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diff --git a/16254-h/16254-h.htm b/16254-h/16254-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..36881c4 --- /dev/null +++ b/16254-h/16254-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4455 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Fertility Of The Unfit, by W.A. Chapple. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .cont {margin-left: 18%; + margin-right: 17%; + } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + .author {text-align: right; margin-right: 5%;} + + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The Fertility of the Unfit, by William Allan Chapple + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Fertility of the Unfit + +Author: William Allan Chapple + +Commentator: Rutherford Waddell + +Release Date: July 10, 2005 [EBook #16254] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FERTILITY OF THE UNFIT *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ah Kit, Irma Špehar, Janet Blenkinship +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h1>The Fertility of the Unfit</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>W.A. CHAPPLE, M.D., Ch.B., M.R.C.S., D.P.H.</h2> + +<h4>WITH PREFACE BY RUTHERFORD WADDELL, M.A., D.D.<br /><br /></h4> + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/motif.png" alt="motif" title="motif" /></div> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Melbourne</span>: <span class="smcap">Christchurch, Wellington, Dunedin, N.Z., and +London</span></p> + +<h4>WHITCOMBE & TOMBS LIMITED.</h4> + +<p><a name="Page_-15" id="Page_-15"></a></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_-14" id="Page_-14"></a></p><p><a name="Page_-13" id="Page_-13"></a></p> +<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2> + +<p>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 class 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.</p> + +<p>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 passengers 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.</p> + +<p>Dr. Chapple's treatise, however, takes things as they are. He proposes +to save society from the multiplication of its<a name="Page_-12" id="Page_-12"></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p class='author'><span class="smcap">Rutherford Waddell</span>.</p> + +<p><i>Dunedin</i>,</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 9th, 1903.</i></p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><a name="Page_-11" id="Page_-11"></a></p><p> +<span class="smcap">From Dr</span>. J.G. FINDLAY, M.A., LL.D.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Dear Dr. Chapple</span>,—<br /> +</p> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 28em;">Yours sincerely,</span></p> + +<p class='author'>J.G. FINDLAY.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p> +<span class="smcap">From</span> MALCOLM ROSS, <span class="smcap">Esq</span>.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Dear Dr. Chapple</span>,—<br /> +</p> + + +<p>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 <a name="Page_-10" id="Page_-10"></a>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 28em;">Yours sincerely,</span></p> + +<p class='author'>MALCOLM ROSS.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + + +<p> +<span class="smcap">From</span> SIR ROBERT STOUT, K.C.M.G., <span class="smcap">Chief Justice</span>.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">My Dear Dr. Chapple</span>,—<br /> +</p> + +<p>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 +assistance. The subject is one that certainly required ventilation, and +whether your remedy is the proper one or not, it ought certainly to be +discussed.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 28em;">Yours truly,</span></p> + +<p class='author'>ROBERT STOUT.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_-9" id="Page_-9"></a></p> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2> + + +<div class="cont"> +<a href='#Page_-14'>PREFACE</a><br /><br /><br /> +<a href='#Page_-7'>INTRODUCTION</a><br /><br /><br /> + +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Chapter</span> I.—<span class="smcap">The Problem Stated</span> <a href='#Page_1'><b>1</b></a><br /> +<br /> +The spread of moral restraint as a check.—Predicted by Malthus.—The +declining Birth-rate.—Its Universality.—Most conspicuous in New Zealand. +Great increase in production of food.—With rising food rate falling +birth-rate.—Malthus's checks.—His use of the term "moral restraint."—The +growing desire to evade family obligations.—Spread of physiological knowledge.—All +limitation involves self-restraint.—Motives for limitation.—Those +who do and those who do not limit.—Poverty and the Birth-rate.—Defectives +prolific and propagate their kind.—Moral restraint held to +include all sexual interference designed to limit families.—Power of self-control +an attribute of the best citizens.—Its absence an attribute of the +worst.—Humanitarianism increases the number and protects the lives of +defectives.—The ratio of the unfit to the fit.—Its dangers to the +State.—Antiquity of the problem.—The teaching of the +ancients.—Surgical methods already advocated.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Chapter</span> II.—<span class="smcap">The Population Question</span> <a href='#Page_10'><b>10</b></a><br /> +<br /> +The teaching of Aristotle and Plato.—The teaching of Malthus.—His +assailants.—Their illogical position.—Bonar on Malthus and his work.—The +increase of food supplies held by Nitti to refute Malthus.—The increase of +food and the decrease of births.—Mr. Spencer's biological theory—Maximum +birth-rate determined by female capacity to bear children.—The +pessimism of Spencer's law.—Wider definition of moral restraint.—Where +Malthus failed to anticipate the future.—Economic law operative only +through biological law.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Chapter</span> III.—<span class="smcap">Declining Birth-Rate</span> <a href='#Page_26'><b>26</b></a><br /> +<br /> +Declining birth-rates rapid and persistent.—Food cost in New Zealand.—Relation +of birth-rate to prosperity before and after 1877.—Neo-Malthusian +propaganda.—Marriage rates and fecundity of marriage.—Statistics of +Hearts of Oak Friendly Society.—Deliberate desire of parents to limit +family increase.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Chapter</span> IV.—<span class="smcap">Means Adopted</span> <a href='#Page_34'><b>34</b></a><br /> +<br /> +Family responsibility—Natural fertility undiminished.—Voluntary prevention +and physiological knowledge.—New Zealand experience.—Diminishing +influence of delayed marriage.—Practice of abortion.—Popular +sympathy in criminal cases.—Absence of complicating issues in New +Zealand.—Colonial desire for comfort and happiness.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Chapter</span> V.—<span class="smcap">Causes of Declining Birth-rate</span> <a href='#Page_38'><b>38</b></a><br /> +<br /> +Influence of self-restraint without continence.—Desire to limit families in +New Zealand not due to poverty.—Offspring cannot be limited without +self-restraint.—New Zealand's economic condition.—High standard of general +education.—Tendency to migrate within the colony.—Diffusion of +ideas.—Free social migration between all classes.—Desire to migrate +upwards.—Desire to raise the standard of ease and comfort.—Social +status the measure of financial status.—Social attraction of one class +to next below.—Each conscious of his limitation.—Large families +confirm this limitation.—The cost of the family.—The cost of +maternity.—The craving for ease and luxury.—Parents' desire for +their children's social success.—Humble homes bear distinguished +sons.—Large number with University education in New Zealand.—No +child labour except in hop and dairy districts.—Hopeless poverty a cause +of high birth-rates.—High birth-rates a cause of poverty.—Fecundity +depends on capacity of the female to bear children.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Chapter</span> VI.—<span class="smcap">Ethics of Prevention</span> <a href='#Page_53'><b>53</b></a><br /> +<br /> +Fertility the law of life.—Man interprets and controls this law.—Marriage +law necessary to fix paternal responsibility.—Malthus's high ideal.—If +prudence the motive, continence and celibacy violate no law.—Post-nuptial +intermittent restraint.—Ethics of prevention judged by consequences.—When +procreation is a good and when an evil.—Oligantrophy.—Artificial +checks are physiological sins.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Chapter VII.—Who Prevent</span> <a href='#Page_66'><b>66</b></a><br /><a name="Page_-8" id="Page_-8"></a> +<br /> +Desire for family limitation result of our social +system.—Desire and practice +not uniform through all classes.—The best limit, the worst do not.—Early +marriages and large families.—N.Z. marriage rates.—Those who delay, and +those who abstain from marriage.—Good motives mostly +actuate.—All +limitation implies restraint.—Birth-rates vary inversely with prudence and +self-control.—The limited family usually born in early married life when +progeny is less likely to be well developed.—Our worst citizens most +prolific.—Effect of poverty on fecundity.—Effect of alcoholic intemperance.—Effect of +mental and physical defects.—Defectives propagate their +kind.—The intermittent +inhabitants of Asylums and Gaols constitute the greatest danger to +society.—Character the resultant of two forces—motor impulse and +inhibition.—Chief criminal characteristic is defective inhibition.—This defect +is strongly hereditary.—It expresses itself in unrestrained fertility.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Chapter VIII.—The Multiplication of the Fit in +Relation to the State</span> <a href='#Page_79'><b>79</b></a><br /> +<br /> +The State's ideal in relation to the fertility of its +subjects.—Keen competition +means great effort and great waste of life.—If in the minds of the +citizens space and food are ample multiplication works automatically.—To +New Zealanders food now includes the luxuries as well as the necessities of +life.—Men are driven to the alternative of supporting a family of their own +or a degenerate family of defectives.—The State enforces the one but cannot +enforce the other.—New Zealand taxation.—The burden of the bread-winner.—As +the State lightens this burden it encourages fertility.—The +survival of the unfit makes the burden of the fit.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Chapter IX.—The Multiplication of the Unfit in +Relation to the State</span> <a href='#Page_89'><b>89</b></a><br /> +<br /> +Ancient methods of preventing the fertility of the +unfit.—Christian sentiment +suppressed inhuman practices.—Christian care brings many defectives +to the child-bearing period of life.—The association of mental and physical +defects.—Who are the unfit?—The tendency of relatives to cast their +degenerate kinsfolk on the State.—Our social conditions manufacture +defectives and foster their fertility.—The only moral force that limits +families is inhibition with prudence.—Defective self-control transmitted +hereditarily.—Dr. MacGregor's cases.—The transmission of insanity.—Celibacy +of the insane is the prophylaxis of insanity in the race.—The +environment of the unfit.—Defectives snatched from Nature's clutches.—At +the age of maturity they are left to propogate their kind.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Chapter X.—What Anæsthetics and Antiseptics Have +Made Possible</span> <a href='#Page_103'><b>103</b></a><br /> +<br /> +Education of defectives in prudence and self-restraint of little avail.—Surgical<br /> +suggestions discussed.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Chapter XI.—Tubo-ligature</span> <a href='#Page_114'><b>114</b></a><br /> +<br /> +The fertility of the criminal a greater danger to society than his depredations.—Artificial +sterility of women.—The menopause artificially induced.—Untoward +results.—The physiology of the Fallopian +tubes.—Their ligature +procures permanent sterility.—No other results immediate or remote.—Some +instances due to disease.—Defective women and the wives of defective +men would welcome protection from unhealthy offspring.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Chapter XII.—Suggestions as to Application</span> <a href='#Page_122'><b>122</b></a><br /> +<br /> +The State's humanitarian zeal protects the lives and fosters the fertility of +the degenerate.—A confirmed or hereditary criminal +defined.—Law on the +subject of sterilization could at first be permissive.—It should apply, to begin +with, to criminals and the insane.—Marriage certificates of health should +be required.—Women's readiness to submit to surgical treatment for minor +as well as major pelvic diseases.—Surgically induced sterility of healthy +women a greater crime than abortion.—This danger not remote.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Conclusion</span> <a href='#Page_128'><b>128</b></a> +</div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_-7" id="Page_-7"></a></p> +<h2><a name="The_Fertility_of_the_Unfit" id="The_Fertility_of_the_Unfit"></a><span class="smcap">The Fertility of the Unfit</span>.</h2> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + + +<h3><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION.</a></h3> + +<p>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 mass 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 constitute +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.</p> + +<p>Biology is the science that observes all this, and enunciates the law +that the life history of this animal cell,<a name="Page_-6" id="Page_-6"></a> <i>i.e.</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>All living organisms require food and space. The power of multiplication +in plants and animals is so great that food or space 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>i.e.</i>, the best able to resist adverse +circumstances, to sustain hardships, to overcome difficulties, to defend +themselves, to outstrip their fellows, in short, to harmonise function +with environment, survive. These <a name="Page_-5" id="Page_-5"></a>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>his</i> reply to the question, "Am I +my brother's keeper?" the defective and the weakling became the special +care of their stronger brother. They constituted 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 <a name="Page_-4" id="Page_-4"></a>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 constitutes 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.</p> + +<p>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 <a name="Page_-3" id="Page_-3"></a>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 institutions 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.)</p> + +<p>All these defectives are prolific, and transmit their fatal taints. "In +a certain family of sixteen persons, eight were born deaf and dumb, and +one at least of this family transmitted the defect as far as the third +generation." ("Heredity and Human Progress.") A murderer was the son of +a drunkard; of three brothers, one was normal, one a drunkard, and the +third was a criminal epileptic. Of his three paternal uncles, one was a +murderer, one a half idiot, and one a violent character. Of his four +cousins, sons of the latter, two were half idiots, one a complete idiot, +and the other a lunatic.</p> + +<p>There is an agricultural community of about 4000 in the rich and fertile +district in the valley of Artena, in Italy, who have been thieves, +brigands, and assassins since 1155 A.D. They were outlawed by Pope Paul +IV., in 1557, but they still live and flourish in their crime, the +victims of a criminal inheritance. The ratio of homicides in Italy and<a name="Page_-2" id="Page_-2"></a> +Artena is as 9 to 61; of assault and battery as 34 to 205; of highway +robbery as 3 to 145; of theft as 47 to 111. Professor Pellman, of Bonn +University, has traced the careers of a large number of defectives, and +shown their cost to the State. Take this example:—A woman who was a +thief, a drunkard, and a tramp for forty years of her life, had 834 +descendants, 709 of whom were traced; 106 were born out of wedlock, 142 +were beggars, and 64 more lived on charity. Of the women, 181 lived +disreputable lives. There were in the family 76 convicts, 7 of whom were +convicted of murder. In 75 years, this family cost their country in +almshouses, trials, courts, prisons, and correctional establishments +about £250,000. The injury inflicted by this one family on person and +property was simply incalculable.