In our Colony, there is no more prevalent or ingrained idea in the minds of our people than that large families are a cause of poverty.

A high birth-rate in a family certainly is a cause of poverty. Many children do not enable a father to earn higher wages, nor do they enable a mother to render the bread-winner more assistance; while in New Zealand, especially, compulsory education and the inhibition of child-labour prevent indigent parents from procuring the slight help that robust boys and girls of 10 years of age, or so, are often able to supply.

These considerations go far to explain the desire on the part of married couples to limit offspring; and, if there were no means at their disposal of limiting the number of children born to them, a great decline in the marriage-rate would be the inevitable result of the existing conditions of life, and the prevalent ideas of the people.

Hopeless poverty appears to be a cause of a high birth-rate, and this seems to be due to the complete abandonment by the hopelessly poor of all hope of attaining comfort and success.

Marriage between two who are hopelessly poor is extremely rare with us. Each is able to provide for his or herself at least, and in all probability the husband is able to provide comfortably for both.

If he is not, the wife can work, and their joint earnings will keep them from want. But, if one of the partners has not only to give herself up to child-bearing, and thus cease to earn, but also bring another into the home that will monopolise all her time, attention, and energy, and a good deal of its father's earnings, how will they fare?

If a man's wages has to be divided between two, then between three, then four, six, eight, ten, while all the time that wages is not increasing, have we not a direct cause of poverty, and, moreover, is not that cause first in time and importance?

Later on in the history of the family their poverty will become a cause of an increase in the children born to them. At first they may struggle to prevent an increase, but, when they are in the depths of hopeless poverty, they will abandon themselves to despair.

Could they have had born to them only one, or two, or three, during their early married life, they might not only have escaped want, but later in life may have had others born to them, without either their little ones or themselves feeling the pinch of poverty.

It must be remembered in this connection that fecundity and sexual activity are not convertible terms.

It is certainly not true to say that the greater the fecundity of the people the stronger their sexual instinct, or the greater the sexual exercise.

A high fecundity does not depend on an inordinate sexual activity.

Fecundity depends on the child-bearing capacity of each female, and a sexual union at an appropriate time once in two years between puberty and the catamenia is compatible with the highest possible fecundity.

It would be quite illogical, and inconsistent with physiological facts, to aver that, were the poor less given to indulge the pleasures of sense, their fecundity would be modified in an appreciable degree.



CHAPTER VI.

ETHICS OF PREVENTION.

Fertility the law of life.—Man interprets and controls this law.—Marriage law necessary to fix paternal responsibility.—Malthus's high ideal.—If prudence the motive, continence and celibacy violate no law.—Post-nuptial intermittent restraint.—Ethics of prevention judged by consequences.—When procreation is a good and when an evil.—Oligantrophy.—Artificial checks are physiological sins.

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them, and God blessed them and God said unto them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.'"—(Genesis i., 27-28). This commandment was repeated to Noah and his sons.

Whether Moses was recording the voice of God, or interpreting a physiological law is immaterial to this aspect of a great social question. The fact remains that in obedience to a great law of life, all living things are fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and multiplication in a state of nature is limited only by space and food.

In a state of nature, reproduction is automatic, and only in this state is this physiological law, or this divine command obeyed.

The reason of man intervenes, and interprets, and modifies this law.

A community of men becomes a social organism, calls itself a State, and limits the law of reproduction. It decrees that the sexes shall, if they pair, isolate themselves in pairs, and live in pairs whether inclined to so live or not.

If the State has a right so to interpret and limit the law of reproduction, a principle in human affairs is established, and its decree that individuals shall not mate before a certain age, or not mate at all, is only a further application of the same principle. By the law of reproduction a strong instinct, second only in force and universality to the law of self-preservation, is planted in the sexes, and upon a blind obedience to this force, the continuity of the race depends.

The tendency in the races of history has been to over-population, or to a population beyond the food supply, and there is probably no race known to history that did not at some one period of its rise or fall suffer from over-population.

States have mostly been concerned, therefore, with restraining or inhibiting the natural reproductive instinct of their subjects through marriage laws which protect the State, by fixing paternal responsibility. There were strong reasons why a State should not be over-populated, and only one reason why it should not be under-populated. That one reason was the danger of annihilation from invasion.

Sparta was said to have suffered thus, because of under-population, and passed a law encouraging large families. Alexander encouraged his soldiers to intermarry with the women of conquered races, in order to diminish racial differences and antagonism, and Augustus framed laws for the discouragement of celibacy, but no law has ever been passed decreeing that individuals must mate, or if they do mate that they shall procreate.

Malthus, the great and good philanthropist of Harleybury, a great moralist and Christian clergyman, urged that it was people's duty not to mate and procreate until they had reasonable hope of being able easily to rear, support, and educate the normal family of four, and, if that were impossible, not to mate at all. As a Christian clergyman, Malthus did not interpret the Divine command apart from the consequences of its literal acceptance.

