!No manufacturer
of to-day has let the product of his plant go to waste as society has wasted
the energies of this by-product of humanity. And the feeble-minded are happy
when they have occupation suited to their needs. If one will but see them when
they are set at occupations within their comprehension and ability, he will
quickly understand the joy they get out of congenial work.
Colonies such as
Mr. Johnstone describes will take care of the
able-bodied
feeble-minded; other institutions will provide for the very young and the aged;
finally, there will always be many of these defectives who can best be
"segregated" in their own homes; whose relatives have means and
inclination to care for them, and sufficient feeling of responsibility to see that
the interests of society are protected. If there is any doubt on this last
point, the state should itself assume charge, or should sterilise the defective
individuals; but it is not likely that sterilisation will need to be used to
any large
!extent in the
solution of this problem. In general it may be said that feeble-mindedness is
the greatest single dysgenic problem facing the country, that it can be
effectively solved by segregation, and that it presents no great difficulty
save the initial one of arousing the public to its importance.
Similarly the
hereditarily insane and epileptic can best be cared for through life-long
segregation--a course which society is likely to adopt readily, because of a
general dread of having insane and epileptic persons at liberty in the
community. There are undoubtedly cases where the relatives of the affected
individual can and should assume responsibility for his care. No insane or
epileptic person whose condition is probably of a hereditary character should
be allowed to leave an institution unless it is absolutely certain that he or
she will
!not become a
parent: if sterilisation is the only means to assure this, then it should be
used. In many cases it has been found that the individual and his relatives
welcome such a step.
The habitual
criminals, the chronic alcoholics, and the other defectives whom we have
mentioned as being undesirable parents, will in most cases need to be given
institutional care throughout life, in their own
!interest as
well as that of society. This is already being done with many of them, and the
extension of the treatment involves no new principle nor special difficulty.
It should be
borne in mind that, from a eugenic point of view, the essential element in
segregation is not so much isolation from society, but separation of the two
sexes. Properly operated, segregation increases the happiness of the
individuals segregated, as well as working to the advantage of the body
politic. In most cases the only objection to it is the expense, and this, as we
have shown, need not be an insuperable difficulty. For these reasons, we
believe that segregation is the best way in which to restrict the reproduction
of those whose offspring could hardly fail to be undesirable, and that
sterilisation
should be looked upon only as an adjunct, to be used in special cases where it
may seem advantageous to allow an individual full liberty, or partial liberty,
and yet where he or she can not be trusted
!to avoid
reproduction.
!
In 1911 the
American Breeders' Association appointed a "Committee to
Study and Report
on the Best Practical Means of Cutting Off the
Defective
Germ-Plasm in the American Population," and this committee has been at
work ever since, under auspices of the Eugenics Record Office, making a
particular study of legal sterilisation. It points out[90] that
!a sterilisation
law, to be of the greatest possible value, must:
!Consider
sterilisation as a eugenic measure, not as a punitive or even therapeutic one.
!Provide due
process of law, before any operation is carried out.
!Provide
adequate and competent executive agents.
!Designate only
proper classes of persons as subject to the law.
!Provide for the
nomination of individuals for sterilisation, by suitable procedure.
!Make an
adequate investigation of each case, the family history being the most
important part, and one which is often neglected at present.
!Have express
and adequate criteria for determining upon sterilisation.
!Designate the
type of operation authorised.
!Make each
distinct step mandatory and fix definitely the responsibility for it.
!Make adequate
appropriation for carrying out the measure.
When the law
prevents marriage on account of
insanity,
feeble-mindedness, or other hereditary defect, it obviously has a eugenic
value; but in so far as it concerns itself with venereal diseases, which are
not hereditary, it is only of indirect interest to eugenics. The great
objection to such laws is that they are too easily evaded by the persons whom
they are intended to reach--a fact that has been demonstrated conclusively
wherever they have been put in force.
