Applied Eugenics Part 35

The minimum wage is admittedly not an attempt to pay a man what he is worth. It is an attempt to make it possible for every man, no matter what his economic or social value, to support a family. Therefore, in so far as it would encourage men of inferior quality to have or increase families, it is unquestionably dysgenic.

MOTHERS' PENSIONS

Half of the states of the Union have already adopted some form of pension for widowed mothers, and similar measures are being urged in nearly all remaining states. The earliest of these laws goes back only to 1911.

In general,[183] these laws apply to mothers who are widows, or in some cases to those who have lost their means of support through imprisonment or incapacity of the husband. The maximum age of the child on whose account allowance is made varies from 14 to 16, in a few cases to 17 or 18. The amount allowed for each child varies in each state, approximately between the limits of $100 and $200 a year. In most states the law demands that the mother be a fit person, physically, mentally and morally to bring up her children, and that it be to their interest that they remain with her at home instead of being placed at work or sent to some inst.i.tution. In all cases considerable lat.i.tude is allowed the administrator of the law,--a juvenile court, or board of county commissioners, or some body with equivalent powers.

Laws of this character have often been described as being eugenic in effect, but examination shows little reason for such a characterization.

Since the law applies for the most part to women who have lost their husbands, it is evident that it is not likely to affect the differential birth-rate which is of such concern to eugenics. On the whole, mothers'

pensions must be put in the cla.s.s of work which may be undertaken on humanitarian grounds, but they are probably slightly dysgenic rather than eugenic, since they favor the preservation of families which are, on the whole, of inferior quality, as shown by the lack of relatives with ability or willingness to help them. On the other hand, they are not likely to result in the production from these families of more children than those already in existence.

HOUSING

At present it is sometimes difficult, in the more fashionable quarters of large cities, to find apartments where families with children are admitted. In other parts of the city, this difficulty appears to be much less. Such a situation tends to discourage parenthood, on the part of young couples who come of good families and desire to live in the part of the city where their friends are to be found. It is at least likely to cause postponement of parenthood until they feel financially able to take a separate house. Here is an influence tending to lower the birth-rate of young couples who have social aspirations, at least to the extent of desiring to live in the pleasanter and more reputable part of their city. Such a hindrance exists to a much less extent, if at all, for those who have no reason for wanting to live in the fashionable part of the city. This discrimination of some apartment owners against families with children would therefore appear to be dysgenic in its effect.

Married people who wish to live in the more attractive part of a city should not be penalized. The remedy is to make it illegal to discriminate against children. It is gratifying to note that recently a number of apartment houses have been built in New York, especially with a view to the requirements of children. The movement deserves wide encouragement. Any apartment house is an unsatisfactory place in which to bring up children, but since under modern urban conditions it is inevitable that many children must be brought up in apartments, if they are brought up at all, the munic.i.p.ality should in its own interests take steps to ensure that conditions will be as good as possible for them. In a few cases of model tenements, the favored poor tenants are better off than the moderately well-to-do. It is essential that the latter be given a chance to have children and bring them up in comfortable surroundings, and the provision of suitable apartment houses would be a gain in every large city.

The growing use of the automobile, which permits a family to live under pleasant surroundings in the suburbs and yet reach the city daily, alleviates the housing problem slightly. Increased facilities for rapid transit are of the utmost importance in placing the city population (a selected cla.s.s, it will be remembered) under more favorable conditions for bringing up their children. Zone rates should be designed to effect this dispersal of population.

FEMINISM

The word "feminism" might be supposed to characterize a movement which sought to emphasize the distinction between woman's nature and that of man to provide for women's special needs. It was so used in early days on the continent. But at present in England and America it denotes a movement which is practically the reverse of this; which seeks to minimize the difference between the two s.e.xes. It may be broadly described as a movement which seeks to remove all discrimination based on s.e.x. It is a movement to secure recognition of an equality of the two s.e.xes. The feminists variously demand that woman be recognized as the equal of man (1) biologically, (2) politically, (3) economically.

