Chapter XVIII: The Eugenic Aspect of Some Specific Reforms (2)

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 class, 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 sexes. It may be broadly described as a movement which seeks to remove all discrimination based on sex. It is a movement to secure recognition of an equality of the two sexes. 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 sexes; 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 sex is a quantitative 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 sex," as Edward Carpenter called it, whose size has been kept down by sexual selection; or better stated there is so much overlapping that it is a question of different averages with many individuals of each sex beyond the average of the other sex.

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

It is worth noting that the spread of feminism will reinforce the action of sexual selection in keeping down the numbers of this "intermediate sex." 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 régime 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 sexes must use the word in a figurative sense, not ignoring the differentiation of the two sexes, 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 anticipation. 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 analysis 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 competitive 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 passed, and it has been found possible to secure the passage 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 pass.

The recent action of the municipality of Schönberg, 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 Schönberg, 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 spaced 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 competition 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 aptitude, 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 sexes and in emphasizing this differentiation by education. Boys will be taught the nobility 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 sexes. 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 class 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 assume 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 SEX HYGIENE MOVEMENT

Sexual 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 sexual immorality is a campaign for eugenics will be apparent if the proposition is analyzed.

First, does sexual 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 sexual 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.

4. Illicit experiences may have been so disillusioning, owing to the disaffecting nature of the consorts, that an attitude of pessimism and misanthropy or misogyny is built up. Such an attitude prevents marriage not only directly, but also indirectly, since persons with such an outlook are thereby less attractive to the opposite sex.

5. A taste for sexual variety is built up so that the individual is unwilling to commit himself to a monogamous union.

6. Occasionally, threat of blackmail by a jilted paramour prevents marriage by the inability to escape these importunities.

We consider next the relative birth-rate of the married and the incontinent unmarried. There can not be the slightest doubt that this is vastly greater in the case of the married. The unmarried have not only all the incentives of the married to keep down their birth-rate but also the obvious and powerful incentive of concealment as well.

Passing to the relative death-rate of the illegitimate and legitimate progeny, the actual data invariably indicate a decided advantage of the legitimately born. The reasons are too obvious to be retailed.

Now, then, knowing that the racial contribution of the sexually moral is greater than that of the sexually immoral, we may compare the quality of the sexually moral and immoral, to get the evolutionary effect.

For this purpose a distinction must be made between the individual who has been chaste till the normal time of marriage and whose sexual life is truly monogamous, and that abnormal group who remain chaste and celibate to an advanced age. These last are not moral in the last analysis, if they have valuable and needed traits and are fertile, because in the long run their failure to reproduce affects adversely the welfare of their group. While the race suffers through the failure of many of these individuals to contribute progeny, probably this does not happen, so far as males are concerned, as much as might be supposed, for such individuals are often innately defective in their instincts or, in the case of disappointed lovers, have a badly proportioned emotional equipment, since it leads them into a position so obviously opposed to race interests.

But, to pass to the essential comparison, that between the sexually immoral and the sexually moral as limited above, it is necessary first of all to decide whether monogamy is a desirable and presumably permanent feature of human society.

We conclude that it is:

1. Because it is spreading at the expense of polygamy even where not favored by legal interference. The change is most evident in China.

2. In monogamy, sexual selection puts a premium on valuable traits of character, rather than on mere personal beauty or ability to acquire wealth; and

3. The greatest amount of happiness is produced by a monogamous system, since in a polygamous society so many men must remain unmarried and so many women are dissatisfied with having to share their mates with others.

Assuming this, then adaptation to the condition of monogamous society represents race progress. Such a race profits if those who do not comply with its conditions make a deficient racial contribution. It follows then that sexual immorality is eugenic in its result for the species and that if all sexual immorality should cease, an important means of race progress might be lost. An illustration is the case of the Negro in America, whose failure to increase more rapidly in number is largely attributable to the widespread sterility resulting from venereal infection.[185] Should venereal diseases be eliminated, that race might be expected to increase in numbers very much faster than the whites.

It may be felt by some that this position would have an immoral effect upon youth if widely accepted. This need not be feared. On the contrary, we believe that one of the most powerful factors in ethical culture is pride due to the consciousness of being one who is fit and worthy.

The traditional view of sexual morality has been to ignore the selectional aspect here discussed and to stress the alleged deterioration of the germ-plasm by the direct action of the toxins of syphilis. The evidence relied upon to demonstrate this action seems to be vitiated by the possibility that there was, instead, a transmitted infection of the progeny. This "racial poison" action, since it is so highly improbable from analogy, can not be credited until it has been demonstrated in cases where the parents have been indubitably cured.

Is it necessary, then, to retain sexual immorality in order to achieve race progress? No, because it is only one of many factors contributing to race progress. Society can mitigate this as well as alcoholism, disease, infant mortality--all powerful selective factors--without harm, provided increased efficiency of other selective factors is ensured, such as the segregation of defectives, more effective sexual selection, a better correlation of income and ability, and a more eugenic distribution of family limitation.

