The Super Race: An American Problem Part 3

The government--providing the machinery of state administration, furnis.h.i.+ng the school, the playground, and the library; affording an opportunity for the exercise of citizens.h.i.+p and the expression of those advancing ideas which must gradually remold the social inst.i.tutions of each age in response to the demands of the new generation--affords one of the most potent forces for the development of the Super Man.

The school is the big home; the government is the big school. The child leaves the home, and enters the school; leaves the school and enters the state. In the home he is acted upon; in the school he, himself, begins to act; but in the government he is the sole actor--he is the state. A home must be higher than the children; the school must be more advanced than the pupils; but the state reflects exactly the character of its citizens.

It is in the state that the Super Man, crystallizing his convictions and beliefs into the form of legislative enactments, must prepare the way for the Super Race.

The Super Race is the produce of heredity, of social environment, and of individual development. Heredity supplies the raw material--the individual human being, while education and social environment, operating upon this raw stuff, determine the course of its development. Steel is not made from bee's wax, nor is the Super Man created out of a defective heredity. In like manner, since those who are in Rome do as the Romans do, the raw material, no matter what its quality, is shaped by its surroundings. The old saying "as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined,"

should be modified in this one particular--the force which bends the twig must continue in the tree, else the latter will turn and grow toward the sky.

The stock of the Super Man will be secured by the mating of persons possessing the Super-Race qualities; yet, reared in an unfavorable environment, these qualities cannot produce the highest result.

Neither biologic nor social forces are alone adequate to develop the Super Race. Physique, mental capacity, aggressiveness, concentration, sympathy and vision are the products of heredity, social environment and training.

The system of human mating must be perfected and the status of social inst.i.tutions must be raised in order that the individuals produced in each generation may attain an additional increment of the qualities which will, in the end, produce the Super Race.

CHAPTER V

THE AMERICAN OPPORTUNITY

Here, in brief compa.s.s, are laid down the general principles upon which a nation must rely for the raising of its standard of human excellence. In general, we are convinced that the Super Race is possible.

Specifically--and here is the next point--there are more possibilities for the development of the Super Race in the United States to-day than there have been in any nation of the past; or than there are in any nation of the present. The Super Race is America's distinctive opportunity.

The factors which may play so significant a part in establis.h.i.+ng a Super Race in the United States are here set down in an order which permits of sequential treatment--

1. Natural resources.

2. The stock of the dominant races.

3. Leisure.

4. The emanc.i.p.ation of women.

5. The abandonment of war.

6. A knowledge of race making.

7. A knowledge of Social Adjustment.

8. A widespread educational machinery.

Natural resources are an indispensable element in national progress. A congenial climate is a pre-requisite to social development. No permanently successful civilization can be erected on the sh.o.r.es of Hudson Bay, or in the torrid heat of the Amazon Valley. The temperate zones, with their variable climate, and their wide range of vegetable products, seem to provide the foundation for the successful civilizations of the immediate future. No less necessary to civilization are harbors for the maintenance of commerce; and an abundance of minerals, the sinews of industry; and most important of all, fertile agricultural land.

In its possession of these natural resources, the United States is unexcelled. Its climate, while generally temperate, varies sufficiently to give an excellent range of products; harbors and rivers are abundant; forests and minerals are scattered everywhere; and the agricultural land, rich and well watered, is as extensive and as potentially productive as any equivalent area in the world. So far as natural resources provide a basis for a Super Race, the United States occupies a position of almost unique prominence.

The stock of the dominant races may or may not be a cant phrase.

Notwithstanding the effective work done by Ripley in his _Races of Europe_,[19] an impression still prevails that certain races are, from their racial characteristics, specially fitted to dominate others.

Woodruff, in his _Expansion of Races_,[20] takes this view, strongly urging the claim of the northwestern European to the distinction of world ruler. Whether race be a matter of supreme or of little concern, in determining the development of a Super Race, the United States possesses an admirable blending of the western European peoples who now occupy the dominant position in the commercial and military affairs of the world. If racial stock be a matter of no importance, it requires no emphasis; if, on the other hand, it be a significant factor in the creation of the Super Race, then the United States holds an enviable position in its racial qualities.

Thus the raw materials of nation building--the natural resources and the racial qualities, are possessed by the United States in generous abundance. Has our use of them tended toward the development of the Super Race?

Leisure is an opportunity for the pursuit of a congenial avocation. It must be carefully differentiated from the idleness with which it is so often considered synonymous. Satan still finds mischief for idle hands.