</p> + +<p>In New Zealand, the ratio of those dependent upon the State, or on +public or private support, has gone up from 16.86 per thousand of +population, over 15 years of age in 1878, to 23.01 in 1901. The ratio of +defectives, including deaf and dumb, blind, lunatics, epileptics, +paralytics, crippled and deformed, debilitated and infirm, has gone up +from 5.4 per thousand, over fifteen years, in 1874, to 11.4 in 1896, +declining slightly to 10.29 in 1901. The ratio of lunatics has gone up +from 1.9, in 1874, to 3.4 in 1901. This is the period of the most rapid +and persistent decline in the New Zealand birth-rate; and, coincident +with this period, the marriage-rate went down from 8.8 per thousand in +1874, to 5.8 in 1886, and then gradually rose to 7.83 in 1901. The +number of weekly rations (Parkes's standard), purchasable by the average +weekly wages of an artisan in Wellington province, has gone up from 11 +to 16.5 between the years 1877 and 1897. In other words, the price of +food and the rate of wages in 1897 would enable an <a name="Page_-1" id="Page_-1"></a>artisan to fill +5½ more mouths than he could have done at the rates prevailing in +1877.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding the development of civilising, Christianising, and +educational institutions, crime, insanity, and pauperism are increasing +with startling rapidity. The true cause is to be found deep down in +biological truth. Society is breeding from defective stock. The best fit +to produce the best offspring are ceasing to produce their kind, while +the fertility of the worst remains undisturbed. The most striking +demographical phenomenon of recent years is the declining birth-rate of +civilised nations. In Germany the birth-rate has fallen from 40 to 35 +per thousand of the population; in England from 35 to 30; in Ireland +from 26 to 22; in France from 26 to 21; and in the United States from 36 +to 30 during the last twenty years; while, in New Zealand, it has +declined from 40.8, in 1880, to 25.6, in 1900. In Australia there were +47,000 less births in 1899 than would have occurred under the rates +prevailing ten years ago.</p> + +<p>There is a consensus of opinion among demographists that this decline is +due to the voluntary curtailment of the family in married life. Prudence +is the motive, and self-restraint the means by which this curtailment is +made possible. But prudence and self-restraint are the characteristic +attributes of the best citizens. They are conspicuous by their absence +in the worst; and it is a matter of common observation that the +hopelessly poor, the drunken and improvident, the criminal and the +defective have the largest families, while those in the higher walks of +life rejoice in smaller numbers. The very qualities, therefore, that +make the social unit a law-abiding and useful citizen, who could and +should raise the best progeny for the State, also enable him to limit +his family, or escape the <a name="Page_0" id="Page_0"></a>responsibility of family life altogether; +while, on the other hand, the very qualities which make a man a social +burden, a criminal, a pauper, or a drunkard—improvidence and defective +inhibition—ensure that his fertility will be unrestrained, except by +the checks of biological law. And it now comes about that the good +citizen, who curtails his family, has the defective offspring of the bad +citizen thrown upon his hands to support; and the humanitarian zeal, +born of Christian sentiment, which is at flood-tide to-day, ensures that +all the defectives born to the world shall not only be nursed and +tended, but shall have the same opportunities of the highest possible +fertility enjoyed by their defective progenitors.</p> + +<p>A higher and nobler human happiness is attainable only through social +evolution, and this comes from greater freedom of thought, from bolder +enquiry, from broader experience, and from a scientific study of the +laws of causation. What "is" becomes "right" from custom, but with our +yearnings for a higher ideal, sentiment slowly yields to the logic of +comparison, and, often wiping from our eyes the sorrows over vanishing +idols, we behold broader vistas of human powers, possibilities, duties, +and destiny.</p> + +<p>As the proper study of mankind is man, influenced wholly by a desire to +be useful to a society to which I am indebted for the pleasures of +civilised life, I offer this brief volume as a comment on a phase of the +social condition of the times, and as my conclusions regarding its +interest for the future.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">The Problem Stated.</span></h4> + + +<p><i>The spread of moral restraint as a check.—Predicted by Malthus.—The +declining Birth-rate.—Its Universality.—Most conspicuous in New +Zealand.—Great increase in production of food.—With rising food rate +falling birth-rate.—Malthus's checks.—His use of the term "moral +restraint."—The growing desire to evade family obligations.—Spread of +physiological knowledge.—All limitation involves self +restraint.—Motives for limitation.—Those who do and those who do not +limit.—Poverty and the Birth-rate. Defectives prolific and propagate +their kind.—Moral restraint held to include all sexual interference +designed to limit families.—Power of self-control an attribute of the +best citizens.—Its absence an attribute of the worst.—Humanitarianism +increases the number and protects the lives of defectives.—The ratio of +the unfit to the fit.—Its dangers to the State.—Antiquity of the +problem.—The teaching of the ancients.—Surgical methods already +advocated.</i></p> + + +<p>A century has passed since Malthus made his immortal contribution to the +supreme problem of all ages and all people, but the whole aspect of the +population question has changed since his day. The change, however, was +anticipated by the great economist, and predicted in the words:—"The +history of modern civilisation is largely the history of the gradual +victory of the third check over the two others" (<i>vide</i> Essay, 7th +edition, p. 476). The third check is moral restraint and the two others +vice and misery.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a>The statistics of all civilized nations show a gradual and progressive +decline in the birth-rate much more marked of recent years. In Germany, +between the years 1875 and 1899, it has diminished from 40 to 35.9 per +thousand of the population. In England and Wales, it dropped from 35 to +29.3 during the same time; in Ireland, from 26 to 22.9; in France, from +26 to 21.9; in the United States of America (between the years 1880 and +1890) the decline has been from 36 to 30; while in New Zealand it +gradually and persistently declined from 40.8 in 1880 to 25.6 in 1900.</p> + +<p>During the period, 1875-1890, the rapid strides made in industry and +production have been unparallelled in the history of the world, Wealth +has accumulated on all sides, and production and distribution have far +outrun the needs and demands of population. To-day food is far more +abundant, cheaper, and therefore more accessible to all classes of the +people than it was 50 years ago, and coincident with this rapid and +abundant increase in those things which go to supply the necessities, +the comforts, and even the luxuries of life, there has been a constant +and uniform decline in the birth-rate, and this decrease is even more +conspicuous in those nations in which the rate of production has been +most pronounced. It would even be true to say that the birth-rate during +recent years is in inverse proportion to the rate of production.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a>At first sight this might appear to falsify the law of population +enunciated by Malthus. Malthus maintained that population tended to +increase beyond the means of subsistence; that three checks constantly +operated to limit population—vice, misery, and moral restraint: vice, +due largely to diseased conditions, misery, due to poverty and want, and +moral restraint due to a dread of these. I shall show later that nothing +has been said or written to add to or take away from the truth and force +of these great principles, but, that the moral restraint of Malthus has +been practised to an extent, and in a direction of which the great +economist never dreamt. By moral restraint in the limitation of families +Malthus meant only delayed marriage. In so far as men and women +abstained from, or delayed their marriage, on the ground of inability to +support a family, they fulfilled the law, and followed the advice of +Malthus. Continence without the marriage bond was assumed; incontinence +was classed with another check vice.</p> + +<p>Contrary to the expectations arising out of the famous progressions, +wealth and production have increased and the birth-rate has decreased. +It is the purpose of this work to show what are the causes that have led +to this decline, that those causes are not equally operative through all +classes of the people, and that the chief cause of the decline of the +birth-rate is the desire on the part of both sexes to limit the <a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a>number +they have to support and educate. The considerations that lead up to, +and, to some extent, justify this desire, will be discussed later.</p> + +<p>The fact remains that an increasingly large number of people have come +to the conclusion that the burden and responsibility of family +obligations limit their enjoyments in life, their ambition, and even +their scope for usefulness, and have discovered, through the spread of +physiological information, means by which marriage may be entered upon +without necessarily incurring these responsibilities and limitations.</p> + +<p>It is the knowledge of these physiological laws and the practice of +rules arising out of that knowledge, that account for the declining +birth-rate of civilized nations.</p> + +<p>If it be true that the birth-rate is controlled by a voluntary effort on +the part of married people to limit their families, and that that effort +implies self restraint and self denial, it would not be too much to +claim that those most capable of exercising self-control and with the +strongest motives for such exercise, are those most responsible for the +declining birth-rate, and that those with least self-control and the +fewest motives for exercising the control they have, are most likely to +have the normal number of children.</p> + +<p>It has already been suggested, that the desire to limit families is due +to a consciousness <a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a>of responsibility on the part of prospective +parents. They realise the stress of competition in the struggle for +existence, they are anxious for their own pecuniary and social +stability, and even more anxious that the children, for whose birth they +are responsible, should be provided with the necessities and comforts of +life which health and development require. They are eager, too, that +their children should be equipped with a good education, and thus be +given a fair advantage in the race of life.</p> + +<p>To the great mass of people this is possible only when the numbers of +the family are limited. As the numbers of the family increase, the +difficulties of clothing and feeding and educating increase, and each +member is the poorer for every birth, and in this sense an increasing +birth-rate is a cause of poverty. The sense in which poverty causes a +high birth-rate will be dealt with later on.</p> + +<p>It will be readily conceded, that those actuated by the motives just +considered, those with the keenest sense of responsibility in life, +those capable of exercising the self-restraint which family limitation +requires, constitute the best type of citizens in any community. From +such the State has good reason to expect the best stock.</p> + +<p>It is one purpose of this work to show that this class, which can and +should produce the best in the largest numbers, is being overwhelmed +<a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a>with the burden of supporting an ever-increasing number of incapables, +and, largely in consequence of this increasing burden and +responsibility, are unwilling to produce, because they are unable +adequately to support their own kind.</p> + +<p>There is a class in every large community, whose sense of responsibility +in life is at zero, whose self-control is substituted by the law and its +sanctions, and whose modes and habits of life are little better than +those of the lower animals. Their appetites are stronger, their desires, +though fewer, are more intense, and their self-control less easily and +less frequently exerted than those in the highest planes of life.</p> + +<p>In the first place then they have less desire to limit their families, +and less power to exercise the self-restraint that is necessary to do +so. Less sense of responsibility is attached to the rearing of a family, +whilst the education of their children gives them little or no concern. +They entertain no ambition that members of their family should compete +in the struggle for social status. Their instincts and their impulses +are their guide in all things. They marry early, and procreation is +unrestrained except by the hardships of life.</p> + +<p>This constitutes a numerous class in every large community, and includes +the criminal, the drunkard, and the pauper, and many defectives <a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>such as +epileptics and imbeciles. Now all these propagate their kind. The checks +to the increase of this class, are the checks which are common to the +lower animals, and which were elaborated in his first essay by Malthus. +They are vice and misery.</p> + +<p>If it were not for moral restraint (not the limited restraint of +Malthus, delayed marriages simply), but restraint in the wider sense, +within as well as without the marriage bond, and including all +artificial checks to conception, these two checks, vice and misery, +would absolutely control the population of the world.</p> + +<p>The mind of man has added to the checks which control increase in the +lower animals, a new check, which applies to, and can be exercised only +by himself, and the problem is, how far will misery and vice as checks +to the population be eliminated, and moral restraint take their places? +And if this restraint must control and determine the population of the +future how far will its exercise affect the moral and mental evolution +of the race?</p> + +<p>If moral restraint with the consequent limitations of families is the +peculiar characteristic of the best people in the state, and the absence +of this characteristic expressing itself in normal fertility is peculiar +to the worst people of the state, the future of the race may be divined, +by reference to the history of the great nations of antiquity.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a>An accumulating amount of evidence shows that society is face to face +with this grave aspect of the population question. The birth-rate of the +unfit is steadily maintained. Improved conditions of life increase the +number that arrive at maturity and enter the procreative period, so that +not only are defectives born into the world at a constant rate, but +sanitary laws and a growing impatience with the sufferings of the poor, +tend so to improve their conditions of life, as to increase their +birth-rate and their chances of arriving at adult life.</p> + +<p>Shortly stated then, the problem that society has to solve is this,—The +birth-rate is rapidly declining amongst the most fit to produce the best +offspring, while it is steadily maintained amongst the least fit, so +that the relative proportion of the unfit born into the world is +annually increasing.