The Fertility of the Unfit Part 10

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 705,756. This const.i.tutes the burden due to defectives and defects in others, a handful of workers have to bear in a spa.r.s.e 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, all alike are encouraged by lavish charity (falsely so called) to entirely s.h.i.+rk their responsibilities in the well grounded a.s.surance 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 antic.i.p.ated, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 a.s.sociation 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 sanct.i.ty 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 const.i.tute the unfit. All our modern inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tutions 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 a.s.sociated 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 const.i.tute their victims members of that great cla.s.s 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.