1. Whether or not woman is to be regarded as biologically equal to man depends on how one uses the word "equal." If it is meant that woman is as well adapted to her own particular kind of work as is man to his, the statement will readily be accepted. Unfortunately, feminists show a tendency to go beyond this and to minimize differentiation in their claims of equality. An attempt is made to show that women do not differ materially from men in the nature of their capacity of mental or physical achievement. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman makes the logical application by demanding that little girls' hair be cut short and that they be prevented from playing with dolls in order that differences fostered in this way be reduced.

In forming a judgment on this proposition, it must be remembered that civilization covers not more than 10,000 years out of man's history of half a million or more. During 490,000 out of the 500,000 years, man was the hunter and warrior; while woman stayed at home of necessity to bear and rear the young, to skin the prey, to prepare the food and clothing.

He must have a small knowledge of biology who could suppose that this long history would not lead to any differentiation of the two s.e.xes; and the biologist knows that man and woman in some respects differ in every cell of their bodies: that, as Jacques Loeb says, "Man and woman are, physiologically, different species."

But the biologist also knows that s.e.x is a quant.i.tative character. It is impossible to draw a sharp line and say that those on one side are in every respect men, and those on the other side in every respect women, as one might draw a line between goats and sheep. Many women have a considerable amount of "maleness"; numerous men have distinct feminine characteristics, physical and mental. There is thus an ill-defined "intermediate s.e.x," as Edward Carpenter called it, whose size has been kept down by s.e.xual selection; or better stated there is so much overlapping that it is a question of different averages with many individuals of each s.e.x beyond the average of the other s.e.x.

A perusal of Havelock Ellis' book, _Man and Woman_, will leave little doubt about the fact of s.e.x differentiation, just as it will leave little doubt that one s.e.x is, in its way, quite as good as the other, and that to talk of one s.e.x as being inferior is absurd.

It is worth noting that the spread of feminism will reinforce the action of s.e.xual selection in keeping down the numbers of this "intermediate s.e.x." In the past, women who lacked femininity or maternal instinct have often married because the pressure of public opinion and economic conditions made it uncomfortable for any woman to remain unmarried. And they have had children because they could not help it, transmitting to their daughters their own lack of maternal instinct. Under the new regime a large proportion of such women do not marry, and accordingly have few if any children to inherit their defects. Hence the average level of maternal instinct of the women of America is likely steadily to rise.

We conclude that any claim of biological equality of the two s.e.xes must use the word in a figurative sense, not ignoring the differentiation of the two s.e.xes, as extreme feminists are inclined to do. To this differentiation we shall return later.

2. Political equality includes the demand for the vote and for the removal of various legal restrictions, such as have sometimes prevented a wife from disposing of her own property without the consent of her husband or such as have made her citizenship follow that of her husband.

In the United States, these legal restrictions are rapidly being removed, at such a rate that in some states it is now the husband who has a right to complain of certain legal discriminations.

Equal suffrage is also gaining steadily, but its eugenic aspect is not wholly clear. Theoretically much is to be said for it, as making use of woman's large social sympathies and responsibilities and interest in the family; but in the states where it has been tried, its effects have not been all that was hoped. Beneficial results are to be expected unless an objectionably extreme feminism finds support.

In general, the demand for political equality, in a broad sense, seems to the eugenist to be the most praiseworthy part of the feminist program. The abolition of those laws, which now discharge women from positions if they marry or have children, promises to be in principle a particularly valuable gain.

3. Economic equality is often summed up in the catch phrase "equal pay for equal work." If the phrase refers to jobs where women are competing on piecework with men, no one will object to it. In practice it applies particularly to two distinct but interlocking demands: (a) that women should receive the same pay as men for any given occupation--as, stenography, for example; and (b) that child-bearing should be recognized as just as much worthy of remuneration as any occupation which men enter, and should be paid for (by the state) on the same basis.