</p> + +<p>What should be the State's attitude to this problem, and how it should +attempt to solve it will be discussed in detail in a subsequent chapter. +Let it suffice to say now, that the right of the State to interfere +directly with the limitation of families amongst the best classes would +find few advocates amongst reformers.</p> + +<p>The right of the State to say, however, that the criminal, the drunkard, +the diseased, and the pauper, shall not propagate their kind should be +stoutly maintained by all rational men.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>Most of the nations of history have recognized the gravity of the +population question, but they were mostly concerned with the tendency of +the numbers in the State to increase beyond the means of subsistence, +instead of the tendency to degeneration as it now concerns us.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">The Population Question.</span></h4> + + +<p><i>The Teaching of Aristotle and Plato.—The teaching of Malthus.—His +assailants.—Their illogical position.—Bonar on Malthus and his +work.—The increase of food supplies held by Nitti to refute +Malthus.—The increase of food and the decrease of births.—Mr. +Spencer's biological theory.—Maximum birth-rate determined by female +capacity to bear children.—The pessimism of Spencer's law.—Wider +definition of moral restraint.—Where Malthus failed to anticipate the +future.—Economic law operative only through Biological law.</i></p> + + +<p>Births, deaths, and migration are the factors which make up the +population question.</p> + +<p>The problem has burned in the minds of all great students of human life +and its conditions.</p> + +<p>Aristotle says (Politics ii. 7-5) "The legislator who fixes the amount +of property should also fix the number of children, for if they are too +many for the property, the law must be broken." And he proceeds to +advise (ib. vii. 16-15) "As to the exposure and rearing of children, let +there be a law that no deformed child shall live, but where there are +too many (for in our State population has a limit) when couples have +children in excess and the state of feeling is adverse to the exposure +of offspring, let abortion be procured."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>The difficulty of over-population was conspicuous in the minds of +Aristotle and Plato, and these philosophers both held that the State had +a right and a duty to control it.</p> + +<p>But some States were almost annihilated because they were not +sufficiently populous, and Aristotle attributes the defeat of Sparta on +one celebrated occasion to this fact. He says:—"The legislators wanting +to have as many Spartans as they could, encouraged the citizens to have +large families, and there is a law at Sparta, that the father of three +sons should be exempt from military service, and he who has four, from +all the burdens of the State. Yet it is obvious that if there were many +children, the land being distributed as it is, many of these must +necessarily fall into poverty."</p> + +<p>The problem in the mind of the Greek philosophers was this. +Over-population is a cause of poverty; under-population is a cause of +weakness. Defectives are an additional burden to the State. How shall +population be so regulated as to established an equilibrium between the +stability of the State, and the highest well-being of the citizens?</p> + +<p>The combined philosophy of the Greeks counselled the encouragement of +the best citizens to increase their kind, and the practice of the +exposure of infants and abortion.</p> + +<p>A century of debate has raged round the name of Malthus, the great +modern analyst of the population problem. He published his <a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>first essay +on population in 1798, a modest pamphlet, which fed so voraciously on +the criticism supplied to it, that it developed into a mighty +contribution to a great social problem, second only in time and in +honour to the work of his great predecessor in economic studies, Adam +Smith.</p> + +<p>Malthus's first essay defined and described the laws of multiplication +as they apply only to the lower animals and savage man. It was only in +his revised work, published five years later, that he described moral +restraint as a third check to population.</p> + +<p>Adverse criticism had been bitter and severe, and Malthus saw that his +first work had been premature. He went to the continent to study the +problem from personal observation in different countries. He profited by +his observation, and by the writings of his critics, and published his +matured work in 1803.</p> + +<p>The distinguishing feature about this edition was the addition of moral +restraint as a check, to the two already described, vice and misery.</p> + +<p>Malthus maintained that population has the power of doubling itself +every 25 years. Not that it <i>does</i> so, or <i>had done</i> so, or <i>will do +so</i>, but that it is <i>capable</i> of doing so, and he instanced the American +Colonies to prove this statement.</p> + +<p>One would scarcely think it was necessary to enforce this distinction, +between what <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>population has done, or is doing, and what it is capable +of doing. But when social writers, like Francesco Nitti (Population and +the Social System, p. 90), urge as an argument against Malthus's +position that, if his principles were true, a population of 176,000,000 +in the year 1800 would have required a population of only one in the +time of our Saviour, it is necessary to insist upon the difference +between <i>increase</i> and the <i>power of increase</i>.</p> + +<p>One specific instance of this doubling process is sufficient to prove +the <i>power of increase</i> possessed by a community, and the instance of +the American Colonies, cited by Malthus, has never been denied.</p> + +<p>A doubling of population in 25 years was thus looked upon by Malthus as +the normal increase, under the most favourable conditions; but the +checks to increase, vice, misery, and moral restraint are operative in +varying degrees of intensity in civilized communities, and these may +limit the doubling to once in 50, or once in 100 years, stop it +altogether, or even sweep a nation from the face of the earth.</p> + +<p>The natural increase among the lower animals is limited by misery only, +in savage man by vice and misery only, and in civilized man by misery, +vice, and moral restraint.</p> + +<p>Misery is caused by poverty, or the need of food or clothing, and is +thus proportionate to the means of subsistence. As the means of +subsistence are abundant, misery will be less, <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>the death-rate lower, +and <i>caeteris paribus</i> the birth-rate higher. The increase will be +directly proportional to the means of subsistence.</p> + +<p>Vice as a check to increase, is common to civilized and savage man, and +limits population by artificial checks to conception, abortion, +infanticide, disease, and war. The third check, moral restraint, is +peculiar to civilized man, and in the writings of Malthus, consists in +restraint from marriage or simply delayed marriage.</p> + +<p>Bonar says (Malthus and his Work, p. 53), "Moral restraint in the pages +of Malthus, simply means continence which is abstinence from marriage +followed by no irregularities."</p> + +<p>These checks have their origin in a need for, and scarcity of +food,—food comprising all those conditions necessary to healthy life. +The need of food is vital and permanent. The desire for food, immediate +and prospective, is the first motive of all animal activity, but the +amount of food available in the world is limited, and the possible +increase of food is estimated by Malthus at an arithmetical ratio.</p> + +<p>Whether or not this is an accurate estimate of the ratio of food +increase is immaterial. Malthus's famous progressions, the geometrical +ratio of increase in the case of animals, and the arithmetical ratio of +increase in the case of food, contain the vital and irrefutable truth of +the immense disproportion between the power <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>of reproduction in man and +the power of production in food.</p> + +<p>Under the normal conditions of life, the population tends constantly to +press upon, and is restrained by the limits of food. The true +significance of the word <i>tends</i> must not be overlooked, or a similar +fallacy to that of Nitti's will occur, when he overlooked the +significance of the term "power to multiply." It is perfectly true to +say, that population <i>tends</i> to press upon the limits of subsistence, +and unrestrained by moral means or man's reason actually does so.</p> + +<p>Some social writers appear to think that, if they can show that +production has far outstripped population, that, in other words, +population for the last fifty years at least has <i>not</i> pressed upon the +limits of food, Malthus by that fact is refuted.</p> + +<p>Nitti says (Population and the Social System, p. 91), "But now that +statistics have made such great progress, and the comparison between the +population and the means of subsistence in a fixed period of time is no +longer based upon hypothesis, but upon concrete and certain data in a +science of observation it is no longer possible to give the name of law +to a theory like that of Malthus, which is a complete disagreement with +facts. As our century has been free from the wars, pestilences and +famines which have afflicted other ages, population has increased as it +never did before, and, nevertheless, the production of the means <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>of +subsistence has far exceeded the increase of men."</p> + +<p>And later on (p. 114) he says "Malthus's law explains nothing just as it +comprehends nothing. Bound by rigid formulas which are belied by history +and demography, it is incapable of explaining not only the mystery of +poverty, but the alternate reverses of human civilization."</p> + +<p>Nitti's conclusions are based largely on the fact that while food +supplies have become abundant and cheap, birth-rates have steadily and +persistently declined.</p> + +<p>No-one who has studied the economic and vital statistics of the last +half century can fail to be impressed with the change that has come over +the relative ratios of increase in population and food.</p> + +<p>Bonar says (Malthus and his Work, p. 165), "The industrial progress of +the country (France) has been very great. Fifty years ago, the +production of wheat was only half of what it is to-day, of meat less +than half. In almost every crop, and every kind of food, France is +richer now than then, in the proportion of 2 to 1. In all the +conveniences of life (if food be the necessaries) the increased supply +is as 4 to 1, while foreign trade has become as 6 to 1."</p> + +<p>In a remarkable table prepared by Mr. F.W. Galton, and quoted by Mr. +Sydney Webb in "Industrial Democracy," it is clearly shown, <a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a>that, while +the birth-rate and food-rate (defined as the amount of wheat in Imperial +quarters, purchased with a full week's wages) gradually increased along +parallel lines between 1846 and 1877, the former suddenly decreased from +36.5 per thousand in 1877 to 30 per thousand in 1895, the latter +increasing from .6 to 1.7 for the same period.</p> + +<p>The remarkable thing about the facts that this table so clearly +discloses is that with a gradual increase of the means of subsistence +from 1846 to 1877 there is also a gradual increase in the proportion of +births to population. But at the year 1877 there, is a very sudden and +striking increase in food products, and the purchasing power of the +people coincides exactly with a very sudden and striking decrease in the +birth-rate of the people. The greater the decrease in the birth-rate, +the greater the increase in the people's purchasing power. Now, what has +brought about this change in the ratios of increase in population and in +food respectively?</p> + +<p>Some serious factor, inoperative during the thirty years prior to 1877 +must have suddenly been introduced into the social system, to work such +a marvellous revolution during the last twenty years.</p> + +<p>Some economic writers find it easy here to discover a law, and declare +that the birth-rate is in inverse ratio to the abundance of food.<a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a> +(Doubleday quoted by Nitti, Population and the Social System, p. 55).</p> + +<p>Other economic writers of recent date attribute this great change in +ratio of increase to economic causes. Only a few find the explanation in +biological laws.</p> + +<p>Herbert Spencer is the champion of the biological explanation of a +decreasing birth-rate.</p> + +<p>With the intellectual progress of the race there is a decadence of +sexual instinct. In proportion as an individual concentrates his +energies and attention on his own mental development, does the instinct +to, and power of, generation decrease.</p> + +<p>It may be true, it certainly is true, that if an individual's energies +are concentrated in the direction of development of one system of the +body, the other systems to some extent suffer. A great and constant +devotion to the development of the muscular system will produce very +powerful muscles, and great muscular energy, with a strong tendency to, +and pleasure in exercise. It is true also, that time and energy are +monopolized in this creation of muscle, and that less time and energy +are available for mental pursuits and mental exercise.</p> + +<p>Up to a certain point muscular exercise aids mental development, but +beyond that point concentration of effort in the direction of muscular +development starves mental growth.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>On the other hand, if the education and exercise of the mind receive +all attention, the muscular system will suffer, and to some extent +remain undeveloped. Or generally, one system of the body can be highly +developed only at the expense of some other system, not immediately +concerned.</p> + +<p>It is true that the more an individual concentrates his efforts on his +own intellectual development, the more his sexual system suffers, and +the less vigorous his sexual instincts.</p> + +<p>And the converse of this is also true, for examples of those with great +sexual powers are numerous.</p> + +<p>In plant life, this same law is also in operation. If one system in a +plant, the woody fibre for instance, takes on abundant growth, the fruit +is starved and is less in quality and quantity, and <i>vice versa</i>.</p> + +<p>But to what extent does this affect fertility? Sexual power and +fertility are not synonymous terms.</p> + +<p>The vast profusion of seed in plant and animal life, would allow of an +enormous reduction in the amount produced, without the least affecting +fertility. Even admitting the application of Spencer's law to sexual +vitality, and allowing him to claim that, with the progress of +"individuation," there is a decline in sexual instinct, would the +fertility of the race be affected thereby?</p> + +<p><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>To have any effect at all on the birth-rate, the instinct would have +either to be killed or to be so reduced in intensity as to stop +marriage, or to delay it till very late in life.</p> + +<p>When once marriage was contracted sexual union once in every two years, +would, under strictly normal conditions, result in a very large family.</p> + +<p>For according to Mr. Spencer's theory, it is the instinct that is +weakened not the power of the spermatozoa to fertilize.</p> + +<p>Evidence is wanting, however, to show that there is a decrease in the +sexual power of any nation.</p> + +<p>France might be flattered to be told that her low birth-rate is due to +the high intellectual attainments of her people, and that the rapidly +decreasing birth-rate is due to a rapid increase of her intellectual +power during recent years.