The man who idles in leisure time is as likely now as ever in the past to find himself breaking several of the commandments. Leisure merely provides an opportunity for free choice. Unwisely used, it leads to individual dissipation and social degeneracy. Wisely employed, it is a most important means for the promotion of social progress.

Most of the great things of the world have been done in leisure time. A poet cannot create, nor can a mechanic devise, if he is forced during twelve hours each day to struggle for the bare necessities of life. A study of the lives of those who have made notable achievements in art, science, literature, and diplomacy shows that they were free, for the most part, from the bread and b.u.t.ter struggle. They had estates, they were the recipients of pensions, but they did not submit to the soul-destroying monotony of repeating the same task endlessly through the long reaches of a twelve hour day.

Primitive society demands the service of even its immature members.

Children are adults before their childhood is well begun. Civilization, recognizing the possibility of self preservation through lengthened youth, has said to the child "Play."

Long youth means long life. Play time--leisure--for the youth is the bone and sinew of a high standard maturity. Leisure in youth for play, leisure in mature life for reflection and creation--these are two of the most precious gifts of civilization to social progress.

The United States has led the nations in providing opportunity for leisure time. Labor saving devices have been brought to a higher perfection there than in any other part of the world. Nowhere are children kept longer from a.s.suming the responsibilities of adult life; in few countries is the workday shorter for adults.

Probably no other people in the world can supply themselves with the necessaries of life in so short a working time as can the inhabitants of the United States. If every able bodied adult engaged for five hours each day in gainful activity, enough economic goods could be created to provide all the necessaries and many of the comforts of life. The leisure obtained through American industry, if rightly directed, may provide for every child born a thorough education--an ample opportunity to express the qualities which are latent in him--and a thorough preparation for life.

The emanc.i.p.ation of women is another force which may be directed toward the improvement of race qualities. Women bear the race in their bodies; at least half of the qualities of the offspring are inherited from them; as mothers, they educate the children during the first six years of their lives, and then, as school teachers and mothers they play the leading part in education until the children reach the age of twelve or fourteen. The youth of the race is in women's keeping. They shape the child clay. The twig is bent, the tree is inclined by women's hands.

The emanc.i.p.ation of woman means her individualization. Both in primitive custom and in early law her individuality is merged in that of the man.

"Wives," wrote Paul, "be obedient unto your husbands, for this is the law." Mohammedan women wear veils that they may not be seen; Chinese women bind their feet that they may not escape; the women of continental Europe spend their lives in ministering to the comfort of their liege lords. They are dependent--almost abject. From such a sowing, what must be the reaping? Into the hands of these subject creatures, men have committed the training of their sons.

Can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit? If women are inferior to men, can they be worthy to train their future superiors--their sons? If they are of a lower mentality than men, how is it that, in the school as well as in the home, men have given into their hands the power to shape the destinies of the race?

Would you have your sons trained by a free man or by a slave? Do n.o.ble civic ideals flow from a citizen of a free commonwealth, or from the subjects of a despot? Only the woman who is a human being, with power and freedom to choose, may teach the son of a free man. Emanc.i.p.ation has given to women the power of choice.

The women of America have been partially emanc.i.p.ated. In some states, they may vote, sue for divorce, collect their own wages, hold property, and transact business. Everywhere they are filling the high schools and colleges; partic.i.p.ating in industry and entering the professions. American women are independent beings--distinctive units in a great organic society.

In so far as the qualities of the Super Man are developed and perfected by the teachings of women, they will be more effectually rounded by the emanc.i.p.ated woman than by the serf. The mothers of America are prepared to teach their sons and daughters because they have been taught to think the n.o.blest thoughts and do the strongest things.

The abandonment of war removes one of the most destructive forces of the past, because war has always tended to eliminate the best of every race.

In the flower of their manhood, the n.o.blest died on the field of battle--their lives uncompleted; their tasks unfinished--leaving, perhaps, no offspring to bear their qualities in the succeeding generation.

Although the law of nature is the survival of the fittest, "In the red field of human history the natural process of selection is often reversed."[21] The best perish in war, leaving the less fit to carry forward the affairs of state, and to propagate. "The man who is left holds in his grasp the history of the future,"[22] and if, as is frequently the case, he is the one least fitted to survive, the race is constantly breeding from the unfit rather than from the fit. Where the human harvest is bad, the nation must perish. So long as war persisted, so long as the best left their bones on the battle field, while the worst left their descendants to man the state, a bad human harvest was inevitable. War ate into the heart of national vitality by destroying the nation's best blood.

