The Fertility of the Unfit Part 9

CASE No. 6, p. 166.

M________________F Mute | Normal ___________|__________ M| |F Mute. No issue Normal__________________M | Normal _________________________|______________________ F F M |F Mute Mute Normal Normal | M Mute

CASE No. 7, p. 231.

J.G. A----'s FAMILY HISTORY.

PATERNAL SIDE. MATERNAL SIDE.

F / i | Grandfather, a drunkard Grandmother, "odd"

r | Grandmother, normal Grandfather, normal s | G t e n S / Uncle, a drunkard Uncle, epileptic e e | Uncle, a drunkard Uncle, rheumatic, totally r c | crippled and his daughter also a o | Uncle, an epileptic Uncle, rheumatic t n | Aunt, rheumatic i d Father, excitable & irritable Mother, died in asylum o n T / Daughter, has had rheumatism and has had heart disease s h | Son, now insane i | Son, died a few days old of convulsions r | Son, now a chronic maniac in an asylum d | Daughter, suicidal, melancholic; died in an asylum. No issue.

Family now extinct.

CASE No. 8, p. 303.

S. M----'s FAMILY.

M F ----------------------------------------- Asthmatic | Somewhat weak-minded | | --------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 23456 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 | | | | | | | | | Healthy Died in Drowned Epilepsy Healthy Idiot Died in Healthy | infancy infancy | in in Scrofulous convulsions convulsions

_The above diagrammatic histories of eight families are taken from Dr.

Strahan's "Marriage and Disease."_

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE FIT IN RELATION TO THE STATE.

_The State's ideal in relation to the fertility of its subjects_.--_Keen compet.i.tion means great effort and great waste of life_.--_If in the minds of the citizens s.p.a.ce and food are ample multiplication works automatically_.--_To New Zealanders food now includes the luxuries as well as the necessities of life_.--_Men are driven to the alternative of supporting a family of their own or a degenerate family of defectives_.--_The State enforces the one but cannot enforce the other_.--_New Zealand taxation_.--_The burden of the bread-winner_.--_As the State lightens this burden it encourages fertility_.--_The survival of the unfit makes the burden of the fit_.

The multiplication of the fit is of the first importance to the State.

It supplies competent producers and courageous defenders, and the more of these, consistent with s.p.a.ce and food (using these terms in their fullest significance), the better off the State.

If healthy happy citizens are the State's ideal, then limitation of population well within the s.p.a.ce and food will be encouraged. If national wealth and prosperity in its material aspect are the State's ideal, the harder the population presses on the means of subsistence the sooner will that ideal be realised. For it cannot be denied, that the greater the stress and hards.h.i.+p in life, the more strenuous the effort put forth to obtain a foothold. The greater the compet.i.tion the keener the effort, and the higher the accomplishment; while to ensure an adequate supply of labour in time of great demand there must always be a surplus.

The waste of life must always be greater; but what of that! National wealth is the ideal--the maximum amount of production. Child labour, and women labour, are called in to fill the national granaries, though misery and death attend the process.

If this be the ideal of the State, life is of less value than the product of labour, for it can be more easily and readily replaced.

But the ideal of the perfect state is not wealth but the robust happiness of its members.

The happiness of its members is best promoted by the maximum increase in its numbers, consistent with ample s.p.a.ce and food. With ample s.p.a.ce and food multiplication works automatically, being kept up to the limit of s.p.a.ce and food by the procreative instinct.

If it can be shown that multiplication is not sufficiently stimulated by this instinct, then it must be concluded that, _in the minds of the citizens_ the s.p.a.ce and food are not ample.

In New Zealand the procreative impulse does not keep multiplication at an equal pace with the apparent supply of food and s.p.a.ce, and this is due, as has been shown, to the fact that our citizens are not satisfied that the supply _is_ ample.

They have come to enlarge the definition of "food," and this term now includes luxuries easily obtainable for themselves and their families.

But the luxuries of life and living can only be easily obtained when individual effort to obtain them is unhampered. Every burden which a man has to bear (only the best are here referred to,--the fit members of the State) limits his power to provide for himself, and any he may bring into the world.

If the State decrees that a citizen shall support himself, his mate, and his progeny, well and good,--if he has no other burden to bear, no other responsibility, he knows exactly where he is and what he has to do, and directs his energies and controls his impulses, and enlarges his desires to suit his tastes and purposes.

But if the State decrees that a citizen shall not only support all for whose existence he is responsible, but also all those unable to support themselves, born into the world in increasing numbers as congenital defectives, and manufactured in the world by legalised drinking saloons, and by pauperising charitable aid and benevolent inst.i.tutions, then our self-respecting right-respecting citizen must decide whether he will forego the luxury and ease that he may enjoy, and rear the normal family, or curtail his own progeny, and support the army of defectives thrown upon society by the State-encouraged fertility of the unfit.

It has already been shown, that in this colony the best fit to multiply are ceasing to do so, because of a desire to attain a social and financial stability that will protect them and their dependents from want or the prospect of want. There is every reason to believe, that when this stability is a.s.sured the normal family soon follows.

The love of luxurious idleness and a pa.s.sion for excitement, which were typical of the voluntarily barren women of ancient Rome, have little place with us, as a cause of limited nativity.

Men and women reason out, that they cannot bear all the burdens that the State imposes upon them, support an increasing army of paupers, and lunatics and defectives, and non-producers, and that luxuriously, and at the same time incur the additional burden of rearing a large family.

Let us examine these burdens, and see if the complaint of our best stock is justified.

The amount raised by taxation in New Zealand (including local rates) during the year 1902-03, amounted per head of population (excluding Maories) to 5 4s. 7d. The bread-winners in New Zealand number according to official returns, 340,230, and the total rates and taxes collected for the year 1902-03 amounted to 4,174,787 or 12 5s. 4d. for each bread-winner for the year.

On March 31st, 1901 (the last census date) there were 23.01 persons per thousand of population over 15 years of age, unable to work from sickness, accident and infirmity. Of these 12.72 were due to sickness and accident, and 10.29 to "specified infirmities."

The proportion of those suffering from sickness and accident in 1874 was 12.64 per 1000 over 15 years, practically the same as for 1901, while disability from "specified infirmities" (lunacy, idiocy, epilepsy, deformity, etc.)--degeneracies strongly hereditary--rose rapidly from 5.32 in 1874 to 10.29 in 1901, or taking the total sickness and infirmity, from 17.96 in 1874 to 23.01 in 1901.

On the last census date there were 340,230 bread-winners, and 12,747 persons suffering from sickness, accident, and infirmity, or 26 fit to work and earn for every one unfit.

The cost to the Colony per year of--

1. Hospitals, year ended 31st March, 1903 138,027

2. Charitable Aid (expended by boards),

year ended 31st March, 1903 93,158

3. Lunatic Asylums, year ended 31st Dec,

1902 (gross) 85,238

Lunatic Asylums, year ended 31st Dec,

1902 (nett) 64,688

4. Industrial Schools, year ended 31st Dec,1902

Government Industrial Schools for

neglected and criminal children 21,708