"Be fruitful," meant to Malthus reproduce your kind,—that implied not only bringing babies into the world, but rearing them up to healthy, robust, and prosperous manhood, with every prospect of continuing the process.

"Multiply and replenish the earth" as a command to Noah, meant in the mind of the Rector of Harleybury, "People the earth with men after your own image."

Very little care would be required in Noah's time, with his fine alluvial flats, and sparse population, but in Malthus's time the command could not be fully carried out without labour, self-development, and "moral restraint."

The physiological law is simple and blind, taking no cognisance of the consequences, or the quality of the offspring produced. The divine command is complex. It embodies the reproductive instinct, but restrains and guides it in view of ultimate consequences.

So much for the views and teaching of Malthus. To him no ethical standard was violated in preventing offspring by protracted continence, or lifelong celibacy, provided the motive was the inability so to provide for a family as to require no aid from the state. And it is difficult to escape this conclusion. There is no ethical, Christian, or social law, that directs a man or woman to procreate their kind if they cannot, or have reasonable grounds to think they cannot, support their offspring without aid from others.

There can be, therefore, no just law that decrees that men or women shall marry under such circumstances. In fact most philanthropists think they violate a social and ethical law if they do marry.

But, if with Paul, they resolve that it is better to marry than to burn, is there any law that can or should prevent them selecting the occasions of their union, with a view to limiting fertility.

Abstention is the voluntary hindrance of a desire, when that desire is strongest in both sexes; and as such it limits happiness, and is in consequence an evil per se. A motive that will control this desire must be a strong one; such a motive is not necessarily bad. It may be good or evil.

There can be no essential ethical difference between constant continence, prior to marriage, and intermittent continence subsequent to marriage, both practices having a similar motive.

If post nuptial restraint with a view to limiting offspring is wrong, restraint from marriage with the same motive is wrong.

If delayed marriage in the interest of the individual and the State is right, marriage with intermittent restraint is in the same interest, and can as easily be defended.

The ethics of prevention by restraint must be judged by its consequences. If unrestrained procreation will place children in a home where the food and comfort are adequate to their healthful support and development, then procreation is good,—good for the individual, society, and the State.

If the conditions necessary to this healthful support and development, can by individual or State effort be provided for all children born, it is the duty of the individual and of the State to make that effort.

All persons of fair education and good intelligence know what those conditions are, and if they procreate regardless of their absence, that procreation is an evil, and prevention by restraint is the contrary virtue.

It is not suggested, however, that all those who prevent, without or within the marriage bond, do so from this worthy motive, nor is it suggested that all those who prevent are not extravagant in their demand for luxurious conditions for themselves and for their children.

Many require not merely the conditions necessary to the healthful development of each and every child they may bear, but they demand that child-bearing shall not entail hardships nor the prospect of hardships, shall not involve the surrender of any comfort or luxury, nor the prospect of any such surrender.

Whatever doubt may exist in the minds of moralists and philanthropists as to the ethics of prevention in the face of poverty, there can be no doubt that prevention by those able to bear and educate healthy offspring, without hardship, is a pernicious vice degrading to the individual, and a crime against society and the State.

Aristotle called this vice "oliganthropy." Amongst the ancients it was associated with self-indulgence, luxury, and ease. It was the result of self-indulgence, but it was the cause of mental and moral anaemia, and racial decay.

So far in this chapter prevention has been dealt with only in so far as it is brought about by ante-nuptial and post-nuptial restraint. Artificial checks were first brought prominently before the notice of the British Public under the garb of social virtue, about the year 1877 by Mrs. Annie Besant and Mr. Charles Bradlaugh.

These checks to conception, though they are very largely used, can hardly be defended on physiological grounds. Every interference with a natural process must be attended, to some extent at least, with physical injury. There is not much evidence that the injury is great, but in so far as an interference is unnatural, it is unhealthy, and there is much evidence to show that many of the checks advocated and used, are not only harmful but are quite useless for the purpose for which they are sold.

It will be conceded by most, no doubt, that with those capable of bearing healthy children, and those unable to rear healthy ones when born, prevention by restraint, ante-nuptial or post nuptial, is a social virtue, while prevention under all other circumstances is a social vice.

Happiness has been defined as the surplus of pleasure over pain. What constitutes pleasure and what pain varies in the different stages of racial and individual development. In civilized man we have the pleasures of mind supplementing and in some cases replacing the pleasures of sense. We talk, therefore, of the higher pleasures—the pleasures of knowledge and learning, of wider sympathies and love, of the contemplation of extended prosperity and concord, of hope for international fraternity and peace, and for a life beyond the grave. Happiness to the highly civilized will consist, therefore, of the surplus of these pleasures over the pains of their negation.

Self-preservation is the basal law of life, and to preserve one's-self in happiness, the completest preservation, for happiness promotes health, and health longevity.