Furthermore, the
nature of the examination demanded is usually wholly inadequate to ascertain
whether the applicant really is or is not
!afflicted with
a venereal disease. Finally, it is to be borne in mind that the denial of a
marriage license will by no means prevent reproduction, among the anti-social
classes of the community.
For these
reasons, the so-called eugenic laws of several states, which provide for a
certificate of health before a marriage license is issued,
are not adequate
eugenic measures. They have some value in awakening public sentiment to the
value of a clean record in a prospective life partner. To the extent that they
are enforced, the probability that persons afflicted with venereal disease are
on the average eugenically inferior to the unaffected gives these laws some
eugenic effect. We are not called on to discuss them from a hygienic point of
view; but we believe that it is a mistake for eugenists to let legislation of
this
!sort be
anything but a minor achievement, to be followed up by more efficient
legislation.
Laws which tend
to surround marriage with a reasonable amount of formality and publicity are,
in general, desirable eugenically.
They tend to discourage hasty and
secret marriages, and to make matrimony appear as a matter in which the public
has a legitimate interest, and which is not to be undertaken lightly and
without consideration. Laws
compelling the
young to get the consent of their parents before marriage are to be placed in
this category; and likewise the German law which requires the presentation of
birth-certificates before a marriage
!license is
issued.
This exhausts
the list of suggested coercive means of restricting the reproduction of the inferior.
What we propose is, we believe, a very modest program, and one which can be
carried out, as soon as public opinion is educated on the subject, without any
great sociological, legal or financial hindrances. We suggest nothing more than
that
individuals
whose offspring would almost certainly be subversive of the general welfare, be
prevented from having any offspring. In most cases, such individuals are, or
should be, given life-long institutional care
!for their own
benefit, and it is an easy matter, by segregation of the sexes, to prevent
reproduction. In a few cases, it will probably be found desirable to sterilise
the individual by a surgical operation.
Such coercive
restriction does, in some cases, sacrifice what may be considered personal
rights. In such instances, personal rights must give way before the immensely
greater interests of the race. But there is a much larger class of cases, where
coercion can not be approved, and yet where an enlightened conscience, or the
subtle force of public opinion, may well bring about some measure of restraint
on reproduction. This class includes many individuals who are not in any direct
way detrimental to society; and who yet have some inherited taint or defect
that should be checked, and of which they, if enlightened, would probably be
the first to desire the elimination. The number of
!high-minded
persons who deliberately refrain from marriage, or parenthood, in the interests
of posterity, is greater than any one imagines, except a eugenist brought into
intimate relations with people who take an intelligent interest in the subject.
comes, let us
say, from a family in which there is a persistent taint of epilepsy, or
insanity. X. is a normal, useful, conscientious member of society. To talk of
segregating such an individual would be rash. But
X. has given
some thought to heredity and eugenics, and decides that he, or she, will
refrain from marriage, in order to avoid transmitting the family taint to
another generation. Here we have, in effect, a
!non-coercive
restriction of reproduction. What shall we say of the action of X. in remaining
celibate,--is it wise or unwise? To be encouraged or condemned?
It is perhaps
the most delicate problem which applied eugenics offers. It is a peculiarly
personal one, and the outsider who advises in such a case is assuming a heavy
responsibility, not only in regard to
the future welfare of the race,
but to the individual happiness of X. We can not accept the sweeping
generalisation sometimes made that "Strength
should marry
weakness and weakness marry strength." No more can we hold fast to the
ideal, which we believe to be utopian, that "Strength should
!only marry
strength." There are cases where such glittering generalities are futile;
where the race and the individual would both be gainers by a marriage which
produced children that had the family taint, but either latent or not to a
degree serious enough to counteract their value. The individual must decide for
himself with especial reference to the trait in question and his other
compensating qualities; but he should at least have the benefit of whatever
light genetics can offer him, before he makes his decision.