War, however, has practically ceased. The movement for peace, in which the United States, both by precept and practice, is a leader, stands as one of the signal achievements of the new century. The abandonment of war has laid a basis for the Super Race by permitting the most fit to live and to hand on their special qualities to coming generations.

In the United States, as elsewhere in the civilized world, the science of race making has recently undergone great development. While the movement began in England, it has spread rapidly, until at the present time its significance is universally recognized by scientists. The principles of artificial selection have been applied in the creation of vegetable and animal prodigies; the knowledge of biologic and selective principles is wide-spread; and the educated men and women of the United States generally understand the potency of these forces.

Important steps have already been taken to prevent the propagation of the unfit. Born criminals are in some states deprived of the power of reproduction; in most of the states, the marriage of diseased persons is prohibited; here and there attempts have been made to prohibit the marriage of any suffering from a transmissible defect. On the other hand, mentally defective persons are being segregated in inst.i.tutions--guarded against the dangers which beset the men and particularly the women of weak mind. During the past two decades great strides have been made in educating the American public to a higher standard of health and efficiency. Though the science of race making, as such, has not been given a prominent place in public discussion, the principles on which race making is based have formed an important element in public education. The desire to make a Super Race in America is as yet in its infancy, but the ground has been thoroughly prepared, and a foundation laid upon which such a super-structure of desire for race making can be speedily and effectively erected.

Meanwhile, the science of Social Adjustment has occupied the most prominent place in American thought. If the American people have under-emphasized Eugenics they have over-emphasized Social Adjustment.

From ocean to ocean, the country has been swept, during the past three decades, by a whirlwind of legislation directed toward the adjustment of social inst.i.tutions to human needs. Trusts, factories, food, railroads, liquor selling and a hundred other subjects have been kept in the foreground of public attention. The American people might almost plead guilty to adjustment madness.

From the foundation of the earliest colonies, the basis, in theory at least, was laid for the development of the individual. The colonists believed in the worth-whileness of men, they lived in an age of natural philosophy; they were the products of an effort to secure religious and political freedom; they therefore emphasized the individual conscience, and the right of the individual to think and act for himself. Each individual was a man, to be so regarded, and so honored. Their new life was a hard one. Nature presented an aspect on the rocky, untilled New England coast different from that in the civilized countries of the old world. There was but one way to meet these new conditions--the individual must carve out his own future.

Throughout the United States, the watchword of the people has been opportunity. Without opportunity, the people perish--hence opportunity must stand waiting for each succeeding generation. In the turmoil of commercial life, in the ebb and flow of the immigrant tide, the reality has been frequently lost; yet the ideal of opportunity remains as firmly rooted as ever.

The worth-whileness of men, the social control of the environment, and a free opportunity for the development of the individual const.i.tute the basis for social advance in the United States. The ideal is firmly rooted; the possibility of its realization is an everpresent reality.

With a boundless wealth of natural resources; bulwarked by the stock of the dominant races; with abundant leisure; granting freedom and individuality to women; foregoing war; cognizant of the principles of race making; Social Adjustment and of Education, the American nation is thrown into the foreground, as the land for the development of the Super Race.

The American people have within their grasp the torch of social progress.

Can they carry it in the van, lighting the dark caverns of the future? Can they develop a race of men who shall set a standard for the world--men of physical and mental power, efficient, broadly sympathetic, actuated by the highest ideals, striving toward a vision of human n.o.bleness?

The answer rests with this and the succeeding generations. Given ten talents of opportunity, are we as a nation worthy to be made the rulers over ten cities? Provided with the raw stuff of a Super Race, can we mold it into "A mightier race than any that has been?" The past worked with things: the present works with men. "We stand at the verge of a state of culture, which will be that of the depths, not, as heretofore, of the surface alone; a stage which will not be merely a culture through mankind, but a culture of mankind. For the first time the great fas.h.i.+oners of culture will be able to work in marble instead of, as heretofore, being forced to work in snow."[23] Bulwarked by this pregnant thought, and a.s.sured by Ruskin that, "There is as yet no ascertained limit to the n.o.blesse of person and mind which the human creature may attain," we press forward confidently, advocating and practicing those measures which will create the energy, mental grasp, efficiency, sympathy and vision of the Super Man and the Super Race.