TRADES UNIONISM

A dysgenic feature often found in trades unionism will easily be understood after our discussion of the minimum wage. The union tends to standardize wages; it tends to fix a wage in a given industry, and demand that nearly all workers in that classification be paid that wage. It cannot be denied that some of these workers are much more capable than others. Artificial interference with a more exact adjustment of wages to ability therefore penalizes the better workmen and subsidizes the worse ones. Economic pressure is thereby put on the better men to have fewer children, and with the worse men encourages more children, than would be the case if their incomes more nearly represented their real worth. Payment according to the product, with prizes and bonuses so much opposed by the unions, is more in accord with the principles of eugenics.

PROHIBITION

It was shown in Chapter II that the attempt to ban alcoholic beverages on the ground of direct dysgenic effect is based on dubious evidence. But the prohibition of the use of liquors, at least those containing more than 5% alcohol, can be defended on indirect eugenic grounds, as well as on the familiar grounds of pathology and economics which are commonly cited.

1. Unless it is present to such a degree as to constitute a neurotic taint, the desire to be stimulated is not of itself necessarily a bad thing. This will be particularly clear if the distribution of the responsiveness to alcoholic stimulus is recalled. Some really valuable strains, marked by this susceptibility, may be eliminated through the death of some individuals from debauchery and the penalization of others in preferential mating; this would be avoided if narcotics were not available.

2. In selection for eugenic improvement, it is desirable not to have to select for too many traits at once. If alcoholism could, through prohibition, be eliminated from consideration, it would just so far simplify the problem of eugenics.

3. Drunkenness interferes with the effectiveness of means for family limitation, so that if his alcoholism is not extreme, the drunkard's family is sometimes larger than it would otherwise be.

On the other hand, prohibition is dysgenic and intemperance is eugenic in their effect on the species in so far as alcoholism is correlated with other undesirable characters and brings about the elimination of undesirable strains. But its action is not sufficiently discriminating nor decisive; and if the strains have many serious defects, they can probably be dealt with better in some other, more direct way.

We conclude, then, that, on the whole, prohibition is desirable for eugenic as well as for other reasons.

PEDAGOGICAL CELIBACY

Whether women are more efficient teachers than men, and whether single women are more efficient teachers than married women, are disputed questions which it is not proposed here to consider. Accepting the present fact, that most of the school teachers in the United States are unmarried women, it is proper to examine the eugenic consequences of this condition.

The withdrawal of this large body of women from the career of motherhood into a celibate career may be desirable if these women are below the average of the rest of the women of the population in eugenic quality. But it would hardly be possible to find enough eugenic inferiors to fill the ranks of teachers, without getting those who are inferior in actual ability, in patent as well as latent traits. And the idea of placing education in the hands of such inferior persons is not to be considered.

It is, therefore, inevitable that the teachers are, on the whole, superior persons eugenically. Their celibacy must be considered highly detrimental to racial welfare.

But, it may be said, there is a considerable number of women so deficient in sex feeling or emotional equipment that they are certain never to marry; they are, nevertheless, persons of intellectual ability. Let them be the school teachers. This solution is, however, not acceptable. Many women of the character described undoubtedly exist, but they are better placed in some other occupation. It is wholly undesirable that children should be reared under a neuter influence, which is probably too common already in education.

If women are to teach, then, it must be concluded that on eugenic grounds preference should be given to married rather than single teachers, and that the single ones should be encouraged to marry. This requires (1) that considerable change be made in the education of young women, so that they shall be fitted for motherhood rather than exclusively for school teaching as is often the case, and (2) that social devices be brought into play to aid them in mating--since undoubtedly a proportion of school teachers are single from the segregating character of their profession, not from choice, and (3) provision for employing some women on half-time and (4) increase of the number of male teachers in high schools.

It is, perhaps, unnecessary to mention a fifth change necessary: that school boards must be brought to see the undesirability of employing only unmarried women, and of discharging them, no matter how efficient, if they marry or have children. The courts must be enabled to uphold woman's right of marriage and motherhood, instead of, as in some cases at present, upholding school boards in their denial of this right. Contracts which prevent women teachers from marrying or discontinuing their work for marriage should be illegal, and talk about the "moral obligation" of normal school graduates to teach should be discountenanced.

Against the proposal to employ married school teachers, two objections are urged. It is said (1) that for most women school teaching is merely a temporary occupation, which they take up to pass the few years until they shall have married. To this it may be replied that the hope of marriage too often proves illusory to the young woman who enters on the pedagogical career, because of the lack of opportunities to meet men, and because the nature of her work is not such as to increase her attractiveness to men, nor her fitness for home-making. Pedagogy is too often a sterilizing institution, which takes young women who desire to marry and impairs their chance of marriage.

Again it will be said (2) that married teachers would lose too much time from their work; that their primary interests would be in their own homes instead of in the school; that they could not teach school without neglecting their own children. These objections fall in the realm of education, not eugenics, and it can only be said here that the reasons must be extraordinarily cogent, which will justify the enforcement of celibacy on so large a body of superior young women as is now engaged in school teaching.

The magnitude of the problem is not always realized. In 1914 the Commissioner of education reported that there were, in the United States, 169,929 men and 537,123 women engaged in teaching. Not less than half a million women, therefore, are potentially affected by the institution of pedagogical celibacy.