Being Well Born Part 16

Concerning crime and delinquency, we find that all evidence tends to show that an alarming increase is in progress although satisfactory data are hard to obtain. It is certain that there is a tremendously disproportionate increase in the number of prisoners in recent years compared with general population, for while the total population has increased three and one-half fold, the prison element has increased fifteen fold. According to Wier, in this country there are four and one-half times as many murders for every million of our population to-day as there were twenty years ago.

It may be urged that this increase in prison population is not a disproportionate increase in the number of defectives or criminals, but only an increase in the number sent to prison, and this is probably a partial truth--but when we recall such pedigree as those of the Nams, the defective line of Kallikaks and other known unsound strains, he must be hopeful indeed who can find much consolation in this supposition. In any event, no such uncertainty exists regarding the number of murders and homicides, since these have in all probability been as fully recorded in the past as at present.

=Vicious Surroundings Not a Sufficient Explanation in Degenerate Stocks.--=It is sometimes urged that we are not dealing in such cases with degenerate strains, but merely with unfortunate individuals who have been subjected to pernicious surroundings from the beginning. And it can not be denied that parents who are mentally defective, dissipated or syphilitic afford most noxious developmental and environmental conditions for their children. But when one notes how intimately the moral degeneracy in such stocks is bound up with some degree of feeble-mindedness, he is strongly skeptical toward the sufficiency of such an interpretation, although environment undoubtedly intensifies the results. Concerning this point Davenport says:

"We have certain methods of testing whether it is bad environment or bad breeding which produced these people. Some of the children have been taken at an early age and 'placed out'. We have traced their subsequent history. In most cases they have turned out quite as bad as those who have remained at home. In a few cases they have turned out well, but it is also true that some of the children who remained at home in bad environment have turned out well."

And to Davenport's testimony may we add that of Doctor Wilmarth, who, speaking of children at the home for feeble-minded, says:

"In no place is this subject of the power of heredity in relation to environment so easily studied as among our children. A group of many little children came to us from the state school, being untrainable there. They have had with us the same teaching and the same companionship. Each one has lived, eaten and slept among the others, and, so far as we know, with but one exception, those of vicious parentage have turned instinctively to vicious traits by preference, while those of simple but honest stock do evil things only under strong temptation, and do not persist in them after the wrong is pointed out."

=By No Means All Delinquents Are Defectives.--=One must not overlook the fact, however, that _delinquent_ and _defective_ are by no means synonymous terms, and that many delinquents are with little doubt the product of adverse social circ.u.mstances.

The recent careful work of Doctor William Healy[13] in connection with the juvenile delinquents of Chicago shows convincingly that the underlying causations of delinquency are many. Such factors as immorality or constant quarreling of parents, bad companions, lack of parental control, defective sense organs, debilitating habits, lack of healthy mental interests and a host of other environmental factors are not infrequently sufficient in themselves to develop delinquency in the absence of inherited deficiency.

The present-day efforts of the student of heredity should not be misunderstood. They are not attempts to make all delinquents out defectives, but rather to determine what percentage of delinquents may be legitimately reckoned as defective and to make the facts known. Since there is no longer any reasonable doubt that, to express it in the mildest terms, an amount of delinquency far from negligible is due in great measure to congenital omissions or propensities, then the sooner the public learns this the better, for we may then set about supplementing our present efforts at race betterment through external improvement by devising means of cleansing the fountain source as well.

It can scarcely be doubted that the average man differs little if any in inherent personality and capacity from many a criminal who is such by occasion rather than by undue predisposition. Who can truthfully answer how many individuals there are who are not potentially criminals to some extent, given sufficient evocative conditions of ignorance, vice, adverse economic pressure and undue temptation?

"Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied."