</p> + +<p>Ireland and New Zealand would be equally pleased could they believe that +their low, and still decreasing birth-rate is due to the lessening of +the sexual instinct, attendant upon, and resulting from a high and +increasing intellectual power and activity.</p> + +<p>The fact is, that the sexual instinct is so immeasurably in excess of +the maximum power of procreation in the female, that an enormous +reduction in sexual power would require to take place before it would +have any effect on the number of children born.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a>The number of children born is controlled by the capacity of the human +female to bear children, and one birth in every two years during the +child-bearing period of life is about the maximum capacity.</p> + +<p>A moderate diminution in the force of the sexual instinct might lead to +a decrease in the marriage rate, but it would require a very serious +diminution bordering on total extinction of the instinct to exert any +serious effect on the fecundity of marriage.</p> + +<p>All that can be claimed for this theory of population is, that, +reasoning from known physiological analogies, we might expect a +weakening of the desire for marriage, coincident with the general +development of intellect in the race.</p> + +<p>There are as yet no facts to prove that such weakening has taken or is +taking place, nor are there facts to prove that population has in any +way suffered from this cause.</p> + +<p>If such a law obtained, and resulted in a diminished birth-rate, the +future of the race would be the gloomiest possible. An inexorable law +would determine that there could be no mental evolution, for the best of +the race would cease to propagate their kind. All who would arrive at +this standard of mental growth would become barren. And against this +there could be no remedy.</p> + +<p>One of the main contentions of this work is that the best have to a +large extent ceased <a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>to propagate their kind, but it is not maintained +that this is the result of a biological law, over which there is no +control. It can be safely claimed that to Malthus's three checks to +population—vice, misery, and moral restraint, the demographic phenomena +of a century have added no other. The third check, however, moral +restraint, must be held to include all restraint voluntarily placed by +men and women on the free and natural exercise of their powers of +procreation.</p> + +<p>Malthus used the term "moral" in this connection, not so much in +relation to the <i>motive</i> for the restraint, but in relation to the +result, viz., the limitation of the family. The "moral restraint" of +Malthus meant to him, restraint from marriage only, chiefly because of +the inability to support a family. It implied marriage delayed until +there was reasonable hope that the normal family, four in number, could +be comfortably supported, continence in the mean time being assumed. +Bonar interpreting Malthus says (p. 53) that impure celibacy falls under +the head of "vice," and not of "moral restraint."</p> + +<p>To Malthus, vice and misery, as checks to population, were an evil +greatly to be deplored in civilized man, and not only did he declare +that moral restraint obtained as a check, but he also declared it a +virtue to be advocated and encouraged in the interest of society, as +well as of the individual.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a>His moral restraint was delayed marriage with continence. He trusted to +the moral force of the sexual passion in a continent man to stimulate to +work, to thrift, to marriage; to work and save so that he may enter the +marriage state with a reasonable prospect of being able to support a +wife and family.</p> + +<p>Malthus never anticipated the changes and developments of recent years. +He advised moral restraint as a preventive measure in the hope that vice +and misery, as checks would be superseded, and that no more would be +born into the world than there was ample food to supply. He believed +that moral restraint was the check of civilized man, and as civilization +proceeded, this check would replace the others, and prevent absolutely +the population pressing upon the limits of subsistence.</p> + +<p>He saw in moral restraint only self-denial, constant continence, and +entertained not a doubt, that the generative instinct would be cheated +of its natural fruit. The passion for marriage is so strong (thought +Malthus) that there is no fear for the race; it cannot be +over-controlled.</p> + +<p>The gratification of the sexual instinct, and procreation were the same +thing in the mind of Malthus.</p> + +<p>But this is not so.</p> + +<p>A physiological law makes it possible, in a large proportion of strictly +normal women, for union to take place without fertilisation. If it <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>were +possible to maintain an intermittent restraint in strict conformity with +this law, it would control considerably the population of the world.</p> + +<p>It is easier to practice intermittent than to practice constant +restraint.</p> + +<p>It is just here that Malthus failed to anticipate the future. Malthus +believed that "moral restraint" would lessen the marriage rate, but +would have no direct effect on the fecundity of marriage.</p> + +<p>A man would not put upon himself the self-denial and restraint, which +abstinence from marriage implied, for a longer period than he could +help.</p> + +<p>The greater the national prosperity, therefore, the higher the +birth-rate. But prosperity keeps well in advance of the birth-rate; in +other words, population, though it still <i>tends</i> to, does not actually +<i>press</i> upon the food supply.</p> + +<p>If the moral restraint of Malthus be extended so as to include +intermittent moral restraint within the marriage bond, then, under one +or other, or all of his three checks, vice, misery, and moral restraint, +will be found the explanation of the remarkable demographic phenomena of +recent years.</p> + +<p><i>Misery</i> will cover deaths from starvation and poverty, the limitation +of births from abortion due to hardship, from deaths due to improper +food, clothing, and housing; and emigration to avoid hardship.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a><i>Vice</i> will cover criminal abortions, limitation of births from +venereal disease, deaths from intemperance, etc., and artificial checks +to conception. Malthus included artificial checks of this kind under +vice (7 ed. of Essay, p. 9.n.), though they have some claim to be +considered under moral restraint. But the question will be referred to +in a later chapter.</p> + +<p><i>Moral restraint</i> will cover those checks to conception, voluntarily +practised in order to escape the burden and responsibility of rearing +children—continence, delayed marriage, and intermittent restraint.</p> + +<p>No other checks are directly operative.</p> + +<p>Misgovernment and the unequal distribution of wealth and land affect +population indirectly only, and can only act through one or other or all +of the checks already mentioned.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Declining Birth-rate.</span></h4> + + +<p><i>Decline of birth-rates rapid and persistent.—Food cost in New +Zealand.—Relation of birth-rate to prosperity before and after +1877.—Neo-Malthusian propaganda.—Marriage rates and fecundity of +marriage.—Statistics of Hearts of Oak Friendly Society.—Deliberate +desire of parents to limit family increase.</i></p> + + +<p>It is not the purpose of this work to follow any further the population +problem so far as it relates to deaths and emigration. Attention will be +concentrated on births, and the influences which control their rates.</p> + +<p>A rapid and continuous decline in the birth-rate of Northern and Western +Europe, in contravention of all known biological and economic laws, has +filled demographists with amazement.</p> + +<p>A table attached here shows the decline very clearly. According to +Parkes ("Practical Hygiene," p. 516), the usual food of the soldier may +be expressed as follows:—</p> + + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Decline in the birth-rate of Northern Europe"> +<tr><td align='left'>Articles.</td><td align='right'>Daily quantity in</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>oz. av.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Meat</td><td align='right'>12.0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Bread</td><td align='right'>24.0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Potatoes</td><td align='right'>16.0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Other vegetables</td><td align='right'>8.0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Milk</td><td align='right'>3.25</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Sugar</td><td align='right'>1.33</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Salt</td><td align='right'>0.25</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Coffee</td><td align='right'>0.33</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Tea</td><td align='right'>0.16</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>——————</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Total</td><td align='right'>65.32</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Butter</td><td align='right'>2.4—(Moleschott.)</td></tr> +</table></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/043.png" alt="New Zealand birthrates" title="New Zealand birthrates" /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a></p> +<p><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a></p> + +<p>The New Zealand Official Year Book gives the following as the average +prices of food for the years mentioned:—</p> + + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="8" summary="Prices of food"> +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td colspan='2' align='left'>1877</td><td colspan='2' align='left'>1887</td><td colspan='2' align='left'>1897</td><td colspan='2' align='left'>1901</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td colspan='2' align='left'>s. d.</td><td colspan='2' align='left'>s. d.</td><td colspan='2' align='left'>s. d.</td><td colspan='2' align='left'>s. d.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Bread</td><td align='left'>per lb.</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 2¼</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 1¾</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 1½</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 1½</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Beef</td><td align='left'>per lb.</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 5¼</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 3½</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 3</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 5</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Mutton</td><td align='left'>per lb.</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 4</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 2¾</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 2</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 4½</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Sugar</td><td align='left'>per lb.</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 5¾</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 3</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 2½</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 2¾</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Tea</td><td align='left'>per lb.</td> + <td align='right'>3</td><td align='left'> 0</td> + <td align='right'>2</td><td align='left'> 3</td> + <td align='right'>2</td><td align='left'> 0</td> + <td align='right'>1</td><td align='left'>10</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Butter (fresh)</td><td align='left'>per lb.</td> + <td align='right'>1</td><td align='left'> 3</td> + <td align='right'>1</td><td align='left'> 0</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 8</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'>11</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Cheese (col'n'l)</td><td align='left'>per lb.</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'>10</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 5¾</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 6</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 6</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Milk</td><td align='left'>per qt.</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 4½</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 3</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 3</td> + <td align='right'>0</td><td align='left'> 3½</td></tr> +</table></div> + +<p>The official returns give the average daily wage for artisans for the +years 1877, 1887, 1897, and 1901 as 11s., 10s. 6d., 9s. 9d., and 10s. +3d., respectively.</p> + +<p>The weekly rations (the standard food supply for soldiers—Parkes's) +purchaseable by the weekly wages for these years respectively are 11.1, +14.3, 16, and 12.4; <i>i.e.</i>, the average weekly wage of an artisan in +constant employment in 1877 would purchase rations for 11.1 persons, in +1887 for 14.3 persons, in 1897 for 16 persons, and in 1901 for 12.4 +persons.</p> + +<p>Up to the year 1877, the birth-rate in England and Wales conformed to +the law of Malthus, and kept pace with increasing prosperity; but, after +that year, and right up to the present time, the nation's prosperity has +gone on advancing at a phenomenal rate <i>pari passu</i> with an equally +phenomenal decline in the number of births per 1000 of the population.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>Now, it is a remarkable coincidence that in this very year, 1877, the +Neo-Malthusians began to make their influence felt, and spread amongst +all classes of the people a knowledge of preventive checks to +conception.</p> + +<p>People were encouraged to believe that large families were an evil. A +great many, no doubt, had already come to this conclusion; for there is +no more common belief amongst the working classes, at least, than that +large families are a cause of poverty and hardship. And this is even +more true than it was in the days of the Neo-Malthusians, for then child +and women labour was a source of gain to the family, and a poor man's +earnings were often considerably augmented thereby.</p> + +<p>The uniform decrease of the birth-rate is a matter of statistics, and +admits of no dispute. It has been least rapid in the German Empire, and +most rapid in New Zealand.</p> + +<p>With the declining birth-rate the marriage-rate must be considered.</p> + +<p>Malthus would have expected a declining birth-rate to be the natural +result of a declining marriage-rate, and a declining marriage-rate to be +due to the practice of moral restraint, rendered imperative because of +hard times, and a difficulty in obtaining work, wages, and food.</p> + +<p>Given the purchasing power of a people, Malthus would have estimated, +according to his laws, the marriage-rate, and, given the marriage-rate, +he would have estimated the birth-rate.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a>But anticipations in this direction, based on Malthus's laws, have not +been realised. The purchasing power of the people we know has enormously +increased; the marriage-rate has not increased, it has, in fact, +slightly decreased; but the birth-rate per marriage, or the fecundity of +marriage, has decreased in a remarkable degree.</p> + +<p>In "Industrial Democracy," by Sydney and Beatrice Webb (p. 637), the +following occurs:—"The Hearts of Oak Friendly Society is the largest +centralised Benefit Society in this country, having now over two hundred +thousand adult male members. No one is admitted who is not of good +character, and in receipt of wages of twenty-four shillings a week or +upwards. The membership consists, therefore, of the artisan and skilled +operative class, with some intermixture of the small shopkeeper, to the +exclusion of the mere labourer. Among its provisions, is the "Lying-in +Benefit," a payment of thirty shillings for each confinement of a +member's wife.