The first law of living nature then is to preserve life and the enjoyment of it, and the pleasures sought, to increase the sum of happiness will depend on the sentiments and emotions, i.e., on the faculties of mind that education and experience have developed, in the race, or in the individual.

My first thought is for myself, and my duty is to increase the sum of my happiness. But the mental state we call happiness is relative to the presence or absence of this state in others. Even amongst the lower animals, misery and distress in one of the flock militate against the happiness of the others. In a highly developed man true happiness is impossible in the presence of pain and misery in others and vice versa; happiness is contagious and flows to us from the joy of others. If the happiness of others then is so essential to my own happiness, I am fulfilling the first law of life and ministering to my own preservation in health and happiness by using my best endeavours to promote this state in others. My material comfort too depends largely on the labour, and love, and the contribution of others in the complex industrial system and division of labour of the higher civilisations. Not only my happiness and health but my very existence depends on the good-will and toil of others. Thus from a purely egoistic standpoint, my first duty to myself is to increase the happiness in others, and, therefore, my first duty to myself becomes my highest duty to society.

My duty to my child is comprehended in my duty to society, i.e., to others. My duty to others is to increase the sum of the happiness of others, and bringing healthy children into the world not only creates beings capable of experiencing and enjoying pleasures, but adds to the sum of social happiness, by increasing the number of social units capable of rendering service to others.

The next great law of life is the law of race preservation. This law comprises the instinct to reproduction and the instinct of parental love. The first and chief function of these instincts in the animal economy is the perpetuation of the race. The preservation of self implies and comprehends the preservation of the race.

My first duty to myself is to preserve myself in health and happiness; but this is best fulfilled and realized in labouring for the health and happiness of others. If this be the universal law, I also am the recipient of others' care, therefore probably better tended and preserved. I save my life by losing it in others.

My second duty, though nominally to Society, is in reality to myself, and it is to preserve myself by preserving the race to which I belong.

Self-preservation therefore, is the first law of life, race preservation the second or subsidiary law.

To fulfil this second law, nature has placed on every normal healthy man and woman the sacred duty of reproducing their kind. Reproduction as a physiological process promotes, both directly and indirectly, the health, happiness and longevity of healthy men and women.

Statistics confirm the popular opinion "that the length of life, to the enjoyment of which a married person may look forward, is greater than that of the unmarried, both male and female at the same age."—(Coghlan).

It is a familiar observation that the mothers of large families of ten and even twice that number are not less healthy nor shorter lived because of the children they have borne. Pregnancy is a stimulus to vitality. Because another life has to be supported, all the vital powers are invigorated and rise to the occasion—the circulation increases, the heart enlarges in response to the extra work, and the assimilative powers of the body are greatly accelerated. During lactation also, the same extra vital work done is a stimulus to a physiological activity which is favourable to health and longevity. The expectancy of life in women is greater than in men all through life, the difference during the child-bearing period of life being about 2.2 years in favour of women.

Statistics and physicians from their observation agree in this, that the bearing of children by normal women, so far from being injurious to health, is as healthful, stimulating, and invigorating a function as the blooming of a flower, or the shedding of fruit, and a mother is no worse for the experience of maternity than is the plant or the tree for the fruit it bears.

The supreme law of society is the law of race-preservation, and the infraction of this law is a social crime. One's duty to society is a higher duty than to one's-self, but the lower duty comes first in our present stage of racial evolution. Instinct prompts to the one, reason—a higher and later, but less respected, faculty—prompts to the other.

But it can be shown that from an egoistic standpoint my duty to the State in this regard is my highest duty to myself.

The parental sacrifice necessary in rearing the normal number of children is infinitesimal compared with the parental advantage.

Parental love is a passion as well as an instinct in normal men and women, and the full play of this passion in its natural state is productive of the greatest happiness.

Vice may restrain, replace, or smother it, but nothing else can damage or adulterate this powerful passion in the human heart.

Low level selfishness, love of low level luxury, diseased imaginings, and unreasonable dreads and fears, are some of the forms of vice that smother this noble passion.

The pursuit of happiness and the higher forms of selfishness would naturally point to parentage.

The ectasy of parental love, the sweet response from little ones that rises as the fragrance of lovely flowers, self-realization in the comfort and joy of family life, the parental pride in the contemplation of effulgent youth, the sympathetic partnership in success, the repose of old age surrounded by filial manhood and womanhood, all go to make a surplus of pleasure over pain, that no other way of life can possibly supply.

What is the alternative?

To miss all this and live a barren life and a loveless old age. Perhaps to bear a child, that, for the need of the educative, elevating companionship of family mates is consumed by self, inheriting that vicious selfishness, which he by his birth defeated, and finding all the forces of nature focussed on his defect, like a pack of hounds that turn and rend an injured mate.

Or a family of one, after years of parental care and love, education and expense, dies or turns a rake, and the canker of remorse takes his place in the broken hearts.