=No Special Inheritable Crime-Factor.--=The main difficulty in trying to find a hereditary basis for crime lies in the multiplicity of things crime may be. The individual impulsions which lead to certain offenses may be utterly different from those which conduce to others. Undoubtedly many inborn tendencies which are perfectly normal or neutral in themselves may be warped by circ.u.mstances into the commission of what are cla.s.sified as crimes. The moral man may have the same desire for a thing that the criminal does, but when he finds that this desire can only be gratified by injury to others, he inhibits it because of his repugnance to such injury.

The criminal makes no such inhibition.

In general, crime means an offense of some kind against person, property or state. But a biological a.n.a.lysis of it, could it be made, would require among other things knowledge of crime in terms of motive or lack of motive, whether the act was intended to benefit the perpetrator, some other person, or even the race or state; whether the offense was one of dishonesty, of cupidity, of l.u.s.t, or of violence against another.

As a matter of fact no satisfactory cla.s.sification of crime can be made since so many factors enter and in such varying degrees. Most cla.s.sifications made in our legal codes are a hodge-podge based on a mixture of motive on the part of the partic.i.p.ant, degree of turpitude involved, nature and extent of the injury inflicted, and the object against which the offense was perpetrated, whether an individual, society or the state. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that in many instances what was crime in the past is no longer so, and vice versa many things which are regarded as criminal to-day were not considered so in the past.

So the futility of seeking a specific inherent propensity for "crime" is manifest. How, for instance, in terms of hereditary determiners shall we draw the fine lines of distinction among those who bribe legislators and legal officials, those who are avaricious and dishonest in the world of trade, and those who are wilfully obtuse in providing proper safeguards for employees?

=What Is Meant by a Born Criminal?--=All we can do is to fall back on the a.s.surance that any act directly or indirectly injurious to society is an offense, and that those offenders who are congenitally unable to distinguish between what is generally accepted as right and wrong, or who if recognizing this are nevertheless uncontrollably impelled toward or are unable to refrain from anti-social acts because of some inherent condition of intellectual or volitional make-up, may be legitimately cla.s.sed as individuals born with an apt.i.tude for crime and social transgressions. In such individuals the natural mental make-up is lacking in some of its necessary elements so that memory, judgment, or will-power are not up to the minimum that is necessary for the establishment of proper conduct. In some cases, apparently, this lack finds expression in almost any kind of vice or crime into which circ.u.mstances happen to lead the individual. In others, however, there seem to be tendencies toward the commission of certain types of crime or vice. Certain family strains are characterized by petty thieving, others by deeds of violence, and still others by s.e.xual offenses. Certain types of mental defect are closely a.s.sociated with certain crimes. Thus sufferers from incipient paresis seem particularly p.r.o.ne to commit a.s.saults and larceny; epileptics, crimes of brutality and violence.

=The Epileptic Criminal Especially Dangerous.--=One of the characteristics of epilepsy, indeed, emphasized by various psychiatrists, is that frequently it leads to loss of those forms of self-restraint which are absolutely indispensable to morality and the safety of society. Cruelty, atrocious s.e.xual offenses and other vicious crimes are the result. It is a noteworthy fact, moreover, that often in the milder forms of affliction, where instead of well-marked convulsions only momentary lapses of consciousness occur, the greatest amount of mental and moral deterioration and fluctuation is sometimes found.

The situation as regards the epileptic is well presented by Doctor William Healy, Director of the Juvenile Psycopathic Inst.i.tute of Chicago, in an article ent.i.tled "Epilepsy and Crime; the Cost", in the _Illinois Medical Journal_, November, 1912. He says:

"In the work of our inst.i.tute,[14] which represents the most thoroughgoing research into the genetics of criminalism ever undertaken in this country, we have with the help of parents and others carefully studied nearly 1,000 young repeated offenders. We have found that no less than 7-1/2 per cent. of these are ordinary epileptics, and we have reason to suspect others. This by no means represents the total number of epileptics seen in connection with juvenile court work, where, of course, first offenders as well as large numbers of dependents are seen. In addition to my above enumeration, other cases seen by the Detention Home physicians and myself amount up to many scores of cases. If one remembers that it is ordinarily calculated that one person in every 500 is epileptic, the significance of this high criminal percentage is clear, and the practical bearing of it is still further accentuated by the fact that some of the worst repeaters are epileptics, and that many of the gravest crimes are committed by those unfortunates. The connection between epilepsy and crime has everywhere been recognized by students of the subject, but it apparently needs constant emphasis in order that common sense steps may be taken toward guardianship of these who suffer from a disease which wreaks such extravagant vengeance on society."