</p> + +<p>From 1866 to 1880 the proportion of lying-in claims to membership slowly +rose from 21.76 to 24.78 per 100. From 1880 to the present time it has +continuously declined, until now it is only between 14 and 15 per 100.</p> + +<p>The following table (from the annual reports of the Committee of +Management of the Hearts of Oak Friendly Society, and those of the +Registrar-General) shows, for each year from 1866 to 1895 inclusive, the +number of <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>members in the Hearts of Oak Friendly Society at the +beginning of the year, the number of those who received Lying-in Benefit +during the year, the percentage of these to the membership at the +beginning of the year, and the birth-rate per thousand of the whole +population of England and Wales.</p> + +<h4>HEARTS OF OAK FRIENDLY SOCIETY.</h4> + + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" summary="Results of Lying-in Benefit"> +<tr><td align='left'>Year.</td> + <td align='center'>Number of Members at the beginning of each year.</td> + <td align='center'>Number of Cases of lying-in Benefit paid during year.</td> + <td align='center'>Percentage of cases paid to total Membership at beginning of year.</td> + <td align='center'>England and Wales: births per 1000 of the total population.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>1866</td><td align='center'> 10,571</td><td align='center'> 2,300</td><td align='center'>21.76</td><td align='center'>35.2</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1867</td><td align='center'> 12,051</td><td align='center'> 2,853</td><td align='center'>23.68</td><td align='center'>35.4</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1868</td><td align='center'> 13,568</td><td align='center'> 3,075</td><td align='center'>22.66</td><td align='center'>35.8</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1869</td><td align='center'> 15,903</td><td align='center'> 3,509</td><td align='center'>22.07</td><td align='center'>34.8</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1870</td><td align='center'> 18,369</td><td align='center'> 4,173</td><td align='center'>22.72</td><td align='center'>35.2</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1871</td><td align='center'> 21,484</td><td align='center'> 4,685</td><td align='center'>21.81</td><td align='center'>35.0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1872</td><td align='center'> 26,510</td><td align='center'> 6,156</td><td align='center'>23.22</td><td align='center'>35.6</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1873</td><td align='center'> 32,837</td><td align='center'> 7,386</td><td align='center'>22.49</td><td align='center'>35.4</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1874</td><td align='center'> 40,740</td><td align='center'> 9,603</td><td align='center'>23.57</td><td align='center'>36.0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1875</td><td align='center'> 51,144</td><td align='center'>13,103</td><td align='center'>23.66</td><td align='center'>35.4</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1876</td><td align='center'> 64,421</td><td align='center'>15,473</td><td align='center'>24.02</td><td align='center'>36.3</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1877</td><td align='center'> 76,369</td><td align='center'>18,423</td><td align='center'>24.11</td><td align='center'>36.0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1878</td><td align='center'> 84,471</td><td align='center'>20,409</td><td align='center'>24.16</td><td align='center'>35.5</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1879</td><td align='center'> 90,603</td><td align='center'>22,057</td><td align='center'>24.34</td><td align='center'>34.7</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1880</td><td align='center'> 91,986</td><td align='center'>22,740</td><td align='center'>24.72</td><td align='center'>34.2</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1881</td><td align='center'> 93,615</td><td align='center'>21,950</td><td align='center'>23.45</td><td align='center'>33.9</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1882</td><td align='center'> 96,006</td><td align='center'>21,860</td><td align='center'>22.77</td><td align='center'>33.8</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1883</td><td align='center'> 98,873</td><td align='center'>21,577</td><td align='center'>21.82</td><td align='center'>33.5</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1884</td><td align='center'>104,339</td><td align='center'>21,375</td><td align='center'>20.51</td><td align='center'>33.6</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1885</td><td align='center'>105,622</td><td align='center'>21,277</td><td align='center'>20.14</td><td align='center'>32.9</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1886</td><td align='center'>109,074</td><td align='center'>21,856</td><td align='center'>20.04</td><td align='center'>32.8</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1887</td><td align='center'>111,937</td><td align='center'>20,590</td><td align='center'>18.39</td><td align='center'>31.9</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1888</td><td align='center'>115,803</td><td align='center'>20,244</td><td align='center'>17.48</td><td align='center'>31.2</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1889</td><td align='center'>123,223</td><td align='center'>20,503</td><td align='center'>16.64</td><td align='center'>31.1</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1890</td><td align='center'>131,057</td><td align='center'>20,402</td><td align='center'>15.57</td><td align='center'>30.2<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1891</td><td align='center'>141,269</td><td align='center'>22,500</td><td align='center'>15.93</td><td align='center'>31.4</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1892</td><td align='center'>153,595</td><td align='center'>23,471</td><td align='center'>15.28</td><td align='center'>30.5</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1893</td><td align='center'>169,344</td><td align='center'>25,430</td><td align='center'>15.02</td><td align='center'>30.8</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1894</td><td align='center'>184,629</td><td align='center'>27,000</td><td align='center'>14.08</td><td align='center'>29.6</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1895</td><td align='center'>201,075</td><td align='center'>29,263</td><td align='center'>14.55</td><td align='center'>30.4</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1896</td><td align='center'>206,673</td><td align='center'>30,313</td><td align='center'>14.67</td><td align='center'>...</td></tr> +</table></div> + + +<p>In this remarkable table the percentage of births to total membership +gradually rose from 21.76, in 1866, to 24.72, in 1880, and then +gradually declined to 14.67 in 1896.</p> + +<p>This is a striking instance of the fact that the decrease in the total +birth-rate is due more to a decrease in the fecundity of marriage, than +to a decrease of the marriage-rate.</p> + +<p>Mr. Webb adds:—"The well-known actuary, Mr. R.P. Hardy, watching the +statistics year by year, and knowing intimately all the circumstances of +the organisation, attributes this startling reduction in the number of +births of children to these specially prosperous and specially thrifty +artisans entirely to their deliberate desire to limit the size of their +families."</p> + +<p>The marriage-rate in England and Wales commenced to decline about three +years before the sudden change in the birth-rate of 1877, and continued +to fall till about 1880, but has maintained a fairly uniform standard +since then, rising slightly in fact, the birth-rate, meanwhile, +descending rapidly.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Means Adopted</span>.</h4> + + +<p><i>Family Responsibility—Natural fertility undiminished.—Voluntary +prevention and physiological knowledge.—New Zealand +experience.—Diminishing influence of delayed marriage.—Practice of +abortion.—Popular sympathy in criminal cases.—Absence of complicating +issues in New Zealand.—Colonial desire for comfort and happiness.</i></p> + + +<p>There is a gradually increasing consensus of opinion amongst +statisticians, that the explanation of the decrease in the number of +births is to be found in the desire of married persons to limit the +family they have to rear and educate, and the voluntary practice of +certain checks to conception in order to fulfil this desire.</p> + +<p>It is assumed that there is no diminution in the natural fertility of +either sex. There is no evidence to show that sexual desire is not as +powerful and universal as it ever was in the history of the race; nor is +there any evidence to show that the generative elements have lost any of +their fertilizing and developmental properties and power.</p> + +<p>Dr. J.S. Billings in the June number of the <i>Forum</i> for 1893, says that +"the most important factor in the change is the deliberate <a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a>and +voluntary avoidance or prevention of child-bearing on the part of a +steadily increasing number of married people, who not only prefer to +have but few children, but who know how to obtain their wish."</p> + +<p>He further says, "there is no good reason for thinking that there is a +diminished power to produce children in either sex."</p> + +<p>M. Arsène Dumont in "Natalite et Democratie" discusses the declining +birth-rate of France, and finds the cause to be the voluntary prevention +of child-bearing on the part of the people, going so far as to say that +where large families occur amongst the peasantry, it is due to ignorance +of the means of prevention.</p> + +<p>The birth-rate in none of the civilized countries of the world has +diminished so rapidly as in New Zealand. It was 40.8 in 1880; it was +25.6 in 1900, a loss of 15.2 births per 1000 of the population in 20 +years.</p> + +<p>There is no known economic cause for this decline. The prosperity of the +Colony has been most marked during these years.</p> + +<p>Observation and statistics force upon us the conclusion that voluntary +effort upon the part of married couples to prevent conception is the one +great cause of the low and declining birth-rate. The means adopted are +artificial checks and intermittent sexual restraint, within the marriage +bond, the latter tending to replace the former amongst normal women, as +physiological knowledge spreads.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>Delayed marriage still has its influence on the birth-rate, but with +the spread of the same knowledge, that influence is a distinguishing +quantity.</p> + +<p>Delayed marriage under Malthusian principles would exert a potent +influence in limiting the births, because early marriages were, and, +under normal circumstances would still be, fruitful.</p> + +<p>In the 28th annual report relating to the registration and return of +Births, Marriages and Deaths in Michigan for the year 1894 (p. 125), it +is stated that "The mean number of children borne by females married at +from 15 to 19 years of age inclusive, is 6.76. For the next five year +period of ages, it is 5.32, or a loss of 1.44 children per marriage, +this attending an advance of five years in age at marriage."</p> + +<p>Voluntary effort frequently expresses itself in the practice of +abortion. Many monthly nurses degenerate into abortionists and practise +their calling largely, while many women have learned successfully to +operate on themselves.</p> + +<p>The extent to which this method of limiting births is practised, and the +absence of public sentiment against it, in fact the wide-spread sympathy +extended to it, may be surmised from the facts that at a recent trial of +a Doctor in Christchurch, New Zealand, for alleged criminal abortion, a +large crowd gathered outside the Court, greeting the accused by a +demonstration in his <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>favour on his being discharged by the jury. A +similar verdict in a similar case in Auckland, New Zealand, was greeted +by applause by the spectators in a crowded Court, which brought down the +indignant censure of the presiding Judge.</p> + +<p>In New Zealand there is no oppressive misgovernment, there is no land +question in the sense in which Nitti applies the term, there is no +poverty to account for a declining birth-rate or to confuse the problem. +There is prosperity on every hand, and want is almost unknown. And yet, +fewer and fewer children, in proportion to the population, and in +proportion to the number of marriages, are born into the colony every +year. The only reason that can be given is that the people, though they +want marriage and do marry, do not wish to bear more children than they +can safely, easily, and healthfully support, with a due and +ever-increasing regard for their own personal comfort and happiness. +They have learned that marriage and procreation are not necessarily +inseperable and they practice what they know.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Causes of Declining Birth-rate</span>.</h4> + + +<p><i>Influence of self-restraint without continence</i>.—<i>Desire to limit +families in New Zealand not due to poverty</i>.—<i>Offspring cannot be +limited without self-restraint</i>.—<i>New Zealand's economic +condition</i>.—<i>High standard of general education</i>.—<i>Tendency to migrate +within the colony</i>.—<i>Diffusion of ideas</i>.—<i>Free social migration +between all classes</i>.—<i>Desire to migrate upwards</i>.—<i>Desire to raise +the standard of ease and comfort</i>.—<i>Social status the measure of +financial status</i>.—<i>Social attraction of one class to next +below</i>.—<i>Each conscious of his limitation</i>.—<i>Large families confirm +this limitation</i>.—<i>The cost of the family</i>.—<i>The cost of maternity. +The craving for ease and luxury</i>.—<i>Parents' desire for their children's +social success</i>.—<i>Humble homes bear distinguished sons. Large number +with University education in New Zealand</i>.—<i>No child labour except in +hop and dairy districts</i>.—<i>Hopeless poverty a cause of high +birth-rates</i>.—<i>High birth-rates a cause of poverty</i>.—<i>Fecundity +depends on capacity of the female to bear children</i>.</p> + + +<p>The first or direct cause of this decline in the birth-rate then, is the +inhibition of conception by voluntary means, on the part of those +capable of bearing children.</p> + +<p>This inhibition is the result of a desire on the part of both sexes to +limit their families.</p> + +<p>Conception is inhibited by means which do not necessitate continence, +but which do necessitate some, and in many cases, a great amount of +self-restraint. But how comes it, that in these days of progress and +prosperity, <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a>especially in New Zealand, a desire to limit offspring +should exist amongst its people, and that the desire should be so strong +and so universal?</p> + +<p>The desire for this limitation must be strong, for there is absolutely +no evidence that the passion for marriage has lost any of its force; it +must be extensive for the statistics show its results, and the +experience of medical men bears the contention out.</p> + +<p>While the marriage passion remains normal, offspring cannot be limited +without the exercise of self-restraint on the part of both parties to +the marriage compact. Artificial means of inhibiting conception, and +intermittent restraint are antagonistic to the sexual instinct, and the +desire for limitation must be strong and mutual to counteract this +instinct within the marriage bond.</p> + +<p>The reasons for this strong and very general desire, that marriage +should not result in numerous births must have some foundation. What is +it?