Applied Eugenics CHAPTER VIII! ! !DESIRABILITY OF RESTRICTIVE EUGENICS!

CHAPTER VIII!

!

!DESIRABILITY OF RESTRICTIVE EUGENICS!

!

In a rural part of Pennsylvania lives the L. family. Three generations

studied "all show the same drifting, irresponsible tendency. No one can say they are positively bad or serious disturbers of the communities

where they may have a temporary home. Certain members are epileptic and defective to the point of imbecility. The father of this family drank

!and provided little for their support. The mother, though hard working, was never able to care for them properly. So they and their 12 children were frequent recipients of public relief, a habit which they have consistently kept up. Ten of the children grew to maturity, and all but one married and had in their turn large families. With two exceptions these have lived in the territory studied. Nobody knows how they have subsisted, even with the generous help they have received. They drift in and out of the various settlements, taking care to keep their residence in the county which has provided most liberally for their support. In some villages it is said that they have been in and out half a dozen times in the last few years. First one family comes slipping back, then one by one the others trail in as long as there are cheap shelters to be had. Then rents fall due, neighbors become suspicious of invaded henroosts and potato patches, and one after another the families take their departure, only to reappear after a year or two.

!"The seven children of the eldest son were scattered years ago through the death of their father. They were taken by strangers, and though kept in school, none of them proved capable of advancement. Three at least could not learn to read or handle the smallest quantities. The rest do this with difficulty. All but two are now married and founding the fourth generation of this line. The family of the fourth son are now county charges. Of the 14 children of school age in this and the remaining families, all are greatly retarded. One is an epileptic and at 16 can not read or write. One at 15 is in the third reader and should be set down as defective. The remainder are from one to four years retarded.

"There is nothing striking in the annals of this family. It comes as

near the lowest margin of human existence as possible and illustrates how marked defect may sometimes exist without serious results in the infringement of law and custom. Its serious menace, however, lies in the certain marriage into stocks which are no better, and the production of large families which continue to exist on the same level of

!semi-dependency. In place of the two dependents of a generation ago we now find in the third generation 32 descendants who bid fair to continue their existence on the same plane--certainly an enormous multiplication of the initial burden of expense."[75]

From cases of this sort, which represent the least striking kind of bad breeding, the student may pass through many types up to the great tribes of Jukes, Nams, Kallikaks, Zeros, Dacks, Ishmaels, Sixties, Hickories, Hill Folk, Piney Folk, and the rest, with which the readers of the literature of restrictive eugenics are familiar. It is abundantly demonstrated that much, if not most, of their trouble is the outcome of bad heredity. Indeed, when a branch of one of these clans is

transported, or emigrates, to a wholly new environment, it soon creates for itself, in many cases, an environment similar to that from which it came. Whether it goes to the city, or to the agricultural districts of

the west, it may soon manage to re-establish the debasing atmosphere to which it has always been accustomed.[76] Those who see in improvement of the environment the cure for all such plague spots as these tribes inhabit, overlook the fact that man largely creates his own environment. The story of the tenement-dwellers who were supplied with bath tubs but refused to use them for any other purpose than to store coal,

!exemplifies a wide range of facts.

Although conditions may be worst in the older and more densely populated states, it is probable that there is no state in the union which has not

many families, or group of families, of this dependent type, which in favourable cases may attract little notice, but therefore do all the more harm eugenically; in other cases may be notorious as centers of criminality. Half a dozen well-defined areas of this kind have been found in Pennsylvania, which is probably not exceptional in this respect. "These differ, of course, in extent and character and the gravity of the problems they present. In some there is great sexual laxity, which leads to various forms of dependency and sometimes to

!extreme mental defect. In others alcoholism prevails and the people show a propensity for deeds of violence. All informants, however, practically agreed to the following characterisation:

!"1. Because of the thefts and depredations and the frequent applications for charitable relief from such sections they constitute a parasitic growth which saps the resources of the self-respecting, self-sustaining contingent of the population.

!"2. They furnish an undue proportion of court cases, and are thus a serious expense to county and state.

"3. They are a source of physical decay and moral contamination, and thus menace the integrity of the entire social fabric."[77]

!

Society has long since admitted that it is desirable to restrict the

reproduction of certain classes of gross defectives, and criminals, by the method of segregation. The ground for this is sometimes biological, perhaps more often legal, as in the case of the insane and criminal, where it is held that the individual is legally incapacitated from entering into a contract, such as that of marriage. It would be better

!to have the biological basis of restriction on marriage and reproduction recognised in every case; but even with the present point of view the desired end may be reached.

!From an ethical standpoint, so few people would now contend that two feeble-minded or epileptic persons have any "right" to marry and perpetuate their kind, that it is hardly worth while to argue the point. We believe that the same logic would permit two individuals to marry, but deny them the privilege of having children. The reasons for this may be considered under three heads.

!Biological. Are there cases in which persons may properly marry but may properly be prevented by society from having any offspring, on the ground that such offspring would be undesirable components of the race?

The right of marriage is commonly, and may well be properly, regarded as an inalienable right of the individual, in so far as it does not

conflict with the interests of the race. The companionship of two persons between whom true love exists, is beyond all question the highest happiness possible, and one which society should desire and strive to give its every member. On that point there will be no difference of opinion, but when it is asked whether there can be a

separation between the comradeship aspect and the reproduction aspect, in marriage, whether any interest of the race can justifiably divorce

!these two phases, often considered inseparable, protests are at once aroused. In these protests, there is some justice. We would be the last ones to deny that a marriage has failed to achieve its goal, has failed to realise for its participants the greatest possible happiness,  unless it has resulted in sound offspring.