In short, the
mating of strength with strength is certainly the ideal which society should
have and which every individual should have. But human heredity is so mixed
that this ideal is not always practicable; and if any two persons wish to
abandon it, society is hardly justified
in interfering,
unless the case be so gross as those which we were discussing in the first part
of this chapter. Progress in this direction
is to be
expected mainly from the enlightened action of the individual. Much more
progress in the study of heredity must be made before advice on marriage
matings can be given in any except fairly obvious cases. The most that can now
be done is to urge that a full knowledge of the family history of an intended
life partner be sought, to encourage the discreet inquiries and subtle guidance
of parents, and to appeal to the eugenic conscience of a young man or woman. In
case of doubt the advice of a competent biologist should be taken. There is a
real danger that
!high-minded
people may allow some minor physical defect to outweigh a greater mental
excellence.
!There remains
one other non-coercive method of influencing the distribution of marriage,
which deserves consideration in this connection.
We have said
that society can not well put many restrictions on marriage
at the present
time. We urge by every means at our command that marriage be looked upon more
seriously, that it be undertaken with more deliberation and consideration. We
consider it a crime for people to
marry, without
knowing each other's family histories. But in spite of all this, ill-assorted,
dysgenic marriages will still be made. When such a marriage is later
demonstrated to have been a mistake, not only from an individual, but also from
a eugenic point of view, society should be
ready to
dissolve the union. Divorce is far preferable to mere separation, since the
unoffending party should not be denied the privilege of remarriage, as the race
in most cases needs his or her contribution to the next generation. In extreme
cases, it would be proper for society to take adequate steps to insure that the
dysgenic party could neither remarry nor have offspring outside marriage. The
time-honoured justifiable grounds for divorce,--adultery, sterility, impotence,
venereal infection, desertion, non-support, habitual cruelty,--appear to us to
be no more worthy of legal recognition
than the more
purely dysgenic grounds of chronic inebriety,
!feeble-mindedness,
epilepsy, insanity or any other serious inheritable physical, mental or moral
defect.
In the closest
of blood-relationships the well-nigh universal
restrictions
should be retained. But when marriage between cousins--the commonest form of
consanguineous marriage--is examined, it is found to result frequently well,
sometimes ill. There is a widespread belief that such marriages are dangerous,
and in support of this idea, one is
referred to the
histories of various isolated communities where consanguineous marriage is
alleged to have led to "an appalling amount of defect and
degeneracy." Without questioning the facts, one may question the
interpretation of the facts, and it seems to us that a
!wrong
interpretation of these stories is partly responsible for the widespread
condemnation of cousin marriage at the present time.
!The Bahama
Islands furnish one of the stock examples. Clement A. Penrose writes[92] of
them:
"In some of
the white colonies where black blood has been excluded, and where, owing to
their isolated positions, frequent intermarriage has taken place, as for
instance at Spanish Wells, and Hopetown, much degeneracy is present, manifested
by many abnormalities of mind and body.... I am strongly of the opinion that
the deplorable state of
degeneracy which
we observed at Hopetown has been in a great measure, if not entirely, brought
about by too close intermarrying of the
!inhabitants."
To demonstrate
his point, he took the pains to compile a family tree of the most degenerate
strains at Hopetown. There are fifty-five marriages represented, and the chart
is overlaid with twenty-three red lines, each of which is said to represent an
intermarriage. This looks like a good deal of consanguineous mating; but to
test the matter a little farther
!the fraternity
at the bottom of the chart,--eight children, of whom five were idiots,--was
traced. In the second generation it ran to another island, and when the data
gave out, at the fourth generation, there was not a single case of
consanguineous marriage involved.
Another
fraternity was then picked out consisting of two men, both idiots and
congenitally blind, and a woman who had married and given birth to ten normal
children. In the fourth generation this pedigree, which was far from complete,
went out of the islands; so far as the data
showed there was
not a single case of consanguineous marriage. There was
one case where a
name was repeated, but the author had failed to mark this as a case of
intermarriage, if it really was such. It is difficult
!to share the
conviction of Dr. Penrose, that the two pedigrees investigated, offer an
example of the nefarious workings of intermarriage.