Nature's laws are not broken with impunity—as a great Physician has said, "She never forgives and never forgets."

Self-preservation and race-preservation together constitute the law of life, just as Conservation of Matter and Conservation of Energy constitute the Law of Substance in Haeckels Monistic Philosophy, and the severest altruism will permit man to follow his highest self-interest in obedience to these laws. It is only a perverted and vicious self-interest that would tempt him to infraction.

That the vice of oliganthropy is growing amongst normal and healthy people is a painful and startling fact. In New Zealand the prevailing belief is that a number of children adds to the cares and responsibilities of life more than they add to its joys and pleasures, and many have come to think with John Stuart Mill, that a large family should be looked on with the same contempt as drunkenness.



CHAPTER VII.

WHO PREVENT.

Desire for family limitation result of our social system.—Desire and practice not uniform through all classes.—The best limit, the worst do not.—Early marriages and large families.—N.Z. marriage rates. Those who delay, and those who abstain from marriage.—Good motives mostly actuate.—All limitation implies restraint.—Birth-rates vary inversely with prudence and self-control.—The limited family usually born in early married life when progeny is less likely to be well developed.—Our worst citizens most prolific.—Effect of poverty on fecundity.—Effect of alcoholic intemperance.—Effect of mental and physical defects.—Defectives propagate their kind.—The intermittent inhabitants of Asylums and Gaols constitute the greatest danger to society.—Character the resultant of two forces—motor impulse and inhibition.—Chief criminal characteristic is defective inhibition.—This defect is strongly hereditary.—It expresses itself in unrestrained fertility.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This class includes clerks with an income of L100 and under,—a large number with L150, and all misogynists with higher incomes.

It includes labourers with L75 a year and under, and many who receive L100.

Their motives for avoiding marriage are mostly prudential.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CASE NO. 1, p. 49. J. E——'s FAMILY.

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

CASE NO. 2, p. 108. K. S——'s FAMILY.

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

CASE No. 3, p. 125.

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

CASE No. 4, p. 137.

M Died mad M__M__ __M__M Imbecile Irritable Died of brain disease ____ _______ F. Imbecile Epileptic Epileptic 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 All seven died in convulsions

CASE No. 5, p. 137.

F. a suicide FF M Insane Insane Excitable Dull Epileptic Imbecile

CASE No. 6, p. 166.

MF Mute Normal M F Mute. No issue NormalM Normal F F M F Mute Mute Normal Normal M Mute

CASE No. 7, p. 231.

J.G. A——'s FAMILY HISTORY.

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

* * * * *

CASE No. 8, p. 303.

S. M——'s FAMILY.

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

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



CHAPTER VIII.

THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE FIT IN RELATION TO THE STATE.

The State's ideal in relation to the fertility of its subjects.—Keen competition means great effort and great waste of life.—If in the minds of the citizens space and food are ample multiplication works automatically.—To New Zealanders food now includes the luxuries as well as the necessities of life.—Men are driven to the alternative of supporting a family of their own or a degenerate family of defectives.—The State enforces the one but cannot enforce the other.—New Zealand taxation.—The burden of the bread-winner.—As the State lightens this burden it encourages fertility.—The survival of the unfit makes the burden of the fit.

The multiplication of the fit is of the first importance to the State. It supplies competent producers and courageous defenders, and the more of these, consistent with space and food (using these terms in their fullest significance), the better off the State.

If healthy happy citizens are the State's ideal, then limitation of population well within the space and food will be encouraged. If national wealth and prosperity in its material aspect are the State's ideal, the harder the population presses on the means of subsistence the sooner will that ideal be realised. For it cannot be denied, that the greater the stress and hardship in life, the more strenuous the effort put forth to obtain a foothold. The greater the competition the keener the effort, and the higher the accomplishment; while to ensure an adequate supply of labour in time of great demand there must always be a surplus.

The waste of life must always be greater; but what of that! National wealth is the ideal—the maximum amount of production. Child labour, and women labour, are called in to fill the national granaries, though misery and death attend the process.

If this be the ideal of the State, life is of less value than the product of labour, for it can be more easily and readily replaced.

But the ideal of the perfect state is not wealth but the robust happiness of its members.

The happiness of its members is best promoted by the maximum increase in its numbers, consistent with ample space and food. With ample space and food multiplication works automatically, being kept up to the limit of space and food by the procreative instinct.

If it can be shown that multiplication is not sufficiently stimulated by this instinct, then it must be concluded that, in the minds of the citizens the space and food are not ample.

In New Zealand the procreative impulse does not keep multiplication at an equal pace with the apparent supply of food and space, and this is due, as has been shown, to the fact that our citizens are not satisfied that the supply is ample.

They have come to enlarge the definition of "food," and this term now includes luxuries easily obtainable for themselves and their families.

But the luxuries of life and living can only be easily obtained when individual effort to obtain them is unhampered. Every burden which a man has to bear (only the best are here referred to,—the fit members of the State) limits his power to provide for himself, and any he may bring into the world.