That word "sound" is the key to the distinction which must be made. The interests of the race demand sound offspring from every couple in a position to furnish them--not only in the interests of that

couple,--interests the importance of which it is not easy to underestimate--but in the interests of the future of the race, whose welfare far transcends in importance the welfare of any one individual, or any pair of individuals. As surely as the race needs a constant supply of children of sound character, so surely is it harmed by a supply of children of inherently unsound character, physically or mentally, who may contribute others like themselves to the next generation. A recollection of the facts of heredity, and of the fact

that the offspring of any individual tend to increase in geometric ratio, will supply adequate grounds for holding this conviction:--that from a biological point of view, every child of congenitally inferior character is a racial misfortune. The Spartans and other peoples of

antiquity fully realised this fact, and acted on it by exposing deformed infants. Christianity properly revolted as such an action; but in repudiating the action, it lost sight of the principle back of the

action. The principle should have been regarded, and civilised races are now coming back to a realisation of that fact--are, indeed, realising

!its weight far more fully than any other people has ever done, because of the growing realisation of the importance of heredity. No one is likely seriously to argue again that deformed infants (whether their deformity be physical or mental) should be exposed to perish; but the argument that in the interests of the future of the race they would better not be born, is one that admits of no refutation.

!From a biological point of view, then, it is to the interest of the race that the number of children who will be either defective themselves, or transmit anti-social defects to their offspring, should be as small as possible.

The humanitarian aspect of the case is no less strong and is likely, in the present state of public education, to move a larger number of individuals. A visit to the children's ward of any hospital, an

!acquaintance with the sensitive mother of a feeble-minded or deformed child, will go far to convince anyone that the sum total of human happiness, and the happiness of the parents, would be greater had these children never been born. As for the children themselves, they will in many cases grow up to regret that they were ever brought into the world. We do not overlook the occasional genius who may be crippled physically or even mentally; we are here dealing with only the extreme defectives, such as the feeble-minded, insane, and epileptic. Among such persons, human happiness would be promoted both now and in the future if the number of offspring were naught.

!There is another argument which may legitimately be brought forward, and which may appeal to some who are relatively insensitive to the biological or even the humanitarian aspects of the case. This is the financial argument.

Except students of eugenics, few persons realise how staggering is the bill annually paid for the care of defectives. The amount which the

state of New York expends yearly on the maintenance of its insane wards, is greater than it spends for any other purpose except education; and in

a very few years, if its insane population continues to increase at the present rate, it will spend more on them than it does on the education of its normal children. The cost of institutional care for the socially inadequate is far from being all that these people cost the state; but

those figures at least are not based on guesswork. The financial burden is becoming a heavy one; it will become a crushing one unless steps are taken to make

the feeble-minded productive and an intangible "sinking fund" at the same time created to reduce the burden gradually by preventing the production of those who make it up. The burden can never be wholly obliterated, but it can be largely reduced by

!a restriction of the reproduction of those who are themselves socially inadequate.

!Alike then on biological, humanitarian and financial grounds, the nation would be the better for a diminution in the production of physically, mentally or morally defective children. And the way to secure this diminution is to prevent reproduction by parents whose offspring would almost certainly be undesirable in character.

Granted that such prevention is a proper function of society, the question again arises whether it is an ethically correct procedure to allow these potentially undesirable parents to marry at all. Should they

!be doomed to perpetual celibacy, or should they be permitted to mate, on condition that the union be childless.

The eugenic interests of society, of course, are equally safeguarded by either alternative. All the other interests of society appear to us to

be better safeguarded by marriage than by celibacy. Adding the interests of the individual, which will doubtless be for marriage, it seems to us that there is good reason for holding such a childless marriage

!ethically correct, in the relatively small number of cases where it might seem desirable.

!It is constantly alleged that the state can not interfere with an individual matter of this sort: "It is an intolerable invasion of personal liberty; it is reducing humanity to the level of the barn-yard; it is impossible to put artificial restraints on the relations between the sexes, founded as they are on such strong and primal feelings."

The doctrine of personal liberty, in this extreme form, was enunciated and is maintained by people who are ignorant of biology and evolution;[79] people who are ignorant of the world as it is, and deal only with the world as they think it ought to be. Nature reveals no such extreme "law of personal liberty," and the race that tries to carry such a supposed law to its logical conclusion will soon find, in the supreme test of competition with other races, that the interests of the

individual are much less important to nature than the interests of the race. Perpetuation of the race is the first end to be sought. So far as according a wide measure of personal liberty to its members will compass that end, the personal liberty doctrine is a good one; but if it is held

!as a metaphysical dogma, to deny that the race may take any action necessary in its own interest, at the expense of the individual, this dogma becomes suicidal.

!As for "reducing humanity to the level of the barn-yard," this is merely a catch-phrase intended to arouse prejudice and to obscure the facts. The reader may judge for himself whether the eugenic program will degrade mankind to the level of the brutes, or whether it will ennoble it, beautify it, and increase its happiness.

Every civilized nation already puts restrictions on numerous classes of people, as has been noted--minors, criminals, and the insane, for example. Even though this

restriction is usually based on legal, rather than biological grounds, it is nevertheless a restriction, and sets a precedent for further restrictions, if any precedent were needed.

!

It is, we conclude, both desirable and possible to enforce certain

!restrictions on marriage and parenthood. What these restrictions may be, and to whom they should be applied, is next to be considered.
CALEB SALEEBY’S Parenthood & Race Culture: An Outline of Family Eugenics