At present, there is almost universally a discrimination against women in commerce and industry. They sometimes get no more than half as much pay as men for similar grades of employment. But there is for this one good reason. An employer needs experienced help, and he expects a man to remain with him and become more valuable. He is, therefore, willing to pay more because of this antic.i.p.ation. In hiring a woman, he knows that she will probably soon leave to marry. But whatever may be the origin of this discrimination, it is justified in the last a.n.a.lysis by the fact that a man is paid as the head of a family, a woman only as an individual who ordinarily has fewer or no dependents to support. Indeed, it is largely this feature which, under the law of supply and demand, has caused women to work for low wages.

It is evident that real economic equality between men and women must be impossible, if the women are to leave their work for long periods of time, in order to bear and rear children. It is normally impossible for a woman to earn her living by compet.i.tive labor, at the same time that she is bearing and rearing children. Either the doctrine of economic equality is largely illusory, therefore, or else it must be extended to making motherhood a salaried occupation just as much as mill work or stenography.

The feminists have almost universally adopted the latter alternative.

They say that the woman who is capable of earning money, and who abandons wage-earning for motherhood, ought to receive from the state as nearly as possible what she would have received if she had not had children; or else they declare that the expense of children should be borne wholly by the community.

This proposal must be tested by asking whether it would tend to strengthen and perpetuate the race or not. It is, in effect, a proposal to have the state pay so much a head for babies. The fundamental question is whether or not the quality of the babies would be taken into account. Doubtless the babies of obviously feeble-minded women would be excluded, but would it be possible for the state to pay liberally for babies who would grow up to be productive citizens, and to refuse to pay for babies that would doubtless grow up to be incompetents, dolts, dullards, laggards or wasters? The scheme would work, eugenically, in proportion as it is discriminatory and graded.

But the example of legislation in France and England, and the main trend of popular thought in America, make it quite certain that at present, and for many years to come, it will be impossible to have babies valued on the basis of quality rather than mere numbers. It is sometimes possible to get indirect measures of a eugenic nature pa.s.sed, and it has been found possible to secure the pa.s.sage of direct measures which prevent reproduction of those who are actually defective. But even the most optimistic eugenist must feel that, short of the remote future, any attempt to have the state grade and pay for babies on the basis of their quality is certain to fail to pa.s.s.

The recent action of the munic.i.p.ality of Schonberg, Berlin, is typical.

It is now paying baby bounties at the rate of $12.50 a head for the first born, $2.50 a head for all later born, and no questions asked. It is to be feared that any success which the feminists may gain in securing state aid for mothers in America will secure, as in Schonberg, in England, in France, and in Australia, merely a small uniform sum.

This acts dysgenically because it is a stimulus to married people to have large families in inverse proportion to their income, and is felt most by those whose purpose in having children is least approvable.

The married woman of good stock ought to bear four children. For many reasons these ought to be s.p.a.ced well apart, preferably not much less than three years. She must have oversight of these children until they all reach adolescence. This means a period of about 12 + 13 = 25 years during which her primary, though by no means her only, concern will be mothercraft. It is hardly possible and certainly not desirable that she should support herself outside of the home during this period. As state support would pretty certainly be indiscriminate and dangerously dysgenic, it therefore appears that the present custom of having the father responsible for the support of the family is not only unavoidable but desirable. If so, it is desirable to avoid reducing the wages of married men too much by the compet.i.tion of single women.

To attain this end, without working any injustice to women, it seems wise to modify their education in general in such a way as to prepare women for the kinds of work best adapted to her capacities and needs.

Women were long excluded from a higher education, and when they secured it, they not unnaturally wanted the kind of education men were receiving,--partly in order to demonstrate that they were not intellectually inferior to men. Since this demonstration is now complete, the continuation of duplicate curricula is uncalled for. The coeducational colleges of the west are already turning away from the old single curriculum and are providing for the election of more differentiated courses for women. The separate women's colleges of the east will doubtless do so eventually, since their own graduates and students are increasingly discontented with the present narrow and obsolete ideals. If the higher education of women, and much of the elementary education, is directed toward differentiating them from men and giving them distinct occupations (including primarily marriage and motherhood) instead of training them so the only thing they are capable of doing is to compete with men for men's jobs, the demand of "equal pay for equal work" will be less difficult to reconcile with the interests of the race. In this direction the feminists might find a large and profitable field for the employment of their energies.