!We are unable
to see in such a history as that of Hopetown, Bahama Islands, any evidence that
consanguineous marriage necessarily results in degeneracy. Dr. Penrose himself
points to a potent factor when he says of his chart in another connection:
"It will be noticed that only a few of the descendants of Widow Malone
[the first settler at Hopetown] are indicated as having married. By this it is
not meant that the others did not marry; many of them did, but they moved away
and settled elsewhere, and in no way affected the future history of the settlement
of Hopetown."
By moving away,
it appears to us, they did very decidedly affect the future history of
Hopetown. Who are the emigrants? Might they not have been the more enterprising
and intelligent, the physically and mentally superior of the population, who rebelled
at the limited opportunities of their little village, and went to seek a
fortune in some broader field?
Did not the best
go in general; the misfits, the defectives, stay behind to propagate?
Emigration in such a case would have the same effect as war; it would drain off
the best stock and leave the weaklings to stay
!home and
propagate their kind. Under such conditions, defectives would be bound to
multiply, regardless of whether or not the marriages are consanguineous.
!"It will
be seen at a glance," Dr. Penrose writes, "that early in the history
of the Malone family these indications of degeneracy were absent; but they
began in the fourth generation and rapidly increased afterward until they
culminated by the presence of five idiots in one family. The original stock was
apparently excellent, but the present state of the descendants is
deplorable."
Now three
generations of emigration from a little community, which even to-day has only
1,000 inhabitants, would naturally make quite a difference in the average
eugenic quality of the population. In almost
any population,
a few defectives are constantly being produced. Take out the better
individuals, and leave these defectives to multiply, and the amount of
degeneracy in the population will increase, regardless of whether the
defectives are marrying their cousins, or unrelated persons.
!The family of
five idiots, cited by Dr. Penrose, is an excellent illustration, for it is not
the result of consanguineous marriage--at least, not in a close enough degree
to have appeared on the chart. It is doubtless a mating of like with like; and
biologically, consanguineous marriage is nothing more.
Honesty demands,
therefore, that consanguineous marriage be not credited with results for which
the consanguineous element is in no wise responsible. The prevailing habit of
picking out a community or a strain where consanguineous marriage and defects
are associated and loudly
!declaring the
one to be the cause of the other, is evidence of the lack of scientific thought
that is all too common.
!If one is going
to credit consanguineous marriage with these evil results, what can one say
when evil results fail to follow?
!What about
Smith's Island, off the coast of Maryland, where all the inhabitants are said
to be interrelated, and where a physician who lived in the community for three
years failed to find among the 700 persons a single case of idiocy, insanity,
epilepsy or congenital deafness?
!What about the
community of Batz, on the coast of France, where Voisin found five marriages of
first cousins and thirty-one of second cousins, without a single case of mental
defect, congenital deafness, albinism, retinitis pigmentosa or malformation?
The population was 3,000, all of whom were said to be interrelated.
And finally,
what about the experience of livestock breeders? Not only has strict brother
and sister mating--the closest inbreeding
!possible--been
carried on experimentally for twenty or twenty-five generations without bad
results; but the history of practically every fine breed shows that inbreeding
is largely responsible for its excellence.
The Ptolemies,
who ruled Egypt for several centuries, wanted to keep the throne in the family,
and hence practiced a system of intermating which has long been the classical evidence
that consanguineous marriage is
!not necessarily
followed by immediate evil effects. The following fragment of the genealogy of
Cleopatra VII (mistress of Julius Cæsar and Marc
Antony) is condensed from Weigall's Life and Times of Cleopatra (1914) and
Ptolemy I
|
| Ptolemy II
|
|
Ptolemy III m.
Berenice II, his half-cousin.
|
|
Ptolemy IV m. Arsinoë III, his full sister.
|
|
Ptolemy V.
|
|
Ptolemy VII m.
