CHAPTER XVII

THE EUGENISTS

By all odds eugenics is the most popular phase of the selection question under discussion in this generation. Since so much misconception and utter nonsense are current regarding the aim and methods of eugenics, and since its methods bear so intimately upon the whole subject of conscious social progress, a brief excursion into its field. is unavoidable.

What is eugenics? Sir Francis Galton, the inventor of the term, defined it at one time as the "science which Ideals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage"; and later as "the science which deals with those social agencies that influence, mentally or physically, the racial qualities of future generations"; still later as the "study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally." Dr. Saleeby, one of the foremost English eugenists, defines it succinctly if not convincingly as "selection for parenthood, not selection for life."

It is obvious that these definitions are vague, that they are not entirely consistent, and that they deal with most uncertain quantities. What, for instance, are the "racial qualities" to be seized upon eugenically? Are they social types or race types or germinal types? Can there be any

selection for parenthood that is not preeminently selection for life? Is this "science" coextensive with that whole process we call social selection? It is to be devoutly hoped that a science to guide social selection may be developed. But whether eugenics meets that need does not by any means yet appear. Prince Kropotkin hit off the situation very wittily by remarking that it is not a real science, but the ideas, generalities, and desires of a few people.

The nascent science has suffered from over-zealous propagandists, with the embarrassing result that popular usage plays so fast and loose with the term "eugenics" that it has come to mean anything from general hygiene and infant welfare to evolution and the control of venereal disease. It has also suffered from over-statement as to its present command of facts and methods. Unfortunately, among the eugenists are numbered some unblushingly assured souls. One of them does not hesitate to aver that the "individuals have the power to improve the race, but not the knowledge what to do. We students of genetics possess the knowledge but not the power; and the great hope lies in the dissemination of our knowledge among the people at large."1 It is a testimonial to the strength of the eugenics cause itself that it is able to make headway in spite of such rash followers. May it not have been a premonition of just such exaggerations that led Galton towards the end of his life to fear that the new science would do more harm than good? As Galton's third definition clearly shows, eugenics has nothing to do with natural selection. It is limited, Professor Johnson insists,2 simply and solely to "the Galtonian concept of the science and art of the control of human germinal characteristics." While some eugenists contend that their science is bound to become a very much larger,

1 A. G. Bell, Journal of Heredity, January, 1914.

2 Amer. Jour. Sociology, 20: 103.

more complex and more difficult matter than Galton forecasted, yet there is substantial agreement that they are not trying to interfere with nor improve on nature. They merely strive to avail themselves of natural processes for high social purposes; that is, they aim at conscious social progress through biological methods. Biology is to become a leading partner with sociology in social improvement. Sometimes, it is true, eugenics, and for that matter biology itself, would appear to be attempting to assume a sort of rough and ready guardianship over a group of toddling infant wards, the social sciences. But, on the whole, eugenics cannot be accused of opposing social reform, except so far as it allows the unfit to multiply. On the other hand, the eugenists hold that selective breeding will relieve the social reformer of most of his work.

Eugenists are not by any means so nearly at one among themselves on the score of methods. A eugenist parliament would look much like any continental legislature with its Right, Left, Center, Conservatives, Ultramontanes and Radicals. But, as so often happens, their differences are largely a matter of emphasis. A certain common policy is discernible. (That policy is, to be sure, negative — the extirpating of the unfit.) Dr. C. B. Davenport's "proper program for elimination of the unfit" is typical. It includes "segregation of the feebleminded, epileptic, insane, hereditary criminals and prostitutes throughout the reproductive period and the education of the more normal people as to fit and unfit matings." 2

One end of the eugenist's program apparently touches that of Malthus and his followers, Place, Owen, Bentham and the two Mills, with their preaching of self-restraint to the poor. John Stuart Mill expressed this attitude in

1 See, for example, Saleeby, Forum, April, 1914.

2 Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, 259.

1

declaring that "little improvement can be expected in morality until the producing of large families is regarded with the same feelings as drunkenness or any other physical excess." Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century sporadic attempts were made to rouse English public opinion to a sense of its duty to check the increase of weaker classes in the population. Drysdale, Bradlaugh, and Mrs. Besant preached contraception. Their illadvised prosecution by certain self-appointed watch-dogs over public morality simply added fuel to the otherwise feeble flame of public interest in birth control. A theory of political economy threatened to become a religion with its quota of martyrs.

The hitch, however, lay then and still lies in the proper means for carrying out this policy of limitation. The means proposed, marriage restriction, voluntary celibacy, contraception or self-restraint, segregation, sterilization, are all of them more or less open to serious objections. Marriage restrictions are notoriously ineffective. Wholesale segregation is too expensive to appeal to the tax-payer. Sterilization, particularly of feebleminded women, would prevent reproduction but would not protect them from abuse, and might induce a stolid complacency in police, courts, and the general public that would preclude adequate attention to these victims of lust. Voluntary celibacy and self-restraint are not to be expected from the feebler, less resistant members of society. But all of these principles, if used with discretion, might serve effectively as negative means.

Need we go so far, however, as to assume that the future of civilization and race health can only be accomplished by wholesale extirpation? A group of American genetists

1 Principles of Political Economy, 4th ed., Vol. I, Bk. II, chap. xiii, P. 448, note.

representing the Breeders' Association are accused of meditating a monstrous scheme to sterilize the entire lower one-tenth of our population from generation to generation.1 The charge is not quite justified, however. The committee report upon which the charge is based was published as Bulletin 10-A of the Eugenics Record Office. While it did not say in so many words what it is accused of saying, yet it is easy to see how ambiguity might creep in. Here are its actual words:

"For the purposes of eugenical study and in working out a policy of elimination, it seems fair to estimate the antisocial varieties of the American people at ten per cent. of the total population; but even this is arbitrary. No matter in what stage of racial progress a people may be, it will always be desirable in the interests of still further advancement to cut off the lowest levels and to encourage high fecundity among the more gifted.'

The chief source of misconception lies obviously enough in the phrase "to cut off "; that is to say, the means for elimination. On this point the committee was explicit. The means recommended, in the order of their importance, were chiefly three: (1) Segregation for life or during the reproductive period; this would require a progressive increase in institutional capacity, so that by 1980 custodial care could be provided for 1500 persons out of every 100,000 of the general population. (2) Sterilization as a purely supplementary policy, to reach, prior to their release, all inmates of institutions supported wholly or in part by public funds, who are marked by "undesirable hereditary potentialities"; beginning with approximately 80 persons per year per 100,000 of the general population, and pro

1 See the remarks of Mr. Charles Boston of the New York Bar in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, January, 1915; also his annual address before the 1914 meeting of the American Association for Medical Jurisprudence, reprinted in the Medical Times (New York), March, 1915.