</p> + +<p>It cannot be poverty. New Zealand's economic experience has been one of +uniform progress and prosperity. There is abundant and fertile land in +these islands where droughts, floods, and famine years, are practically +unknown. Blissards and destructive storms are mysterious terms. +Fluctuations in production take place of course, but not such as to +result in want, to any noticeable extent. There are <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a>no extremes of heat +and cold, no extremes of drought and flood, no extremes of wealth and +poverty. The climate is equable, the progress is uniform, the classes +are at peace.</p> + +<p>Every natural blessing that a people could desire in a country, is to be +found in New Zealand. Climate, natural fertility, and production, +unrivalled scenery in mountain, lake, and forest, everything to bless +and prosper the present, and inspire hope in the future. Why is it that, +with all this wealth, and with the country still progressing and yet +undeveloped, a desire exists in the heart of the people to limit +families.</p> + +<p>The reason is social not economic, if one may contrast the terms.</p> + +<p>Take women's attitude to the question first. Our women are well +educated. A state system of compulsory education has placed within the +reach of all a good education, up to what is known as the VI. or VII. +Standard, and only a very few in the colony have been too poor or too +rich to take advantage of it.</p> + +<p>Most women can and do read an extensive literature, and to this they +have abundant access, for even small country towns have good libraries. +Alexandra, a little town of 400 inhabitants amongst the Central Otago +mountains, has a public library of several thousand volumes, and the +people take as much pride in this institution as in their school and +church.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a>People move about from place to place, and it is surprising how small +and even large families keep migrating from one part of the colony to +another. They are always making new friends and acquaintances, and with +these interchanging ideas and information.</p> + +<p>Class distinctions have no clear and defined line of demarcation, and +there is a free migration between all the classes; the highest, which is +not very high, is always being recruited from those below, and from even +the lowest, which is not very low.</p> + +<p>The highest class is not completely out of sight of any class below it, +and many families are distributed evenly over all the classes. A woman +is the wife of a judge, a sister is the President of a Woman's Union, +another sister is in a shop, and a fourth is married to a labourer.</p> + +<p>If one of the poorer (they do not like "lower") class rises in the +social scale, he or she is welcome—if one of the richer (they do not +like "higher") falls, no effort is made by the class they formerly +belonged to to maintain her status in order to save its dignity or +repute.</p> + +<p>In other words, there are not the hindrances to free migration between +the various strata of society that obtain in other lands. Not only is +that migration continually taking place, but there are very few who are +not touched by a consciousness of it.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a>Members of the lower strata, all well educated voters, can give +instances of friends, or relatives, or acquaintances, who are higher up +than themselves—have "made their way," have "risen in society," have +"done well," are "well off." And this consciousness inspires in all but +the very lowest classes an ambition to rise.</p> + +<p>Because it is possible to rise, because others rise, the desire to be +migrating upwards soon takes possession of members of all but the lowest +or poorest class, or those heavily ballasted with a large or increasing +family.</p> + +<p>The desire to rise in social status is inseparably bound up with the +kindred desire to rise in the standard of comfort and ease.</p> + +<p>Social status in New Zealand is, as yet, scarcely distinguishable from +financial status. Those who are referred to as the better classes, are +simply those who have got, or who have made, money. All things, +therefore, are possible to everyone in this democratic colony.</p> + +<p>There is thus permeating all classes in New Zealand a spirit of social +rivalry, which shows no tendency to abate nor to be diverted. The social +status of one class exerts an attractive force on the class next below.</p> + +<p>But, apart from the influence of status, one class keeps steadily in +view, and persistently strives to attain, the ease, comfort, and even +luxury of the class above it.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a>Because the members of different grades are so migratory, there are +many in one class known well to members in some class or classes below, +and the ease and luxury which the former enjoy are a constant +demonstration of what is possible to all.</p> + +<p>Many who do not acquire wealth enough to make any appreciable difference +in their social status, are able, through family, to improve their +position. Their sons and daughters are given an University education, +and by far the largest number of those entering the learned professions +in New Zealand are the sons of farmers, tradespeople, and retail +dealers.</p> + +<p>The great mass of the people in our Colony are conscious of the fact +that their social relations and standard of comfort, or shall one say +standard of ease, are capable of improvement, and the desire to bring +about that improvement is the dominant ambition of their lives.</p> + +<p>Anything that stands in the way of this ambition must be overcome. A +large family is a serious check to this ambition, so a large family must +be avoided.</p> + +<p>This desire to rise, and this dread too of incurring a responsibility +that will assuredly check individual progress were counselled by +Malthus, and resulted, and he said should result, in delayed marriage, +lest a man, in taking to himself a wife, take also to himself a family +he is unable to support.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>But if this man can take to himself a wife without taking to himself a +family, what then?</p> + +<p>Men and women, in this Colony at least, have discovered that conformity +to physiological law makes this possible.</p> + +<p>A wife does not really add very much to a man's responsibility—it is +the family that adds to his expense, and taxes all his resources. It is +the doctor and the nurse, the food and the clothing, and the education +of the uninvited ones to his home, that use up all his earnings, that +keep him poor, or make him poorer.</p> + +<p>Then there is one aspect of the question peculiar to the women +themselves. Women have come to dread maternity. This is part of a +general impatience with pain common to us all. Chloroform, and morphia, +and cocaine, and ethyl chloride have taught us that pain is an evil.</p> + +<p>When there was no chance of relieving it, we anæsthetised ourselves and +each other with the thought that it was necessary, it was the will of +Providence, the cry of our nerves for succour.</p> + +<p>Now it is an evil, and if we must submit we do so under protest. Women +now engage doctors on condition that chloroform will be administered as +soon as they scream, and they scream earlier in their labour at each +succeeding occasion.</p> + +<p>Women are less than ever impressed with the sacredness and nobility of +maternity, and <a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>look upon it more and more as a period of martyrdom. +This attitude is in consonance with the crave for ease and luxury that +is beginning to possess us.</p> + +<p>It is, however, no new phase in human experience. It characterised all +the civilisations of ancient times, at the height of their prosperity, +and was really the beginning of their decay.</p> + +<p>Women with us are more eager to limit families than are their husbands. +They feel the burdens of a large family more. They are often heard to +declare that, with a large family around her, and limited funds at her +disposal with which to provide assistance, a woman is a slave. A large +number think this, and, if there is a way out of the difficulty, they +will follow that way. And they are not content to escape the hardships +of life. They want comforts, and seek them earnestly. With the advent of +comfort, they seek for ease, and, when this is found, they seek for +luxury and social position.</p> + +<p>Parents with us have a high ideal of what upbringing should be. Every +parent wants his children to "do better" than himself. If he does not +wish to make a stepping-stone of them, on which to rise to higher social +things, he certainly wishes to give them such a "start in life" as will +give them the best prospects of keeping pace with, or outstripping their +fellows.</p> + +<p>The toil and self-denial that many poor parents undergo, in order to +give their children <a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>a good education, is almost pathetic, and is not +eclipsed by the enthusiasm for education even in Scotland.</p> + +<p>There is a shoemaker in a small digging town in New Zealand, still +toiling away at his last, whose son is a distinguished graduate of our +University, author of several books, and in a high position in his +profession.</p> + +<p>There is a grocer in another remote inland village whose son is a doctor +in good practice. There is a baker in a little country district whose +sons now hold high positions in the medical profession, one at home and +the other abroad.</p> + +<p>These facts are widely known amongst the working classes, and inspire +them with a spirit of rivalry.</p> + +<p>With regard to the general education of the people, the +Registrar-General says, (New Zealand Official Year Book for 1898, page +164) "In considering the proportions of the population at different age +periods, the improvement in education is even more clearly proved. It is +found that, in 1896, of persons at the age-period 10-15 years, 98.73 per +cent, were able to read and write, while 0.65 per cent. could merely +read, and 0.62 per cent. were unable to read. The proportion who could +not read increased slowly with each succeeding quinquennial period of +age, until at 50-55 years it stood at 4.04 per cent. At 75 to 80 years +the proportion was 7.05, and at 80 and upwards it <a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>advanced to 8.07. +Similarly, the proportion of persons who could read only increased from +0.65 at 10-15 years to 3.66 at the period 50-55 years, and again to 9.74 +and upwards. The better education of the people at the earlier stages is +thus exhibited.</p> + +<p>Further evidences of improved education will be found in the portion of +his work relating to marriages, where it is shown that the proportion of +persons in every thousand married, who signed by mark, has fallen very +greatly since 1881. The figures for the sexes in the year 1881 were +32.04 males, and 57.04 females, against 6.19 males and 7.02 females in +1895.</p> + +<p>For the position of teacher in a public school in New Zealand, at a +salary of £60 a year, there were 14 female applicants, 10 of whom held +the degree of M.A., and the other four that of B.A.</p> + +<p>The number of children, 5-15 years of age, in New Zealand, was estimated +as on 31st December, 1902, at 178,875. The number of children, 7-13 +years of age (compulsory school age), was estimated as on 31st December, +1902, at 124,986. The attendance at schools, public and private, during +the fourth quarter of 1902, was European 150,332, Maoris and half-castes +5,573. If children spend their useful years of child life at school, +they can render little or no remunerative service to their parents.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>Neither boys or girls can earn anything till over the age of 14 years. +Our laws prohibit child labour.</p> + +<p>In New Zealand, children, therefore, while they remain at home, are a +continual drain on the resources of the bread-winner. More is expected +from parents than in many other countries.</p> + +<p>At our public schools children are expected to be well clad; and it is +quite the exception, even in the poorest localities of our large cities, +to see children attending school with bare feet.</p> + +<p>During child-life, nothing is returned to the parent to compensate for +the outlay upon the rearing and educating of children.</p> + +<p>If a boy, by reason of a good education, soon, say, at from 14-18 years, +is enabled to earn a few shillings weekly, it is very readily absorbed +in keeping him dressed equally well with other boys at the same office +or work.</p> + +<p>An investment in children is, therefore, from a pecuniary point of view, +a failure. There are, perhaps, two exceptions in New Zealand—in dairy +farming in Taranaki, where the children milk outside school hours; and +in the hop districts of Nelson, where, during the season, all the +children in a family become hop-pickers, and a big cheque is netted when +the family is a large one.</p> + +<p>Quite apart from considerations of self, parents declare that the fewer +children they have, the better they can clothe and educate <a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>them; and +they prefer to "do well" for two or three, than to "drag up" twice or +three times as many in rags and ignorance.</p> + +<p>Clothing is dear in New Zealand. The following is a labourer's account +of his expenditure. He is an industrious man, and his wife is a thrifty +Glasgow woman. It is drawn very fine. No. 7 is less than he would have +to pay in the city by two or three shillings a week for a house of +similar size. No. 9 is rather higher than is usual with Benefit +Societies, which average about sixteen shillings a quarter.</p> + +<h4> +WEEKLY EXPENSES OF FAMILY COMPRISING<br /> +FIVE CHILDREN AND PARENTS. +</h4> + + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Weekly Expenses for a family of five"> + +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'>Per</td><td align='left'>Week.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='right'>£</td><td align='right'>s</td><td align='right'>d.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>1.</td><td align='left'>Groceries and milk</td><td align='right'>0</td><td align='right'>15</td><td align='right'>0</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>2.</td><td align='left'>Coal and light</td><td align='right'>0</td><td align='right'>4</td><td align='right'>0</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>3.</td><td align='left'>Butcher</td><td align='right'>0</td><td align='right'>4</td><td align='right'>0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>4.</td><td align='left'>Baker</td><td align='right'>0</td><td align='right'>4</td><td align='right'>0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>5.</td><td align='left'>Boots, with repairing</td><td align='right'>0</td><td align='right'>2</td><td align='right'>6</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>6.</td><td align='left'>Clothing and underclothing</td><td align='right'>0</td><td align='right'>5</td><td align='right'>0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>7.</td><td align='left'>Rent in suburbs</td><td align='right'>0</td><td align='right'>10</td><td align='right'>0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>8.</td><td align='left'>Sundries</td><td align='right'>0</td><td align='right'>2</td><td align='right'>0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>9.</td><td align='left'>Benefit Society</td><td align='right'>0</td><td align='right'>2</td><td align='right'>0</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td colspan='3' align='right'>——————</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'>Weekly total</td><td align='right'>£2</td><td align='right'>8</td><td align='right'>6</td></tr> +</table></div> + + +<p>Most young people make a good start in New Zealand. Even men-servants +and maid-servants want for nothing. They dress well, they go to the +theatres and music-halls, they have numerous holidays, and enjoy them by +excursions on land or sea. It is when they <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>marry, and mouths come +crying to be filled, that they become poor, and the struggle of life +begins.