Cleopatra II, his full sister.
|
|
Cleopatra III m.
Ptolemy IX (brother of VII), her uncle.
|
|
Ptolemy X. m.
Cleopatra IV, his full sister.
|
-----|
| Berenice II m. Ptolemy XI (brother of X), her
uncle.
| |
| |
| Ptolemy XII, d. without issue, succeeded by
his uncle.
| |
| |
---Ptolemy XIII.
|
|
Cleopatra VII.
!
shows an amount
of continued inbreeding that has never been surpassed in
!recorded
history, and yet did not produce any striking evil results. The ruler's consort
is named, only when the two were related. The consanguineous marriages shown in
this line of descent are by no means the only ones of the kind that took place
in the family, many like them being found in collateral lines.
It is certain
that consanguineous marriage, being the mating of like with like, intensifies
the inheritance of the offspring, which gets a "double dose" of any
trait which both parents have in common. If the traits are good, it will be an
advantage to the offspring to have a double dose of them; if the traits are
bad, it will be a disadvantage.
!The marriage of
superior kin should produce children better than the parents; the marriage of
inferior kin should produce children even worse than their parents.
!In passing
judgment on a proposed marriage, therefore, the vital question is not,
"Are they related by blood?" but "Are they carriers of desirable
traits?"
!The nature of
the traits can be told only by a study of the ancestry. Of course, characters
may be latent or recessive, but this is also the case in the population at
large, and the chance of unpleasant results is so small, when no instance can
be found in the ancestry, that it can be disregarded. If the same congenital
defect or undesirable trait does not appear in the three previous generations
of two cousins, including collaterals, the individuals need not be discouraged
from marrying if they want to.
Laws which
forbid cousins to marry are, then, on an unsound biological basis. As Dr.
Davenport remarks, "The marriage of Charles Darwin and Emma Wedgewood
would have been illegal and void, and their children pronounced illegitimate in
Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma,
Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and other
states." The vitality and great capacity of their seven children are well
known. A law which would have prevented such a marriage is certainly not
eugenic.
!
We conclude,
then, that laws forbidding cousin marriages are not
desirable. Since
it would be well to make an effort to increase the opportunities for further
play of sexual selection, the lack of which is sometimes responsible for cousin
marriages, consanguineous marriage is by no means to be indiscriminately
endorsed. Still, if there are cases where it is eugenically injurious, there
are also cases where its
!results are
eugenically highly beneficial, as in families with no serious defects and with
outstanding ability.
!To sum up: we
believe that there are urgent reasons for and no objections to preventing the
reproduction of a number of persons in the United States, many of whom have
already been recognised by society as being so anti-social or inferior as to
need institutional care. Such restriction can best be enforced by effective
segregation of the sexes, although there are cases where individuals might well
be released and allowed full freedom, either "on parole," so to
speak, or after having undergone a surgical operation which would prevent their
reproduction.
Laws providing
for sterilisation, such as a dozen states now possess,
!are not framed
with a knowledge of the needs of the case; but a properly drafted sterilisation
law to provide for cases not better treated by segregation is desirable.
Segregation should be considered the main method.
!It is
practicable to place only minor restrictions on marriage, with a eugenic goal
in view.
!Marriages of
individuals whose families are marked by minor taints can not justify social
interference; but an enlightened conscience and a eugenic point of view should
lead every individual to make as good a choice as possible.
!If a
eugenically bad mating has been made, society should minimise as far as
possible the injurious results, by means of provision for properly restricted
divorce.
!Consanguineous
marriages in a degree no closer than that of first cousins, are neither to be
condemned nor praised indiscriminately. Their desirability depends on the
ancestry of the two persons involved; each case should therefore be treated on
its own merits.
CALEB SALEEBY’S Parenthood & Race Culture: An Outline of Family Eugenics
CALEB SALEEBY’S Parenthood & Race Culture: An Outline of Family Eugenics
!
