Applied Eugenics Part 21

It is an encouraging sign to see such items as this from a Washington newspaper: "The Modern Dancing Club of the Margaret Wilson Social Center gave a masquerade ball at the Grover Cleveland school last night, which was attended by about 100 couples." Still more promising are such inst.i.tutions as the self-supporting Inkowa camp for young women, at Greenwood Lake, N. J., conducted by a committee of which Miss Anne Morgan is president, and directed by Miss Grace Parker. Near it is a similar camp, Kechuka, for young men, and during the summer both are full of young people from New York City. A newspaper account says:

There is no charity, no philanthropy, no subsidy connected with Camp Inkowa. Its members are successful business women, who earn from $15 to $25 a week. Board in the camp is $9 a week. So every girl who goes there for a vacation has the comfortable feeling that she pays her way fully. This rate includes all the activities of camp life.

Architects, doctors, lawyers, bookkeepers, bank clerks, young business men of many kinds are the guests of Kechuka. Next week 28 young men from the National City Bank will begin their vacations there.

Inkowa includes young women teachers, stenographers, librarians, private secretaries and girls doing clerical work for insurance companies and other similar business inst.i.tutions.

Sat.u.r.day and Sunday are "at home" days at Camp Inkowa and the young men from Kechuka may come to call on the Inkowa girls, partic.i.p.ate with them in the day's "hike" or go on the moonlight cruise around the lake if there happens to be one.

"Young men and women need clean, healthy a.s.sociation with each other," Miss Parker told me yesterday, when I spent the day at Camp Inkowa. "Social workers in New York city ask me sometimes, 'How dare you put young men and women in camps so near to each other?'

"How dare you not do it? No plan of recreation or out-of-door life which does not include the healthy a.s.sociation of men and woman can be a success. Young men and women need each other's society. And if you get the right kind they won't abuse their freedom."

The churches have been important instruments in this connection, and the worth of their services can hardly be over-estimated, as they tend to bring together young people of similar tastes and, in general, of a superior character. Such organizations as the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor serve the eugenic end in a satisfactory way; it is almost the unanimous opinion of competent observers that matches "made in the church" turn out well. Some idea of the importance of the churches may be gathered from a census which F. O. George of the University of Pittsburgh made of 75 married couples of his acquaintance, asking them where they first met each other. The answers were:

Church 32 School (only 3 at college) 19 Private home 17 Dance 7 -- 75

These results need not be thought typical of more than a small part of the country's population, yet they show how far-reaching the influence of the church may be on s.e.xual selection. Quite apart from altruistic motives, the churches might well encourage social affairs where the young people could meet, because to do so is one of the surest way of perpetuating the church.

An increase in the number of non-sectarian bis.e.xual societies, clubs and similar organizations, and a diminution of the number of those limited to men or to women alone is greatly to be desired. It is doubtful whether the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. are, while separated, as useful to society as they might be. Each of them tends to create a celibate community, where the chance for meeting possible mates is practically nil. The men's organization has made, so far as we are aware, little organized attempt to meet this problem. The women's organization in some cities has made the attempt, but apparently with indifferent success. The idea of a merger of the two organizations with reasonable differentiation as well would probably meet with little approval from their directors just now, but is worth considering as an answer to the urgent problem of providing social contacts for young people in large cities.

It is encouraging that thoughtful people in all walks of life are beginning to realize the seriousness of this problem of contacts for the young, and the necessity of finding some solution. The novelist Miss Maria Thompson Davies of Sweetbriar Farm, Madison, Tenn., is quoted in a recent newspaper interview as saying:

"I'm a Wellesley woman, but one reason why I'm dead against women's colleges is because they shut girls up with women, at the most impressionable period of the girls' lives, when they should be meeting members of the opposite s.e.x continually, learning to tolerate their little weaknesses and getting ready to marry them."