There is good ground for the feminist contention that women should be liberally educated, that they should not be regarded by men as inferior creatures, that they should have the opportunity of self-expression in a richer, freer life than they have had in the past. All these gains can be made without sacrificing any racial interests; and they must be so made. The unrest of intelligent women is not to be lessened or removed by educating them in the belief that they are not different from men and setting them to work as men in the work of the world. Except where the work is peculiarly adapted to women or there is a special individual apt.i.tude, such work will, for the reasons we have set forth, operate dysgenically and therefore bring about the decadence of the race which practices it.

The true solution is rather to be sought in recognizing the natural differentiation of the two s.e.xes and in emphasizing this differentiation by education. Boys will be taught the n.o.bility of being productive and of establishing families; girls will have similar ideals held up to them but will be taught to reach them in a different way, through cultivation of the intellectual and emotional characters most useful to that division of labor for which they are supremely adapted, as well as those that are common to both s.e.xes. The home must not be made a subordinate interest, as some feminists desire, but it must be made a much richer, deeper, more satisfying interest than it is too frequently at present.

OLD AGE PENSIONS

Pensions for aged people form an important part of the modern program of social legislation. What their merits may be in relieving poverty will not be discussed here. But beyond the direct effect, it is important to inquire what indirect eugenic effect they would have, as compared with the present system where the aged are most frequently supported by their own children when they have failed through lack of thrift or for other reasons to make provision for their old age.

The ordinary man, dependent on his daily work for a livelihood, can not easily support his parents and his offspring at the same time. Aid given to the one must be in some degree at the expense of the other. The eugenic consequences will depend on what cla.s.s of man is required to contribute thus to parental support.

It is at once obvious that superior families will rarely encounter this problem. The parents will, by their superior earning capacity and the exercise of thrift and foresight, have provided for the wants of their old age. A superior man will therefore seldom be under economic pressure to limit the number of his own children because of the necessity of supporting his parents. In inferior families, on the other hand, the parents will have made no adequate provision for their old age. A son will have to a.s.sume their support, and thus reduce the number of his own children,--a eugenic result. With old age pensions from the state, the economic pressure would be taken off these inferior families and the children would thus be encouraged to marry earlier and have more children,--a dysgenic result.

From this point of view, the most eugenic course would perhaps be to make the support of parents by children compulsory, in cases where any support was needed. Such a step would not handicap superior families, but would hold back the inferior. A contributory system of old age pensions, for which the money was provided out of the individual's earnings, and laid aside for his old age, would also be satisfactory. A system which led to the payment of old age pensions by the state would be harmful.

The latter system would be evil in still another way because, as is the case with most social legislation of this type, the funds for carrying out such a scheme must naturally be furnished by the efficient members of the community. This adds to their financial burdens and encourages the young men to postpone marriage longer and to have fewer children when they do marry,--a dysgenic result.

It appears, therefore, that old age pensions paid by the state would be dysgenic in a number of ways, encouraging the increase of the inferior part of the population at the expense of the superior. If old age pensions are necessary, they should be contributory.

THE s.e.x HYGIENE MOVEMENT

s.e.xual morality is thought by some to be substantially synonymous with eugenics or to be included by it. One of the authors has protested previously[184] against this confusion of the meaning of the word "eugenics." The fallacy of believing that a campaign against s.e.xual immorality is a campaign for eugenics will be apparent if the proposition is a.n.a.lyzed.

First, does s.e.xual immorality increase or decrease the marriage rate of the offenders? We conclude that it reduces the marriage rate. Although it is true that some individuals might by s.e.xual experience become so awakened as to be less satisfied with a continent life, and might thus in some cases be led to marriage, yet this is more than counterbalanced by the following considerations:

1. The mere consciousness of loss of virginity has led in some sensitive persons, especially women, to an unwillingness to marry from a sense of unworthiness. This is not common, yet such cases are known.

2. The loss of reputation has prevented the marriage of the desired mates. This is not at all uncommon.

3. Venereal infection has led to the abandonment of marriage. This is especially common.