record Office, with which we began the study of this point, can hardly be misunderstood. These families have the best inherited constitution possible and the other studies cited would make us certain of finding a low child mortality among them, even if we had not directly investigated the facts.

If the interpretation which we have given is correct, the conclusion is inevitable that child mortality is primarily a problem of eugenics, and that all other factors are secondary. There is found to be no warrant for the statement so often repeated in one form or another, that "the fundamental cause of the excessive rate of infant mortality in industrial communities is poverty, inadequate incomes, and low standards of living."[194] Royalty and its princely relatives are not characterized by a low standard of living, and yet the child mortality among them is very high—somewhere around 400 per 1,000, in cases where a parent died young. If poverty is responsible in the one case, it must be in the other—which is absurd. Or else the logical absurdity is involved of inventing one cause to explain an effect to-day and a wholly different cause to explain the same effect to-morrow. This is unjustifiable in any case, and it is particularly so when the single cause that explains both cases is so evident. If weak heredity causes high mortality in the royal families, why, similarly, can not weak heredity cause high infant mortality in the industrial communities? We believe it does account for much of it, and that the inadequate income and low standard of living are largely the consequences of inferior heredity, mental as well as physical. The parents in the Genealogical Record Office files had, many of them, inadequate incomes and low standards of living under frontier conditions, but their children grew up while those of the royal families were dying in spite of every attention that wealth could command and science could furnish.

If the infant mortality problem is to be solved on the basis of knowledge and reason, it must be recognized that sanitation and hygiene can not take the place of eugenics any more than eugenics can dispense with sanitation and hygiene. It must be recognized that the death-rate in childhood is largely selective, and that the most effective way to cut it down is to endow the children with better constitutions. This can not be done solely by any euthenic campaign; it can not be done by swatting the fly, abolishing the midwife, sterilizing the milk, nor by any of the other panaceas sometimes proposed.

But, it may be objected, this discussion ignores the actual facts. Statistics show that infant mortality campaigns have consistently produced reductions in the death-rate. The figures for New York, which could be matched in dozens of other cities, show that the number of deaths per 1,000 births, in the first year of life, has steadily declined since a determined campaign to "Save the Babies" was started:

1902 181 1903 152 1904 162 1905 159 1906 153 1907 144 1908 128 1909 129 1910 125 1911 112 1912 105 1913 102 1914 95

To one who can not see beyond the immediate consequences of an action, such figures as the above indeed give quite a different idea of the effects of an infant mortality campaign, than that which we have just tried to create. And it is a great misfortune that euthenics so often fails to look beyond the immediate effect, fails to see what may happen next year, or 10 years from now, or in the next generation.

We admit that it is possible to keep a lot of children alive who would otherwise have died in the first few months of life. It is being done, as the New York figures, and pages of others that could be cited, prove. The ultimate result is twofold:

1. Some of those who are doomed by heredity to a selective death, but are kept alive through the first year, die in the second or third or fourth year. They must die sooner or later; they have not inherited sufficient resistance to survive more than a limited time. If they are by a great effort carried through the first year, it is only to die in the next. This is a statement which we have nowhere observed in the propaganda of the infant mortality movement; and it is perhaps a disconcerting one. It can only be proved by refined statistical methods, but several independent determinations by the English biometricians leave no doubt as to the fact. This work of Karl Pearson, E. C. Snow, and Ethel M. Elderton, was cited in our chapter on natural selection; the reader will recall how they showed that nature is weeding out the weaklings, and in proportion to the stringency with which she weeds them out at the start, there are fewer weaklings left to die in succeeding years.

To put the facts in the form of a truism, part of the children born in any district in a given year are doomed by heredity to an early death; and if they die in one year they will not be alive to die in the succeeding year, and vice versa. Of course there are in addition infant deaths which are not selective and which if prevented would leave the infant with as good a chance as any to live.

In the light of these researches, we are forced to conclude that baby-saving campaigns accomplish less than is thought; that the supposed gain is to some extent temporary and illusory.

2. There is still another consequence. If the gain is by great exertions made more than temporary; if the baby who would otherwise have died in the first months is brought to adult life and reproduction, it means in many cases the dissemination of another strain of weak heredity, which natural selection would have cut off ruthlessly in the interests of race betterment. In so far, then, as the infant mortality movement is not futile it is, from a strict biological viewpoint, often detrimental to the future of the race.

Do we then discourage all attempts to save the babies? Do we leave them all to natural selection? Do we adopt the "better dead" gospel?

Unqualifiedly, no! The sacrifice of the finer human feelings, which would accompany any such course, would be a greater loss to the race than is the eugenic loss from the perpetuation of weak strains of heredity. The abolition of altruistic and humanitarian sentiment for the purpose of race betterment would ultimately defeat its own end by making race betterment impossible.