=Mental Disorders Most Frequently a.s.sociated With Crime.--=Doctor Charles Mercier, an English authority on crime and insanity, in enumerating the mental disorders most frequently a.s.sociated with crime, places the insanity of drunkenness first. Any one who will take the trouble to verify the facts in his own community will find that a large percentage, frequently considerably over half, of the arrests made by the police are for acts committed while the offender was more or less under the influence of alcohol. Next to drunkenness among mental disorders which lead to crime Doctor Mercier places feeble-mindedness. Next to feeble-mindedness comes epilepsy; then paranoia or systematized delusion; next paresis; and lastly melancholia.

Paranoics are peculiar in that they are particularly apt to attack persons of prominence. Highly egotistical, they almost invariably believe themselves or some one or some cause dear to them, the subject of a plot, perhaps to rob them, to torture them, to steal their inventions or literary productions, or to persecute them in some way. Two if not three of our murdered presidents owe their a.s.sa.s.sinations to paranoics. Many rulers have been attacked and some killed by such insane individuals. Most of the "cranks" who write threatening letters are lunatics of this type.

Of the kinds of mental unsoundness known to be inheritable which are of special significance from the standpoint of crime and delinquency undoubtedly feeble-mindedness ranks first. We have already seen that as our methods for detecting the higher grades of feeble-mindedness become more accurate we disclose in border-line cases a veritable hot-bed of mental incapacity suitable for the engendering of the criminal and the vicious. Here in addition to some of the more p.r.o.nounced criminal types belong hosts of our chronic petty offenders, our s.e.xually vicious and our "won't-works". One interesting outcome of a recent investigation into the army of unemployed in England was the discovery of the general unfitness of these unemployed. In our own country the habitually unemployed are so not because of lack of work, but largely because it is unprofitable to employ them.

=The Bearing of Immigration on Crime and Delinquency.--=Perhaps in no field more than this of crime and delinquency, especially in so far as it is based on innate deficiency, does the gravity of the immigration question impress itself on us. How stupendous this problem[15] has become may be realized from the fact that according to the census of 1910, 13,345,545, or one out of seven of the inhabitants of the United States, were foreign born. And if we add to these the 18,897,837 of whom one or both parents were of foreign birth, we reach the astonishing total of over 32,000,000, or more than one-third of our total population, who are foreign born, or who have one or both parents of foreign birth.

During the decade from 1900 to 1910, 8,500,000 foreigners came to the United States, of whom 5,250,000 remained to make a permanent home. This shows how rapidly our whole population might be radically changed. In recent years the source of our immigrants has shifted proportionately from northwestern Europe to southern and eastern Europe (Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia), and whether for weal or woe this new blood must inevitably leave its impress upon us. Does it not behoove us then to seek with anxious eyes some knowledge of these invading hordes with whom we are to mingle our life-blood?

Even the most superficial examination may well cause us grave concern. We find that in one year (1908) at Ellis Island alone, 3,741 paupers, 2,900 persons with contagious disease, 184 insane, 121 feeble-minded, 136 criminals, 124 prost.i.tutes and 65 idiots were denied entrance, and yet, according to the estimate of Doctor F. K. Sprague, of the United States Public Health Service, probably only about 5 per cent of the mentally deficient and 25 per cent. of those who will become insane have been detected. When confronted by such data we can begin to realize what we are facing. Others estimate that from 6 to 7 per cent. of the immigrants who are now arriving are feeble-minded. We learn further that recently while the foreign-born population of New York state was about 30 per cent., the foreign-born population of the insane hospitals of the state was over 43 per cent., and at one time approximately 65 per cent. for New York City.