If the State decrees that a citizen shall support himself, his mate, and his progeny, well and good,—if he has no other burden to bear, no other responsibility, he knows exactly where he is and what he has to do, and directs his energies and controls his impulses, and enlarges his desires to suit his tastes and purposes.

But if the State decrees that a citizen shall not only support all for whose existence he is responsible, but also all those unable to support themselves, born into the world in increasing numbers as congenital defectives, and manufactured in the world by legalised drinking saloons, and by pauperising charitable aid and benevolent institutions, then our self-respecting right-respecting citizen must decide whether he will forego the luxury and ease that he may enjoy, and rear the normal family, or curtail his own progeny, and support the army of defectives thrown upon society by the State-encouraged fertility of the unfit.

It has already been shown, that in this colony the best fit to multiply are ceasing to do so, because of a desire to attain a social and financial stability that will protect them and their dependents from want or the prospect of want. There is every reason to believe, that when this stability is assured the normal family soon follows.

The love of luxurious idleness and a passion for excitement, which were typical of the voluntarily barren women of ancient Rome, have little place with us, as a cause of limited nativity.

Men and women reason out, that they cannot bear all the burdens that the State imposes upon them, support an increasing army of paupers, and lunatics and defectives, and non-producers, and that luxuriously, and at the same time incur the additional burden of rearing a large family.

Let us examine these burdens, and see if the complaint of our best stock is justified.

The amount raised by taxation in New Zealand (including local rates) during the year 1902-03, amounted per head of population (excluding Maories) to L5 4s. 7d. The bread-winners in New Zealand number according to official returns, 340,230, and the total rates and taxes collected for the year 1902-03 amounted to L4,174,787 or L12 5s. 4d. for each bread-winner for the year.

On March 31st, 1901 (the last census date) there were 23.01 persons per thousand of population over 15 years of age, unable to work from sickness, accident and infirmity. Of these 12.72 were due to sickness and accident, and 10.29 to "specified infirmities."

The proportion of those suffering from sickness and accident in 1874 was 12.64 per 1000 over 15 years, practically the same as for 1901, while disability from "specified infirmities" (lunacy, idiocy, epilepsy, deformity, etc.)—degeneracies strongly hereditary—rose rapidly from 5.32 in 1874 to 10.29 in 1901, or taking the total sickness and infirmity, from 17.96 in 1874 to 23.01 in 1901.

On the last census date there were 340,230 bread-winners, and 12,747 persons suffering from sickness, accident, and infirmity, or 26 fit to work and earn for every one unfit.

The cost to the Colony per year of—

L 1. Hospitals, year ended 31st March, 1903 138,027

2. Charitable Aid (expended by boards),

year ended 31st March, 1903 93,158

3. Lunatic Asylums, year ended 31st Dec,

1902 (gross) 85,238

Lunatic Asylums, year ended 31st Dec,

1902 (nett) 64,688

4. Industrial Schools, year ended 31st Dec,1902

Government Industrial Schools for

neglected and criminal children 21,708

Government Expenditure on Private

Denominational Industrial Schools 2,526

5. Police Force, year ended 31st March, 1903 123,804

6. Prisons, year ended 31st March, 1903 32,070

7. Criminal Courts (Criminal Prosecutions), year ended 31st March, 1903 16,813

8. Old Age Pensions (pensions only for persons over 65 years of age, who have been 25 years in the Colony, and who make a declaration of poverty, including departmental expenses) 212,962

A total of L705,756. This constitutes the burden due to defectives and defects in others, a handful of workers have to bear in a sparse population of 800,000 souls in one of the finest countries on which the sun of heaven ever shone.

The burden which the fit have to bear has often been referred to by Dr. MacGregor, who states in one of his reports, "Wives and husbands, parents of bastards, all alike are encouraged by lavish charity (falsely so called) to entirely shirk their responsibilities in the well grounded assurance that public money will be forth-coming to keep them and their families in quite as comfortable position as their hardworking and independent neighbours."

The state can not decree that men shall marry, or that women shall marry, or that women shall procreate. All it can do is to discover why its subjects are not fertile, and remove the causes so far as it is possible.

As people become educated they become conscious of their limitations, and endeavour to break through them and better their conditions.

The more difficult this process is, the less likely will men and women be to incur the burden of a large family. The more the conditions of existence are improved, the more completely is each man's wish realized, and the more readily will he undertake the responsibilities of a family.

If the State can and will lighten the burden of taxation and modify the strain and stress of life, it will indirectly encourage procreation.

No direct encouragement is possible. It was tried and it failed in Sparta, it was tried by Augustus and it failed in Rome, it must fail everywhere, for the most willing and the most ready to respond to any provision made to encourage increase, are the unfit, and it is the fertility of the unfit that is the very evil that has to be attacked.