</p> + +<p>In our Colony, there is no more prevalent or ingrained idea in the minds +of our people than that large families are a cause of poverty.</p> + +<p>A high birth-rate in a family certainly is a cause of poverty. Many +children do not enable a father to earn higher wages, nor do they enable +a mother to render the bread-winner more assistance; while in New +Zealand, especially, compulsory education and the inhibition of +child-labour prevent indigent parents from procuring the slight help +that robust boys and girls of 10 years of age, or so, are often able to +supply.</p> + +<p>These considerations go far to explain the desire on the part of married +couples to limit offspring; and, if there were no means at their +disposal of limiting the number of children born to them, a great +decline in the marriage-rate would be the inevitable result of the +existing conditions of life, and the prevalent ideas of the people.</p> + +<p>Hopeless poverty appears to be a cause of a high birth-rate, and this +seems to be due to the complete abandonment by the hopelessly poor of +all hope of attaining comfort and success.</p> + +<p>Marriage between two who are hopelessly poor is extremely rare with us. +Each is able to provide for his or herself at least, and in all +<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>probability the husband is able to provide comfortably for both.</p> + +<p>If he is not, the wife can work, and their joint earnings will keep them +from want. But, if one of the partners has not only to give herself up +to child-bearing, and thus cease to earn, but also bring another into +the home that will monopolise all her time, attention, and energy, and a +good deal of its father's earnings, how will they fare?</p> + +<p>If a man's wages has to be divided between two, then between three, then +four, six, eight, ten, while all the time that wages is not increasing, +have we not a direct cause of poverty, and, moreover, is not that cause +first in time and importance?</p> + +<p>Later on in the history of the family their poverty will become a cause +of an increase in the children born to them. At first they may struggle +to prevent an increase, but, when they are in the depths of hopeless +poverty, they will abandon themselves to despair.</p> + +<p>Could they have had born to them only one, or two, or three, during +their early married life, they might not only have escaped want, but +later in life may have had others born to them, without either their +little ones or themselves feeling the pinch of poverty.</p> + +<p>It must be remembered in this connection that fecundity and sexual +activity are not convertible terms.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a>It is certainly not true to say that the greater the fecundity of the +people the stronger their sexual instinct, or the greater the sexual +exercise.</p> + +<p>A high fecundity does not depend on an inordinate sexual activity.</p> + +<p>Fecundity depends on the child-bearing capacity of each female, and a +sexual union at an appropriate time once in two years between puberty +and the catamenia is compatible with the highest possible fecundity.</p> + +<p>It would be quite illogical, and inconsistent with physiological facts, +to aver that, were the poor less given to indulge the pleasures of +sense, their fecundity would be modified in an appreciable degree.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Ethics of Prevention</span>.</h4> + + +<p><i>Fertility the law of life.—Man interprets and controls this +law.—Marriage law necessary to fix paternal responsibility.—Malthus's +high ideal.—If prudence the motive, continence and celibacy violate no +law.—Post-nuptial intermittent restraint.—Ethics of prevention judged +by consequences.—When procreation is a good and when an +evil.—Oligantrophy.—Artificial checks are physiological sins.</i></p> + + +<p>"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He +him, male and female created He them, and God blessed them and God said +unto them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the +earth.'"—(Genesis i., 27-28). This commandment was repeated to Noah and +his sons.</p> + +<p>Whether Moses was recording the voice of God, or interpreting a +physiological law is immaterial to this aspect of a great social +question. The fact remains that in obedience to a great law of life, all +living things are fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and +multiplication in a state of nature is limited only by space and food.</p> + +<p>In a state of nature, reproduction is automatic, and only in this state +is this physiological law, or this divine command obeyed.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>The reason of man intervenes, and interprets, and modifies this law.</p> + +<p>A community of men becomes a social organism, calls itself a State, and +limits the law of reproduction. It decrees that the sexes shall, if they +pair, isolate themselves in pairs, and live in pairs whether inclined to +so live or not.</p> + +<p>If the State has a right so to interpret and limit the law of +reproduction, a principle in human affairs is established, and its +decree that individuals shall not mate before a certain age, or not mate +at all, is only a further application of the same principle. By the law +of reproduction a strong instinct, second only in force and universality +to the law of self-preservation, is planted in the sexes, and upon a +blind obedience to this force, the continuity of the race depends.</p> + +<p>The tendency in the races of history has been to over-population, or to +a population beyond the food supply, and there is probably no race known +to history that did not at some one period of its rise or fall suffer +from over-population.</p> + +<p>States have mostly been concerned, therefore, with restraining or +inhibiting the natural reproductive instinct of their subjects through +marriage laws which protect the State, by fixing paternal +responsibility. There were strong reasons why a State should not be +over-populated, and only one reason why it should <a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>not be +under-populated. That one reason was the danger of annihilation from +invasion.</p> + +<p>Sparta was said to have suffered thus, because of under-population, and +passed a law encouraging large families. Alexander encouraged his +soldiers to intermarry with the women of conquered races, in order to +diminish racial differences and antagonism, and Augustus framed laws for +the discouragement of celibacy, but no law has ever been passed +decreeing that individuals must mate, or if they do mate that they shall +procreate.</p> + +<p>Malthus, the great and good philanthropist of Harleybury, a great +moralist and Christian clergyman, urged that it was people's duty not to +mate and procreate until they had reasonable hope of being able easily +to rear, support, and educate the normal family of four, and, if that +were impossible, not to mate at all. As a Christian clergyman, Malthus +did not interpret the Divine command apart from the consequences of its +literal acceptance.</p> + +<p>"Be fruitful," meant to Malthus reproduce your kind,—that implied not +only bringing babies into the world, but rearing them up to healthy, +robust, and prosperous manhood, with every prospect of continuing the +process.</p> + +<p>"Multiply and replenish the earth" as a command to Noah, meant in the +mind of the Rector of Harleybury, "People the earth with men after your +own image."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>Very little care would be required in Noah's time, with his fine +alluvial flats, and sparse population, but in Malthus's time the command +could not be fully carried out without labour, self-development, and +"moral restraint."</p> + +<p>The physiological law is simple and blind, taking no cognisance of the +consequences, or the quality of the offspring produced. The divine +command is complex. It embodies the reproductive instinct, but restrains +and guides it in view of ultimate consequences.</p> + +<p>So much for the views and teaching of Malthus. To him no ethical +standard was violated in preventing offspring by protracted continence, +or lifelong celibacy, provided the motive was the inability so to +provide for a family as to require no aid from the state. And it is +difficult to escape this conclusion. There is no ethical, Christian, or +social law, that directs a man or woman to procreate their kind if they +cannot, or have reasonable grounds to think they cannot, support their +offspring without aid from others.</p> + +<p>There can be, therefore, no just law that decrees that men or women +shall marry under such circumstances. In fact most philanthropists think +they violate a social and ethical law if they do marry.</p> + +<p>But, if with Paul, they resolve that it is better to marry than to burn, +is there any law that can or should prevent them selecting the +<a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>occasions of their union, with a view to limiting fertility.</p> + +<p>Abstention is the voluntary hindrance of a desire, when that desire is +strongest in both sexes; and as such it limits happiness, and is in +consequence an evil <i>per se</i>. A motive that will control this desire +must be a strong one; such a motive is not necessarily bad. It may be +good or evil.</p> + +<p>There can be no essential ethical difference between constant +continence, prior to marriage, and intermittent continence subsequent to +marriage, both practices having a similar motive.</p> + +<p>If post nuptial restraint with a view to limiting offspring is wrong, +restraint from marriage with the same motive is wrong.</p> + +<p>If delayed marriage in the interest of the individual and the State is +right, marriage with intermittent restraint is in the same interest, and +can as easily be defended.</p> + +<p>The ethics of prevention by restraint must be judged by its +consequences. If unrestrained procreation will place children in a home +where the food and comfort are adequate to their healthful support and +development, then procreation is good,—good for the individual, +society, and the State.</p> + +<p>If the conditions necessary to this healthful support and development, +can by individual or State effort be provided for all children born, <a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a>it +is the duty of the individual and of the State to make that effort.</p> + +<p>All persons of fair education and good intelligence know what those +conditions are, and if they procreate regardless of their absence, that +procreation is an evil, and prevention by restraint is the contrary +virtue.</p> + +<p>It is not suggested, however, that all those who prevent, without or +within the marriage bond, do so from this worthy motive, nor is it +suggested that all those who prevent are not extravagant in their demand +for luxurious conditions for themselves and for their children.</p> + +<p>Many require not merely the conditions necessary to the healthful +development of each and every child they may bear, but they demand that +child-bearing shall not entail hardships nor the prospect of hardships, +shall not involve the surrender of any comfort or luxury, nor the +prospect of any such surrender.</p> + +<p>Whatever doubt may exist in the minds of moralists and philanthropists +as to the ethics of prevention in the face of poverty, there can be no +doubt that prevention by those able to bear and educate healthy +offspring, without hardship, is a pernicious vice degrading to the +individual, and a crime against society and the State.</p> + +<p>Aristotle called this vice "oliganthropy." Amongst the ancients it was +associated with self-indulgence, luxury, and ease. It was the result of +self-indulgence, but it was the cause of mental and moral anæmia, and +racial decay.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>So far in this chapter prevention has been dealt with only in so far as +it is brought about by ante-nuptial and post-nuptial restraint. +Artificial checks were first brought prominently before the notice of +the British Public under the garb of social virtue, about the year 1877 +by Mrs. Annie Besant and Mr. Charles Bradlaugh.</p> + +<p>These checks to conception, though they are very largely used, can +hardly be defended on physiological grounds. Every interference with a +natural process must be attended, to some extent at least, with physical +injury. There is not much evidence that the injury is great, but in so +far as an interference is unnatural, it is unhealthy, and there is much +evidence to show that many of the checks advocated and used, are not +only harmful but are quite useless for the purpose for which they are +sold.</p> + +<p>It will be conceded by most, no doubt, that with those capable of +bearing healthy children, and those unable to rear healthy ones when +born, prevention by restraint, ante-nuptial or post nuptial, is a social +virtue, while prevention under all other circumstances is a social vice.</p> + +<p>Happiness has been defined as the surplus of pleasure over pain. What +constitutes pleasure and what pain varies in the different stages of +racial and individual development. In civilized man we have the +pleasures of mind supplementing and in some cases replacing the +<a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>pleasures of sense. We talk, therefore, of the higher pleasures—the +pleasures of knowledge and learning, of wider sympathies and love, of +the contemplation of extended prosperity and concord, of hope for +international fraternity and peace, and for a life beyond the grave. +Happiness to the highly civilized will consist, therefore, of the +surplus of these pleasures over the pains of their negation.</p> + +<p>Self-preservation is the basal law of life, and to preserve one's-self +in happiness, the completest preservation, for happiness promotes +health, and health longevity.</p> + +<p>The first law of living nature then is to preserve life and the +enjoyment of it, and the pleasures sought, to increase the sum of +happiness will depend on the sentiments and emotions, <i>i.e.</i>, on the +faculties of mind that education and experience have developed, in the +race, or in the individual.</p> + +<p>My first thought is for myself, and my duty is to increase the sum of my +happiness. But the mental state we call happiness is relative to the +presence or absence of this state in others. Even amongst the lower +animals, misery and distress in one of the flock militate against the +happiness of the others. In a highly developed man true happiness is +impossible in the presence of pain and misery in others and <i>vice +versa</i>; happiness is contagious and flows to us from the joy of others. +If the happiness of others then is so essential to my own happiness,<a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a> I +am fulfilling the first law of life and ministering to my own +preservation in health and happiness by using my best endeavours to +promote this state in others. My material comfort too depends largely on +the labour, and love, and the contribution of others in the complex +industrial system and division of labour of the higher civilisations. +Not only my happiness and health but my very existence depends on the +good-will and toil of others. Thus from a purely egoistic standpoint, my +first duty to myself is to increase the happiness in others, and, +therefore, my first duty to myself becomes my highest duty to society.</p> + +<p>My duty to my child is comprehended in my duty to society, <i>i.e.</i>, to +others. My duty to others is to increase the sum of the happiness of +others, and bringing healthy children into the world not only creates +beings capable of experiencing and enjoying pleasures, but adds to the +sum of social happiness, by increasing the number of social units +capable of rendering service to others.</p> + +<p>The next great law of life is the law of race preservation. This law +comprises the instinct to reproduction and the instinct of parental +love. The first and chief function of these instincts in the animal +economy is the perpetuation of the race. The preservation of self +implies and comprehends the preservation of the race.