The Fertility of the Unfit Part 1

The Fertility of the Unfit.

by William Allan Chapple.

PREFACE.

The problem with which Dr. Chapple deals in this book is one of extreme gravity. It is also one of pressing importance. The growth of the Criminal is one of the most ominous clouds on every national horizon. In spite of advances in criminology the rate of increase is so alarming that the "Unfit" threatens to be to the new Civilization what the Hun and Vandal were to the old. How to deal with this dangerous cla.s.s is perhaps the most serious question that faces Sociologists at this hour.

And something must be done speedily, else our civilization is in imminent peril of being swamped by the increasingly disproportionate progeny of the Criminal.

Various methods have from time to time been suggested to ward off this danger. In my judgment one of the most effective has yet to be tried in the Colony--the system of indeterminate sentences. Nothing can be more futile than the present method of criminal procedure. After a certain stated period in gaol, we allow Criminals--even of the most dangerous character--to go out free without making the slightest effort to secure that they are fit to be returned to society. We quarantine the plague-stricken or small-pox ship, and keep the pa.s.sengers isolated till the disease is eradicated. But we send up the Criminal only for a definite time, and at the end of that, he is allowed to go at large even though we may know he is a more dangerous character than when he entered the gaol. This is egregious folly.

Dr. Chapple's treatise, however, takes things as they are. He proposes to save society from the multiplication of its Criminals by a remedy of the most radical kind. When he was good enough to ask me to write a preface for his book I hesitated somewhat. I read the substance of it in MS.S. and was deeply impressed by it. But still I am in some doubt. I am not quite prepared to accept at once Dr. Chapple's proposed remedy.

Neither am I prepared to reject it. I am simply an enquirer, trying to arrive at the truth regarding this clamant social problem. The time has certainly come when the issues raised in Dr. Chapple's book must be faced. It is very desirable therefore, that the public should have these put before it in a frank, cautious way, by experts who understand what they are writing about, and have a due sense of the grave responsibilities involved. Dr. Chapple's contribution seems to me very fully to satisfy these requirements. No doubt both his premises and conclusions are open to criticism at various points. It is, indeed, not unlikely that the plan whereby he proposes to limit the "fertility of the Unfit" may come with a sort of shock to some readers.

It is, perhaps, well that it should, for it may lead to thought and criticism. In any case, this policy of drift must be dropped and Dr.

Chapple's remedy, or some other, promptly adopted. A preface is not the place to discuss the pro's and con's of Dr. Chapple's treatise. My main object in this foreword is to commend to the public who take an interest in this grave problem a discussion of it, which is alike timely and thorough and reverent. And this, I believe, readers will find in the following pages.

RUTHERFORD WADDELL.

_Dunedin_,

_Dec. 9th, 1903._

FROM DR. J.G. FINDLAY, M.A., LL.D.

DEAR DR. CHAPPLE,--

You are aware that I gave your Treatise on the "Fertility of the Unfit"

a very careful perusal. It is a subject to which I have devoted some attention, both at College and since I left College, and I feel competent to say that no finer work on the subject has been accomplished than that contained in your Treatise. I consider it of value, not only from a statistical point of view, but also from a point of view of scientific originality.

I have no doubt that if the work were published in New Zealand it would be read and bought by a large number of people. I may add that I discussed your views with competent critics, and they share the opinion which I have expressed in this letter. I sincerely hope that the volume will be published, and need not add that my friends and myself will be subscribers for copies.

Yours sincerely,

J.G. FINDLAY.

FROM MALCOLM ROSS, ESQ.

DEAR DR. CHAPPLE,--

I am pleased to hear that your MS. is to be published. The subject is one that must attract an increasing amount of attention on the part of all who have the true interests of the state at heart. There can be no doubt that the Parliamentary machine has failed, lamentably, to grapple with the problems you have referred to. At the present time, when some of our most earnest statesmen and greatest thinkers are discussing the supposed commercial decadence of the nation, the publication of such a treatise as you have prepared is opportune, and a perusal of it prompts the thought that the main remedy lies deeper, and may be found in sociological even more than in economic reform.

I do not profess myself competent to express any opinion regarding the remedy you propose. That is a matter for a carefully selected expert Royal Commission. The whole question, however, is one that might with advantage be discussed, both in the Press and the Parliament, at the present time, and I feel sure your book will be welcomed as a valuable contribution on the subject.

Yours sincerely,

MALCOLM ROSS.

FROM SIR ROBERT STOUT, K.C.M.G., CHIEF JUSTICE.

MY DEAR DR. CHAPPLE,--

I have read your MSS., and am much pleased with it. It puts the problem of our times very plainly, and I think should be published in England. I have a friend in England who would, I think, be glad to help, and he is engaged by one of the large publishing firms in England. If you decide on sending it to England I shall be glad to write to him, and ask his a.s.sistance. The subject is one that certainly required ventilation, and whether your remedy is the proper one or not, it ought certainly to be discussed.

Yours truly,

ROBERT STOUT.

THE FERTILITY OF THE UNFIT.

INTRODUCTION.

Biology is the Science of Life. It seeks to explain the phenomena of all life, whether animal or vegetable. Its methods are observation and experiment. It observes the tiny cell on the surface of an egg yolk, and watches it divide and multiply until it becomes a great ma.s.s of cells, which group off or differentiate, and rearrange and alter their shapes.