It is the fertility of the unfit that makes the burden of the fit, and a tax on bachelors, or a bonus on families, would be responded to by the least fit, long before it affected those whose response was anticipated, and the problem sought to be solved would only be aggravated thereby.

No encouragement whatever can the State afford to give to the natural increase of population till it has successfully grappled with the propagation of defectives.

The burden of life would be lessened by nearly one-third if the fertility of defectives could be stopped.

The State would have to support only those who acquired defects, the scars of service more honourable than wealth, in their efforts to support themselves and families, and these would be few indeed, if inherited tendencies could be eliminated or reduced to a minimum.

It is the purpose of this work to attempt to describe a method that will help to bring about this end.



CHAPTER IX.

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 L1 Total Per week. Cost. Family of B (Brothers). L s. d. L 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 —————— L3,817 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. 91/2; 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.



CHAPTER X.

WHAT ANAESTHETICS AND ANTISEPTICS HAVE MADE POSSIBLE.

Education of defectives in prudence and self-restraint of little avail.—Surgical suggestions discussed.

For the intelligent mind, which I assume has already been impressed with the importance of such an inquiry, I think I have set forth the salient truths with sufficient clearness, but holding that a recitation of social faults, without a suggestion as to social reforms, is not only useless but mischievous, I shall endeavour to show not only that the situation is not hopeless, but that science and experience have, or will reveal means to the accomplishment of all rationally desired ends, and that it remains only for intelligence to enquire that sentiment may move up to the line so as to harmonise with science, with justice, and with the demands of a growing necessity.

These questions of population are not new. More than two thousand years ago, many of the wisest philosophers of all the centuries meditated deeply upon the tendencies of the population to crowd upon subsistence, and in many ages and many countries, the situation has been discussed with serious forebodings for the future.

In all ages thinking men have regarded war with aversion, yet with peace and domestic prosperity other dangers arose to threaten the progress of the race, and as the passing generations cried out for some remedy for the ever pressing evils, thinking men have been proposing measures somewhat harmonising with the knowledge or the sentiment of the times. Whether we are wiser than our ancestors remains an unsettled question.

The old Greeks faced the problem boldly. There were two dangers in the minds of these ancient philosophers. There was the danger of over-population of good citizens, and there was the danger of increasing the burden good citizens had to bear by the maintenance of defectives. However good the breed, over-population was an economic danger, for, said Aristotle, "The legislator who fixes the amount of property should also fix the number of children, for if the children are too many for the property the law must be broken." (Politics II, 7-5.) And he further declares (ib. VII. 16 25) "As to the exposure and rearing of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live"; and the exposure of infants was for years the Grecian method of eliminating the unfit.

A century ago "Parson Malthus" dealt with over-population without regard to the fitness of individuals to survive, and he advised the exercise of moral restraint expressed in delayed marriage, to prevent population pressing on the limits of food, which he maintained it invariably tends to do. After the high souled Malthus, came the Neo-Malthusians, who, although they retained the name perverted the teaching of this great demographist, and some Socialist writers of high repute still advocate the systematic instruction of the poor in Neo-Malthusian practices.

The rising tide of firm conviction in the minds of present day sociologists, that the fertility of the unfit is menacing the stability of the whole social superstructure, is forcing many to advocate more drastic measures for the salvation of the race. Weinhold seriously proposed the annual mutilation of a certain portion of the children of the popular classes. Mr. Henry M. Boies, the most enlightened analyst of the problem of the unfit, in his exhaustive work "Prisoners and Paupers," urges the necessity of effectively controlling the fecundity of the degenerate classes, and he points to surgery, and life-long incarceration as the solution of the problem. Dr. McKim, in an exhaustive work on "Heredity and Human Progress," after declaring that he is profoundly convinced of the inefficiency of the measures which we bring to bear against the weakness and depravity of our race, ventures to plead for the remedy which alone, as he believes, can hold back the advancing tide of disintegration. He states his remedy thus:—"The roll then, of those whom our plan would eliminate, consists of the following classes of individuals coming under the absolute control of the State:—idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, habitual drunkards and insane criminals, the larger number of murderers, nocturnal house-breakers, such criminals whatever their offence as might through their constitutional organization appear very dangerous, and finally, criminals who might be adjudged incorrigible. Each individual of these classes would undergo thorough examination, and only by due process of law would his life be taken from him. The painless extinction of these lives would present no practical difficulty—in carbonic acid gas we have an agent which would instantaneously fulfil the need."