In one year (1908) 84 per cent. of the patients in Bellevue Hospital, New York City, were of foreign parentage. Paresis, which probably always has syphilis as its antecedent, is proportionately twice as prevalent among foreigners as among natives in New York City.

But from the standpoint of inheritance, however great the danger may be from cla.s.sifiable defectives, it is probably far greater from that much larger cla.s.s of aliens we are now receiving with open arms who are below the mental and physical average of their own countries. Moreover, with our present system of inspection there is no way of detecting the grades of feeble-mindedness above idiocy and imbecility in the great numbers of foreign children under five when brought in, who are beginning to show up in alarming numbers in the schools of some of our larger cities. About thirty per cent. of the annual increment of our population is due to immigration and not to births; and once in our country the alien far outbreeds the native stock, with relatively little increase in death-rate, thus making a double contribution to the increase of population. When we take all these facts into consideration it certainly is high time that we arouse from our self-complacent att.i.tude and consider the whole question of immigration most earnestly.

In spite of the fact that many individuals are caught in the net of inspection at our portals, it is clear that still more rigid rejection[16]

is imperative. The inspectors at our various ports are doing the best they can under the circ.u.mstances, but there are at present too few of them and they are too restricted in their powers to meet the situation satisfactorily. Moreover, when at one of our ports in one year (1910), of 1,483 immigrants certified by the inspecting surgeons as unfit to land because of serious mental or physical defects, 1,370 were landed anyway, it is evident that there is a strong and reprehensible pull somewhere to evade the obvious intent of the law.

It remains for us as a people to decide whether we shall continue to let the large employers of cheap labor, the railroad and steamship agents and brokers, who care nothing about the innate fitness of the immigrants they bring, determine the character of our future population, or whether we shall insist on a proper regulation of this flood so that we may receive only an honest, intelligent, industrious and healthy stock. To continue to absorb these aliens with as little selection as we now do is nothing short of criminal carelessness. Let us not be deceived by the promptings of a misguided sentiment, "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." The voice is Jacob's voice, nor should this voice of the easily persuaded, the sentimentalist, the interested organization to which the relatives of the defective alien belong, or any other pressure move us from our obvious duty of refusing to fasten upon this country an incubus of degeneracy for which we as a nation are in no way responsible.

To render us safe we should not only have more carefully drawn laws and more rigid selection at our ports of entry, but we should if possible also know the stock from which our future citizens come. This is peculiarly desirable for such defects as feeble-mindedness and various other mental imperfections, some of which require prolonged observation for detection. Davenport estimates that it is wholly within the realm of possibility and good business sense to maintain a corps of trained inspectors abroad in the chief centers from which our immigrants come who shall certify the desirable applicants. He makes the point that the national expense would be far less than the cost of maintaining the army of defectives we are now admitting to our own country, many of whom almost immediately become public charges, to say nothing of the hordes of carriers who though normal themselves, will transmit undesirable traits.

=s.e.xual Vice.--=As to s.e.xual vice, the skein is indeed a tangled one.

Since nine-tenths of the difficulty centers in a lack of self-restraint, and inasmuch as the mating instinct is one of the strongest that tugs at the flesh of humanity, it is obvious that those by nature deficient in volitional control will almost without exception give way to the call. So as might be expected the hordes of our feeble-minded and epileptic are always a source of grave danger in this respect. However, the mentally enfeebled are by no means the only offenders; indeed, they are probably not the majority. The true situation is finally dawning on society and the reformer's call for instruction in "s.e.x-hygiene" resounds through the land. The whole matter is one of the most perplexing and momentous that confronts us to-day.