It observes how little organs unfold themselves, or evolve out of these little cell groups--how gradual, but how unvarying the change; how one group becomes a bone, another a brain, another a muscle, to const.i.tute in three short weeks the body of a matured chick. Those little tendons like silken threads, that run down those slender pink legs to each and every toe, and move its little joints so swiftly that we hardly see them--that little brain, no bigger than a tiny seed, in which is planted a mysterious force that impels it to set all those brand-new muscles in motion, and to dart after a fly with the swiftness of an arrow--all this wondrous mechanism, all this beauteous structure, all this perfection of function, all this adaptation to environment, have evolved from a few microscopic cells in three short weeks.

Biology is the science that observes all this, and enunciates the law that the life history of this animal cell, _i.e._, its history from a simple unicellular state in the egg, to its complex multicellular state in the matured chick, represents the history of the race to which the chick belongs. If we could trace that chicken back through all its ancestry, we would discover at different periods in the history of life upon the globe (about 100 million years, according to Haeckel) exactly the stages of development we found in the life history of the chick, and arrive at last at a primordial cell.

What is true of the chick is true of all life. This is the law of evolution. It is true of all plant and animal life; it is true of man as an individual; it is true of his mind as well as of his body; it is true of society as an aggregation of individuals. As men have evolved from a lower to a higher, a simple to a complex state, so they are still evolving and rising "on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things."

Natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, is one of the processes by which evolution takes place. According to this law, only the fittest survive in the struggle for life. Darwin was led to this discovery on reading Malthus's thesis regarding the disproportion between the rates of increase in population and food, and the consequent struggle for existence.

All living organisms require food and s.p.a.ce. The power of multiplication in plants and animals is so great that food or s.p.a.ce is sooner or later entrenched upon, and then commences this inevitable struggle for existence. In this struggle for life, the individuals best able to conform to their environment, _i.e._, the best able to resist adverse circ.u.mstances, to sustain hardships, to overcome difficulties, to defend themselves, to outstrip their fellows, in short, to harmonise function with environment, survive. These propagate their kind according to the law of heredity. Variations exist in the progeny, and the individuals whose variations best adapt them to their environment are the fittest to, and do, survive.

In a state of nature the weaklings perish. If man interferes with this state of nature in the lower animals, he may make a selection and cultivate some particular attribute. This is artificial selection, and is best exemplified in the experiments with pigeons. Pasteur saved the silk industry of France, and perhaps of the whole world, by the application of this law of artificial selection. The disease of silkworms, known as Pebrine, was spreading with ruinous rapidity in France. Pasteur demonstrated that the germ of the disease could be detected in the blood of affected moths by the aid of the microscope. He proved that the eggs of diseased moths produced unhealthy worms, and he advised that the eggs of each moth be kept apart, until the moth was examined for germs. If these were found, the eggs were to be burned.

Thus the eggs of unhealthy moths were never hatched, and artificial selection of healthy stock stamped out a disease, and saved a great industry.

Each individual plant in the struggle for life has only itself to maintain. In the higher forms of animal life, each animal has its offspring as well as itself to maintain. In a state of nature, that is in a state unaffected by man's rational interference, defective offspring and weaker brethren were the victims of the inexorable law of natural selection. When Christ gave _his_ reply to the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" the defective and the weakling became the special care of their stronger brother. They const.i.tuted thenceforth The Fit Man's Burden. The work a man has to do during life, in order to support himself, is the unit of measurement of the burden he has to bear. Many factors in modern times have helped to reduce that work to a minimum.

The invention of machinery has multiplied his eyes, his hands, his feet; and one man can now produce, for his own maintenance and comfort, what it took perhaps a score of men to produce even a century ago. Man's disabilities from incidental and epidemic disease have been immeasurably reduced by modern sanitation, and the teaching and practice of preventive medicine. Agricultural chemistry has made the soil more productive, and manufacturing arts have aided distribution as well as production.

All the departments of human knowledge have been placed under contribution to man's necessity, and longer life, better health, and more food and clothing for less work, are the blessings on his head to-day.

While the burden has been lessened by the industrial and scientific progress of the last half century, it has been augmented by the fertility of the unfit; and the maintenance in idleness and comfort of the great and increasing army of defectives const.i.tutes the fit man's burden. The unfit in the State include all those mental and moral and physical defectives who are unable or unwilling to support themselves according to the recognised laws of human society. They include the criminal, the pauper, the idiot and imbecile, the lunatic, the drunkard, the deformed, and the diseased. We are now face to face with the startling fact that this army of defectives is increasing in numbers and relative fertility.

Consider what a burden is the criminal. Every community is more or less terrorised by him; our property is liable to be plundered, our houses invaded, our women ravished, our children murdered. To restrain him we must build gaols, and keep immense staffs of highly paid officials to tend him in confinement, and watch him when he is at liberty.

Notwithstanding these, crime is rife, and is rapidly increasing. Says Douglas Morrison:--"It is perfectly well known to every serious student of criminal questions, both at home and abroad, that the proportion of habitual criminals in the criminal population is steadily on the increase, and was never so high as it is now.... The population under detention in reformatory inst.i.tutions is increasing more rapidly than the growth of the community as a whole, and, as far as it is possible to see, the juvenile population in prisons is doing the same thing."

Havelock Ellis ("The Criminal," p. 295), Boies, and McKim, all corroborate this testimony. "Among the three or four millions of inhabitants of London, one in every five dies in gaol, prison, or workhouse." ("Heredity and Human Progress," p. 32.)