These briefly are some of the remedies which have been advocated and in part applied for the protection of the race from degeneracy. I quote them, not with approval, but merely to show how grave and serious the social outlook is, in the minds of some of the best thinkers and truest philanthropists that have taught mankind. If the fertility of the fit could be kept uniformly at its normal rate in a state of nature, the race would have little to fear, for the tendency to further degeneration and consequent extinction amongst the defective would be sufficient to counteract their disposition to a high fertility. But in all civilized nations, the fertility of the fit is rapidly departing from that normal rate, and Mr. Herbert Spencer declares, with the gloomiest pessimism, that the infertility of the best citizens is the physiological result of their intellectual development. I have already expressed the opinion that prudence and social selfishness, operating through sexual self-restraint on the part of the best citizens of the State, are the cause of their infertility. It is impossible for the State to correct this evil, except by lessening the burden the fit man has to bear; and the elimination of the unfit, by artificial selection, is the surest and most effective way of bringing this about.

We have learned from the immortal Pasteur the true and scientific method of artificial selection of the fit, by the elimination of the unfit. We have already seen that he examined the moth, to find if it were healthy, and rejected its eggs if it were diseased. Medical knowledge of heredity and disease makes it possible to conduct analogous examinations of prospective mothers; and surgery secreted in the ample and luxurious folds of anaesthesia, and protected by its guardian angels antiseptics, makes it possible to prevent the fertilization of human ova with a vicious taint. It is possible to sterilize defective women, and the wives of defective men by an operation of simple ligature, which produces absolutely no change whatever in the subjects of it, beyond rendering this fertilization impossible, for the rest of life. This remedy for the great and growing evil which confronts us to-day is suggested, not to avenge but to protect society, and in profound pity for the classes who are a burden to themselves, as well as to those who have to tend and support them.

The problem of the unfit is not new. The burden of supporting those unable to support themselves has been keenly felt in all ages and among all peoples.

The ancients realized the danger and the burden, but found no difficulty when the stress became acute in enacting that all infants should be examined and the defective despatched.

To come nearer home, Boeltius tells us, that, "in old times when a Scot was affected with any hereditary disease their sons were emasculated, their daughters banished, and if any female affected with such disease were pregnant, she was to be burned alive."

Aristotle declared (Politics Book II, p. 40) that "neglect of this subject is a never failing cause of poverty, and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime," and he advocated habitual abortion as one remedy against over-population. The combined wisdom of the Greeks found no better method of keeping population well within the limits of the State's power to support its members than abortion, and the exposure of infants.

Since Aristotle's time abortion has been largely practised by civilized nations. Mutilation and infibulation of females have been practised by savages with the same end in view, while vasectomy, orchotomy, and ovariotomy, have had their avowed advocates in our own time.

The purpose of all these measures was to limit population with little or no distinction as to fitness to survive. The Spartans in ancient times, and many social reformers of to-day have discussed and advocated the artificial limitation of the unfit. The exposure of defective infants was the Spartan method of preserving the physical and mental stature of the race.

The surgical operations on both sexes advocated by some social writers of recent date, have not been received with much favour, and, as a social reform have not been practised. As operations they are grave and serious, profound in their effect upon the individual, and a violation of public sentiment. Anaesthetics and antiseptics have, however, made them possible, and if a surgical operation could be devised, simple and safe in performance, inert in every way but one, and against which there would be no individual or public sentiment, its application as a social reform, would go far to solve the grave and serious problem of the fertility of the unfit.

The unfit are subject to no moral law in the matter of procreation. They can be taught nothing, and they will practise nothing. Like the lower animals they obey their instincts and gratify their desires as they arise.

It has been seriously suggested that the poor should be systematically taught Neo-Malthusian methods for the limitation of their offspring.

The best among the poor might practise them, the worst certainly would not, and the limitation among the best would only stimulate the fertility of the worst. This is the most innocent and harmless of the numerous suggestions made by reformers for controlling the fecundity of the poor.

Of surgical methods, castration of males, Oophorectomy or the removal of the ovaries in women, and vasectomy, or the section of the cords of the testicles, have all been suggested.

Annual castration of a certain number of the children of the popular classes was not long ago seriously proposed by Weinhold.

Boies, in his "Prisoners and Paupers," declares that surgical interference is the only method of dealing with the criminal, and preventing him from reproducing his kind. He says:—"These organs have no function in the human organism except the creation and gratification of desire and the reproduction of the species. Their loss has no effect upon the health, longevity, or abilities of the individual of adult years. The removal of them therefore by destroying desire would actually diminish the wants of nature and increase the enjoyments of life for paupers. A want removed is equivalent to a want supplied. In other words, such removal would be a positive benefit to the abnormal rather than a deprivation, rather a kindness than an injury. This operation bestowed upon the abnormal inmates of our prisons, reformatories, jails, asylums, and public institutions, would entirely eradicate those unspeakable evil practices which are so terribly prevalent, debasing, destructive, and uncontrolled in them. It would confer upon the inmates health and strength, for weakness and impotence, satisfaction and comfort for discontent and insatiable desire."

Anaesthetics have ensured that these operations may be performed without the slightest suspicion of pain, and with careful sympathetic surgery, pain may be absent throughout the whole of convalescence. Antiseptics have made it possible to perform these operations with practically no risk to life.