=The Question of School Instruction in s.e.x-Hygiene.--=While the writer does not for an instant underestimate the gravity of the situation, and has only contempt for the nonsense that is palmed off on children about their origin, or the indelicate self-consciousness which puts under the ban the discussion of so serious a problem by adults, still he is not convinced that the universal teaching of the subject to children in schools by the average teacher, as advocated by some, is to be the solution of the matter or is even a wise attempt at solution. Yet he freely admits that he is possibly overfearful of the effects of the undesirable features of such instruction. True it is that all children do learn, frequently at an astonishingly early age, about s.e.x, and their knowledge is usually of an undesirable kind from unreliable and often vicious sources, and it is equally true that parents, either through ignorance or prudery, generally can not be depended on to give the child necessary instruction. But before entering on a wide-spread campaign of undiluted s.e.x-instruction in schools might it not be more prudent to make an attempt toward reaching fathers and mothers and convincing them of the necessity of dealing more frankly and intelligently with their children regarding s.e.x?

Even to the novice in psychology the powerful nature of suggestion is known, and with this knowledge before us, is it not wiser to strive in the main to keep the child's mind off of s.e.x rather than specifically to focus it on it by special convocations and discourse? If our psychology means anything, then the worst possible thing we can do for a child is to make him unduly s.e.x-conscious. Something might be done profitably perhaps in schools in an un.o.btrusive way by specially gifted persons, but the self-conscious way in which most teachers go about topics of s.e.x is certainly not rea.s.suring to the thoughtful observer as regards the benefit derived from such instruction. The one evident method of accomplishing wholesome s.e.x-instruction in schools, devoid of all possibility of undesirable suggestion and s.e.x-consciousness, is in the form of biological work where plants and animals are studied in all their relations, the subject of propagation being taken up in as matter-of-fact a way as the functioning of any other organ system of plants or animals. In such a course, long before the subject of s.e.x in higher animals need be approached the pupil will have developed an att.i.tude of mind which will lead him to see nothing unusual or suggestive in the function of s.e.x no matter where it may be found. Incidentally, inasmuch as the manner in which germs affect living organisms should be studied in such a course anyway, it would be a simple matter to give all necessary information about the dangers of infection from venereal diseases.

=Mere Knowledge Not the Crux of the s.e.x Problem.--=However, desirable as correct knowledge about s.e.x is, knowledge alone is not the crux of the s.e.x problem. The moral dangers and abuses that we are trying to circ.u.mvent lie rather in the realm of the emotions than that of the intellect. The problem must be solved from a broader foundation than mere information.

The all-important consideration is the early establishment of general habits of self-control so that these may become incorporated in the nervous organization of the child and become inhibitory anchors against pa.s.sions and temptation. Children must be taught to suppress the present impulse, to sacrifice the immediate pleasure for the more distant or permanent good. They must be practised in calling up feelings that will counteract other promptings which if followed blindly are inimical to social welfare. Their control must come from within not as a matter of external compulsion. That way character lies.

So in viewing the problem of s.e.xual hygiene the writer feels that our attempts toward damming the torrents in the adolescent by a belated effort at verbal instruction on s.e.x-hygiene is at best only a palliative or an attempt to cure the symptoms of a more deeply-seated, organic, social malady. The treatment should have been in progress long before in the form of training in self-control, and in the inculcation of the sense of dignity and self-respect which springs from the individual's consciousness of being, not a slave to his desires, but his own master. This, together with the judicious schooling of boys in a greater chivalry and respect for womanhood, and of girls in the necessity of meriting such esteem, will, in my estimation, carry us further than formal courses in s.e.x-hygiene.