"The city should make arrangements to chaperon the meetings of its young citizens. There ought to be munic.i.p.al gathering places where, under the supervision of tactful, warm-hearted women--themselves successfully married--girls and young men might get introduced to each other and might get acquainted."

If it is thought that the time has not yet come for such munic.i.p.al action, there is certainly plenty of opportunity for action by the parents, relatives and friends of young persons. The match-making proclivities of some mothers are matters of current jest: where subtly and wisely done they might better be taken seriously and held up as examples worthy of imitation. Formal "full dress" social functions for young people, where acquaintance is likely to be too perfunctory, should be discouraged, and should give place to informal dances, beach parties, house parties and the like, where boys and girls will have a chance to come to know each other, and, at the proper age, to fall in love. Let social stratification be not too rigid, yet maintained on the basis of intrinsic worth rather than solely on financial or social position. If parents will make it a matter of concern to give their boys and girls as many desirable acquaintances of the opposite s.e.x as possible, and to give them opportunity for ripening these acquaintances, the problem of the improvement of s.e.xual selection will be greatly helped. Young people from homes where such social advantages can not be given, or in large cities where home life is for most of them non-existent, must become the concern of the munic.i.p.ality, the churches, and every inst.i.tution and organization that has the welfare of the community and the race at heart.

To sum up this chapter, we have pointed out the importance of s.e.xual selection, and shown that its eugenic action depends on young people having the proper ideals, and being able to live up to these ideals.

Eugenists have in the past devoted themselves perhaps too exclusively to the inculcation of sound ideals, without giving adequate attention to the possibility of these high standards being acted upon. One of the greatest problems confronting eugenics is that of giving young people of marriageable age a greater range of choice. Much could be done by organized action; but it is one of the hopeful features of the problem that it can be handled in large part by intelligent individual action.

If older people would make a conscious effort to help young people widen their circles of suitable acquaintances, they would make a valuable contribution to race betterment.

CHAPTER XII

INCREASING THE MARRIAGE RATE OF THE SUPERIOR

No race can long survive unless it conforms to the principles of eugenics, and indisputably the chief requirement for race survival is that the superior part of the race should equal or surpa.s.s the inferior part in fecundity.

It follows that the superior members of the community must marry, and at a reasonably early age. If in the best elements of the community celibacy increases, or if marriage is postponed far into the reproductive period, the racial contribution of the superior will necessarily fall, and after a few generations the race will consist mainly of the descendants of inferior people, its eugenic average being thereby much lowered.

In a survey of vital statistics, to ascertain whether marriages are as frequent and as early as national welfare requires, the eugenist finds at first no particularly alarming figures.

In France, to whose vital statistics one naturally turns whenever race suicide is suggested (and usually with a holier-than-thou att.i.tude which the Frenchman might much more correctly a.s.sume toward America), it appears that there has been a very slight decrease in the proportion of persons under 20 who are married, but that between the ages of 20 and 30 the proportion of those married has risen during recent years. The same condition exists all over Europe, according to F. H. Hankins,[105]

except in England and Scotland. "Moreover on the whole marriages take place earlier in France than in England, Germany or America. Nor is this all, for a larger proportion of the French population is married than in any of these countries. Thus the birth-rate in France has continued to fall in spite of those very conditions which should have sustained it or even caused it to increase."

In America, conditions are not dissimilar. Although it is generally believed that young persons are marrying at a later age than they did formerly, the census figures show that for the population as a whole the reverse is the case. Marriages are not only more numerous, but are contracted at earlier ages than they were a quarter of a century ago.

Comparison of census returns for 1890, 1900 and 1910, reveals that for both s.e.xes the percentage of married has steadily increased and the percentage listed as single has as steadily decreased. The census cla.s.sifies young men, for this purpose, in three age-groups: 15-19, 20-24, and 25-34; and in every one of these groups, a larger proportion was married in 1910 than in 1900 or 1890. Conditions are the same for women. So far as the United States as a whole is concerned, therefore, marriage is neither being avoided altogether, nor postponed unduly,--in fact, conditions in both respects seem to be improving every year.