Though castration and Oophorectomy can be performed with safety and without pain, they are absolutely unjustifiable operations, if done to produce sterility.

Every incision and every stitch in surgery, beyond the necessities of the case, are objectionable, and to remove an organ, when the section of its duct is sufficient is to say the least of it, bad surgery.

Vasectomy is the resection of a portion of the duct of the testicles, followed by ligature of the ends. No doubt ligature alone would be sufficient for the purpose, but up to the present, a piece of the duct has been removed, when this operation has been found necessary in the treatment of disease.

This duct is the secretory tube of the testicle, so that when it is occluded, the secretion is dammed back, and degeneration and atrophy of the organ are induced. It soon wastes, and becomes as functionless as though it were removed.

This operation can be performed in a Surgery with the aid of a little Cocaine, and the patient may walk to his home, sterilized for the rest of his natural life, after the complete loss of any accumulated fluid.

Of these two operations for the sterilization of men, vasectomy is preferable. The major operation for the purpose of inducing artificial sterility should never for a moment be considered.

But vasectomy, though surgically simple, and a less violation of sentiment than castration, cannot be justified except in exceptional cases.

Neither of these operations makes the subjects of them altogether or at once impotent, certainly not for years. It sterilizes and partly unsexes them and in the end completely so.

But the physical and mental changes that follow the operation in the young adolescent are grave and serious, and a violent outrage upon the man's nature and sentiment.

Society can hope for nothing but evil from the man she forcibly unsexes; but if he must be kept in durance vile for the whole of his life there is little need for such an operation.

The criminal cases bad enough to justify this grave and extreme measure should be incarcerated for life.

The cases, it has been thought, that fully justify this operation are those guilty of repeated criminal assaults.

Such a claim arises out of insufficient knowledge of the physiology of sex, and the pathology of crime. Emasculation would have little influence in preventing a recurrence of this crime, for the operation does not render its subjects immediately impotent, nor does it change their sexual nature any more than it beautifies their character.

The instinct remains, and the power to gratify it remains at least for some years. With the less knowledge of surgery of earlier times, a social condition in which such a practice might be rationally considered, is conceivable, but with the present state of our profession, such measures would be unthinkable.



CHAPTER XI.

TUBO-LIGATURE.

The fertility of the criminal a greater danger to society than his depradations.—Artificial sterility of women.—The menopause artificially induced.—Untoward results.—The physiology of the Fallopian tubes.—Their ligature procures permanent sterility.—No other results immediate or remote.—Some instances due to disease.—Defective women and the wives of defective men would welcome protection from unhealthy offspring.

There is a growing feeling that society must be protected, not so much against the criminal as against the fertility of the criminal, and no rational, practicable, acceptable method has as yet been devised.

The operations on men to induce sterility have been discussed and dismissed as unsatisfactory.

But analogous operations may be performed on women. And if women can be sterilized by surgical interference, whence comes the necessity of sterilizing both?

Oophorectomy, or removal of the ovaries is analogous to castration. It is an equally safe, though a slightly more severe and complicated operation.

It can be safely and painlessly performed, the mortality in uncomplicated cases being practically nil.

The changes physical and mental are not so grave as in the analogous operation on the opposite sex, and they vary considerably at different ages and in different cases. The later in life the operation is performed the less the effect produced. At or after the menopause (about the 45th year) little or no change is noticeable.

In many, and especially in younger women however, grave mental and physical changes are induced. The menstrual function is destroyed, the appearance often becomes masculine, the face becomes coarse and heavy, and hair may appear on the lips and chin. Lethargy and increase of weight are often noticed, and not a few, especially in congenitally neurotic cases, have an attack of insanity precipitated.

On the same principle on which the radical operation on men was condemned, Oophorectomy must also be condemned. It is a serious operation, often attended with grave mental and physical disturbances, not the least of which is the partial unsexing of those subjected to it.

While these are delicate they are also pressing questions, questions which, like the mythical riddle of the Sphynx, not to answer means to be destroyed, yet the sentimental difficulties, are accentuated by modern progress, for the public conscience becomes more sensitive as problems become more grave. But as science has prepared the bridge over which society may safely march, so, with rules easily provided by an enlightened community all remedial measures formerly proposed—wise in their times, probably, may now be waived aside.

With our present knowlege, the simple process of tubo-ligature renders unsexing absolutely unnecessary in order to effect complete and permanent sterility. As the lesser operation vasectomy, is effectual in men, so is a lesser operation, tubo-ligature effectual in women. And it has this paramount advantage that, whereas vasectomy being an occlusion of a secretory duct, leads to complete atrophy and destruction of the testis, ligature of the Fallopian tube, which is only a uterine appendage and not a secretory duct of the ovary, has absolutely no effect whatever on that organ.

A simple ligature of each Fallopian tube would effectually and permanently sterilise, without in any way whatever altering or changing the organs concerned, or the emotions, habits, disposition, or life of the person operated on.