=Early Training in Self-Restraint an Important Preventive of Crime and Delinquency.--=As to crime and delinquency in general, it is evident that the same early training in self-restraint is a most important factor of prevention. A wise warden in charge of a large prison says, "Most of these men are here because they have not learned sufficiently the lesson of self-control." This is the age of preventive medicine, why not also of preventive crime and delinquency? Instead of confining our practise to punishing offenders, necessary as this may be under the present conditions, why not strive more to prevent the commission of offenses? As far as normal individuals are concerned much can be done by early cultivation in self-discipline and through the establishment of moral backbone by training in the overcoming of difficulties. Much, very much, also remains to be done in the correction of wrong social conditions.

=Unpardonable to Permit Delinquent Defectives to Multiply Their Kind.--=As for our mental defectives and moral imbeciles, knowing now how strongly hereditary the underlying factors of these conditions are, and with no preventive or curative agents in sight, to let them produce progeny, is clearly unpardonable.

CHAPTER X

RACE BETTERMENT THROUGH HEREDITY

Most of us have heard in one form or another the fairy story of the youth on adventure bent, who was captured by the giant and under dire penalty in case of failure was set the task of sweeping out the giant's stable before sundown. The peculiarity of this stable, it will be recalled, was that, as fast as the refuse was swept out at the door an even greater quant.i.ty poured in through the windows so that the sweeper, just in proportion to his zeal, became more and more enc.u.mbered with his burden.

=A Questionable Form of Charity.--=Though we smile at the childishness of this legend, are we not as a civilized people attempting through our charities a feat parallel to that of this unfortunate youth? We foster and favor our social wastage with the inevitable result that it runs riot under our sheltering hand and deluges us with an ever acc.u.mulating flood of its like. For are we not constantly building more asylums, sanitaria and prisons, to preserve more unfit, to produce more defectives, to require still greater numbers of asylums, sanitaria and prisons, to preserve more unfit, and so on in unending progression?

At nearly every period of history there have been certain individuals who have seen the necessity of a state eliminating its supply of defectives.

=Past Protests.--=For instance, we find the importance of this strongly urged by Plato. After pointing out the fact that the shepherd, in order to maintain the standard of his flocks, bred only from the best individuals, as did likewise the huntsman with his dogs and horses, and the fancier with his various pets, Plato went on to show the danger to the state of allowing the constantly increasing body of defectives and degenerates to multiply their kind. Repeated expression of the same idea has occurred from time to time during the succeeding centuries.

Little heed was paid to these remonstrances, however, with the result that is known to us all. To-day, "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" is still sung by the poet, but the original nations themselves have long since pa.s.sed into the night.

=An Increasing Flood of Defectives.--=Strive to ignore the unpleasant facts as we may, we have to admit that the same problem of what the human harvest shall be is with us in grave form to-day. The alarming phase of the situation, however, lies in the fact that we are facing an ever increasing flood of social wastage.

But _why_ this increase of defectives? It can not be attributed to oppression, to grinding poverty, or to decline in attention to our sick and needy, for never was prosperity greater, never were charities more flourishing, never such activity in the search for palliatives and cures.

The simple fact is that we are breeding our defectives. The human harvest like the grain harvest is based fundamentally on heritage. And to get a better crop of human beings, we must, as with other crops, weed out bad strains.

To whatever source of information we turn the facts are essentially the same. Abroad we find that in England, for example, the ratio of defectives to normals more than doubled between 1764 and 1896. At home, from the investigation of Davenport and Weeks we learn that in the state of New Jersey the number of epileptics doubles every thirty years. And other investigators estimate that the fecundity of mental defectives in general is about twice as great as that of the average of our population. In a recent report of the New York State Board of Charities we read, "There are about thirty thousand feeble-minded persons in the state of New York, of whom four thousand are intermittently sequestered while twenty-six thousand who are a menace to society are at liberty and may produce the unfit." And a pa.s.sage from the last Ma.s.sachusetts report reads as follows: "We have been obliged to refuse a very large number of applicants for the admission of feeble-minded women--many of whom have given birth to one or more children. The prolific progeny of these women almost without exception are public charges from the date of their birth."