So far the findings should gratify every eugenist. But the census returns permit further a.n.a.lysis of the figures. They cla.s.sify the population under four headings: Native White of Native Parentage, Native White of Foreign Parentage or of Mixed Parentage, Foreign-born White, and Negro. Except among Foreign-born Whites, who are standing still, the returns for 1910 show that in every one of these groups the marriage rate has steadily increased during the past three decades; and that the age of marriage is steadily declining in all groups during the same period, with a slight irregularity of no real importance in the statistics for foreign-born males.

On the whole, then, the marriage statistics of the United States are rea.s.suring. Even if examination is limited to the Native Whites of Native Parentage, who are probably of greater eugenic worth, as a group, than any of the other three, the marriage rate is found to be moving in the right direction.

But going a step farther, one finds that within this group there are great irregularities, which do not appear when the group is considered as a whole. And these irregularities are of a nature to give the eugenist grave concern.

If one sought, for example, to find a group of women distinctly superior to the average, he might safely take the college graduates. Their superior quality as a cla.s.s lies in the facts that:

(a) They have survived the weeding-out process of grammar and high school, and the repeated elimination by examinations in college.

(b) They have persevered, after those with less mental ability have grown tired of the strain and have voluntarily dropped out.

(c) Some have even forced their way to college against great obstacles, because attracted by the opportunities it offers them for mental activity.

(d) Some have gone to college because their excellence has been discovered by teachers or others who have strongly urged it.

All these attributes can not be merely acquired, but must be in some degree inherent. Furthermore, these girls are not only superior in themselves, but are ordinarily from superior parents, because

(a) Their parents have in most cases cooperated by desiring this higher education for their daughters.

(b) The parents have in most cases had sufficient economic efficiency to be able to afford a college course for their daughters.

Therefore, although the number of college women in the United States is not great, their value eugenically is wholly disproportionate to their numbers. If marriage within such a selected cla.s.s as this is being avoided, or greatly postponed, the eugenist can not help feeling concerned.

And the first glance at the statistics gives adequate ground for uneasiness. Take the figures for Wellesley College, for instance:

_Status in fall of 1912_ _Graduates_ _All students_

Per cent married (graduated 1879-1888) 55% 60% Per cent married in: 10 years from graduation 35% 37% 20 years from graduation 48% 49%

From a racial standpoint, the significant marriage rate of any group of women is the percentage that have married before the end of the child-bearing period. Cla.s.ses graduating later than 1888 are therefore not included, and the record shows the marital status in the fall of 1912. In compiling these data deceased members and the few lost from record are of course omitted.

In the foregoing study care was taken to distinguish as to when the marriage took place. Obviously marriages with the women at 45 or over being sterile must not be counted where it is the fecundity of the marriage that is being studied. The reader is warned therefore to make any necessary correction for this factor in the studies to follow in some of which unfortunately care has not been taken to make the necessary distinction.

Turn to Mount Holyoke College, the oldest of the great inst.i.tutions for the higher education of women in this country. Professor Amy Hewes has collected the following data:

_Decade of graduation Per cent remaining single Per cent marrying_

1842-1849 14.6 85.4 1850-1859 24.5 75.5 1860-1869 39.1 60.9 1870-1879 40.6 59.4 1880-1889 42.4 57.6 1890-1892 50.0 50.0

Bryn Mawr College, between 1888 and 1900, graduated 376 girls, of whom 165, or 43.9%, had married up to January 1, 1913.

Studying the Va.s.sar College graduates between 1867 and 1892, Robert J.

Sprague found that 509 of the total of 959 had married, leaving 47% celibate. Adding the cla.s.ses up to 1900, it was found that less than half of the total number of graduates of the inst.i.tution had married.