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>My first duty to myself is to preserve myself in health and happiness; +but this is best fulfilled and realized in labouring for the health and +happiness of others. If this be the universal law, I also am the +recipient of others' care, therefore probably better tended and +preserved. I save my life by losing it in others.</p> + +<p>My second duty, though nominally to Society, is in reality to myself, +and it is to preserve myself by preserving the race to which I belong.</p> + +<p>Self-preservation therefore, is the first law of life, race preservation +the second or subsidiary law.</p> + +<p>To fulfil this second law, nature has placed on every normal healthy man +and woman the sacred duty of reproducing their kind. Reproduction as a +physiological process promotes, both directly and indirectly, the +health, happiness and longevity of healthy men and women.</p> + +<p>Statistics confirm the popular opinion "that the length of life, to the +enjoyment of which a married person may look forward, is greater than +that of the unmarried, both male and female at the same +age."—(Coghlan).</p> + +<p>It is a familiar observation that the mothers of large families of ten +and even twice that number are not less healthy nor shorter lived +because of the children they have borne. Pregnancy is a stimulus to +vitality. Because <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>another life has to be supported, all the vital +powers are invigorated and rise to the occasion—the circulation +increases, the heart enlarges in response to the extra work, and the +assimilative powers of the body are greatly accelerated. During +lactation also, the same extra vital work done is a stimulus to a +physiological activity which is favourable to health and longevity. The +expectancy of life in women is greater than in men all through life, the +difference during the child-bearing period of life being about 2.2 years +in favour of women.</p> + +<p>Statistics and physicians from their observation agree in this, that the +bearing of children by normal women, so far from being injurious to +health, is as healthful, stimulating, and invigorating a function as the +blooming of a flower, or the shedding of fruit, and a mother is no worse +for the experience of maternity than is the plant or the tree for the +fruit it bears.</p> + +<p>The supreme law of society is the law of race-preservation, and the +infraction of this law is a social crime. One's duty to society is a +higher duty than to one's-self, but the lower duty comes first in our +present stage of racial evolution. Instinct prompts to the one, +reason—a higher and later, but less respected, faculty—prompts to the +other.</p> + +<p>But it can be shown that from an egoistic standpoint my duty to the +State in this regard is my highest duty to myself.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>The parental sacrifice necessary in rearing the normal number of +children is infinitesimal compared with the parental advantage.</p> + +<p>Parental love is a passion as well as an instinct in normal men and +women, and the full play of this passion in its natural state is +productive of the greatest happiness.</p> + +<p>Vice may restrain, replace, or smother it, but nothing else can damage +or adulterate this powerful passion in the human heart.</p> + +<p>Low level selfishness, love of low level luxury, diseased imaginings, +and unreasonable dreads and fears, are some of the forms of vice that +smother this noble passion.</p> + +<p>The pursuit of happiness and the higher forms of selfishness would +naturally point to parentage.</p> + +<p>The ectasy of parental love, the sweet response from little ones that +rises as the fragrance of lovely flowers, self-realization in the +comfort and joy of family life, the parental pride in the contemplation +of effulgent youth, the sympathetic partnership in success, the repose +of old age surrounded by filial manhood and womanhood, all go to make a +surplus of pleasure over pain, that no other way of life can possibly +supply.</p> + +<p>What is the alternative?</p> + +<p>To miss all this and live a barren life and a loveless old age. Perhaps +to bear a child, that, for the need of the educative, elevating +companionship of family mates is consumed by self, <a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>inheriting that +vicious selfishness, which he by his birth defeated, and finding all the +forces of nature focussed on his defect, like a pack of hounds that turn +and rend an injured mate.</p> + +<p>Or a family of one, after years of parental care and love, education and +expense, dies or turns a rake, and the canker of remorse takes his place +in the broken hearts.</p> + +<p>Nature's laws are not broken with impunity—as a great Physician has +said, "She never forgives and never forgets."</p> + +<p>Self-preservation and race-preservation together constitute the law of +life, just as Conservation of Matter and Conservation of Energy +constitute the Law of Substance in Haeckels Monistic Philosophy, and the +severest altruism will permit man to follow his highest self-interest in +obedience to these laws. It is only a perverted and vicious +self-interest that would tempt him to infraction.</p> + +<p>That the vice of oliganthropy is growing amongst normal and healthy +people is a painful and startling fact. In New Zealand the prevailing +belief is that a number of children adds to the cares and +responsibilities of life more than they add to its joys and pleasures, +and many have come to think with John Stuart Mill, that a large family +should be looked on with the same contempt as drunkenness.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Who Prevent</span>.</h4> + + +<p><i>Desire for family limitation result of our social system.</i>—<i>Desire and +practice not uniform through all classes.</i>—<i>The best limit, the worst +do not.</i>—<i>Early marriages and large families.</i>—<i>N.Z. marriage rates. +Those who delay, and those who abstain from marriage.</i>—<i>Good motives +mostly actuate.</i>—<i>All limitation implies restraint.</i>—<i>Birth-rates vary +inversely with prudence and self-control.</i>—<i>The limited family usually +born in early married life when progeny is less likely to be well +developed.</i>—<i>Our worst citizens most prolific.</i>—<i>Effect of poverty on +fecundity.</i>—<i>Effect of alcoholic intemperance.</i>—<i>Effect of mental and +physical defects.</i>—<i>Defectives propagate their kind.</i>—<i>The +intermittent inhabitants of Asylums and Gaols constitute the greatest +danger to society.</i>—<i>Character the resultant of two forces—motor +impulse and inhibition.</i>—<i>Chief criminal characteristic is defective +inhibition.</i>—<i>This defect is strongly hereditary.</i>—<i>It expresses +itself in unrestrained fertility.</i></p> + + +<p>It has been sufficiently demonstrated in preceding chapters, that the +birth-rate has been, and is still rapidly declining. It has been sought +to prove that this decline is chiefly due to voluntary means taken by +married people to limit their families, and that the desire for this +limitation is the result of our social system.</p> + +<p>The important question now arises. Is the desire uniform through all +classes of Society, and is the practice of prevention uniform through +all classes?</p> + +<p><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>In other words, is the decline in the birth-rate due to prevention in +one class more than in another, and if so which?</p> + +<p>Experience and statistics force us to the startling conclusion, that the +birth-rate is declining amongst the best classes of citizens, and +remains undisturbed amongst the worst.</p> + +<p>Now the first-class responsible for the decline includes those who do +not marry, and those who marry late. The Michigan vital statistics for +1894 (p. 125) show that the mean number of children to each marriage at +the age of 15-19 years is 6.75, at the age of 20-25 years it is 5.32, a +difference of 1.44 in favour of delayed marriage for a period of five +years.</p> + +<p>In New Zealand the marriage rate has gone up from 5.97 per thousand +persons living in 1888 to 7.67 in 1900.</p> + +<p>This class includes clerks with an income of £100 and under,—a large +number with £150, and all misogynists with higher incomes.</p> + +<p>It includes labourers with £75 a year and under, and many who receive +£100.</p> + +<p>Their motives for avoiding marriage are mostly prudential.</p> + +<p>Those who abstain from marriage for prudential reasons are as a rule +good citizens. They are workers who realise their responsibilities in +life, and shrink from undertaking duties which they feel they cannot +adequately perform. By far the largest class who practice <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>prevention, +consists of those who marry, and have one or two children, and limit +their families to that number, for prudential, health, or selfish +reasons.</p> + +<p>These too are as a rule good citizens, and there are two qualities that +so distinguish them. First, their prudence; they have no wish to burden +the State with the care or support of their children. Their fixed +determination is to support and educate them themselves, and they set +themselves to the work with thriftiness and forethought.</p> + +<p>In order to do this, however, it is essential that the family is limited +to one, two, or three, as the case may be, and before it is too late, +preventive measures are resorted to.</p> + +<p>The second quality that distinguishes them as good citizens is their +self-control. Every preventive measure in normal individuals implies a +certain amount of self-restraint, and in proportion as prudential +motives are strong is the self-imposed restraint easy and effective.</p> + +<p>The existence of these two qualities, prudence and self-control, is a +very important factor in human character, and upon their presence and +prevalence in its units depend the progress and stability of society. +But the birth-rate varies in an inverse ratio with these qualities. In +those communities or sections of communities, where these qualities are +conspicuous, will the birth-rate be correspondingly low.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>There is another class of people that has strong desires to keep free +from the cares and expense of a large family. These are, too, good +citizens and belong to good stock. They are those possessed of ambition +to rise socially, politically, or financially, and they are a numerous +body in New Zealand.</p> + +<p>They are quite able to support and educate a fairly large family, but as +children are hindrances, and increase the anxieties, the +responsibilities and the expense, they must be limited to one or two.</p> + +<p>There is still another class that consists of the purely selfish and +luxurious members of society, who find children a bother, who have to +sacrifice some of the pleasures of life in order to rear them.</p> + +<p>Now all those who prevent have some rational ground for prevention, and +at least are possessed of sufficient self-control to give effect to +their wish. They include the best citizens and the best stock, and from +them would issue, if the reproductive faculty were unrestrained, the +best progeny.</p> + +<p>One grave aspect of this limitation is that, as a rule, the family is +limited after the first one or two are born. The small families, say of +two, are born when the parents are both young, and carefully compiled +statistics prove that these are not the best offspring a couple can +produce. Those born first in wedlock, are shorter and not so well +developed as those born <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>later in married life, when parents are more +matured.</p> + +<p>If it is substantially true, that the decline in the birth-rate is due +to voluntary prevention, and that prevention implies prudence and +self-control, it is safe to conclude that those in whom these qualities +are absent or least conspicuous, will be the most prolific.</p> + +<p>But those in whom these qualities are absent or least conspicuous are +our worst citizens, and, therefore, our worst citizens are the most +prolific. Observation and statistics lead to the same conclusion.</p> + +<p>Amongst the very poor in crowded localities, the passion for marriage +early asserts itself.</p> + +<p>Its natural enemies are prudence and a consciousness of responsibility, +and these suggest restraint. But prudence and restraint are not the +common attributes of the very poor. Poverty makes people reckless, they +live from hour to hour as the lower animals do. They satisfy their +desires as they arise, whether it be the desire for food or the desire +of sex.</p> + +<p>The very poor includes amongst its numbers, the drunkard, the criminal, +the professional pauper, and the physically and mentally defective.</p> + +<p>The drunkard is not distinguished by his prudence, nor by his +self-restraint. In fact the alcohol which he imbibes paralyses what +self-control he has, and excites through an increased circulation in his +lower brain-centres <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>an unnatural sexual desire. What hope is there of +the drunkard curtailing his family by self-restraint?</p> + +<p>Dr. Billings says, (Forum, June 1893) "So far as we have data with +regard to the use of intoxicating liquors, fertility seems greatest in +those countries and amongst those classes where they are most freely +used."</p> + +<p>Neither is the criminal blessed with the important attributes of +prudence and self-control. They are conspicuous by their absence in him.</p> + +<p>In all defectives, in epileptics, idiots, the physical deformed, the +insane, and the criminal, the prudence and self-restraint necessary to +the limitation of families is either partially or entirely absent.</p> + +<p>To the poor in crowded localities, with limited room-space and +insanitary surroundings, effective self-restraint is more difficult than +in any other class of society.</p> + +<p>In all defectives the sexual instinct is as strong, if not stronger, +than in the normal, and they have not that interest in life, and regard +for the future that suggest restraint, nor have they the power to +practise it though prudence were to guide them.</p> + +<p>The higher checks to population, as they exist among the better classes +of people, do not obtain amongst the defectives taken as a class.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>Vice and misery are more active checks amongst the very poor, and +abortion is practised to a very considerable extent, but the appalling +fact remains, that the birth-rate of the unfit goes on undisturbed, +while the introduction of higher checks amongst the normal classes has +led to a marked decline, more marked than at first sight appears. The +worst feature of the problem, however, is not so much the disproportion +in the numbers born to the normal and the abnormal respectively, but the +fact that the defectives propagate their kind.</p> + +<p>The defectives, whose existence and whose liberty constitute the +greatest danger to the State, are the intermittent inhabitants of our +lunatic asylums, prisons, and reformatories.</p> + +<p>There is one defect common to all these, and that is defective +inhibition.</p> + +<p>All human activity is the result of two forces, motor impulses tending +to action, and inhibition tending to inertia.</p> + +<p>The lower animals have strong motor impulses constantly exploding and +expressing themselves in great activity, offensive, defensive, +self-preservative, and procreative, being restrained only by the +inhibitive forces of their conditions and environment.</p> + +<p>Children have strong motor impulses, which are at first little +controlled. Inhibition is a late development and is largely a result of +education.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a>If the motor impulses remain strong, or become stronger in the presence +of development with exercise, while inhibition remains weak, we have a +criminal.</p> + +<p>Inhibition is the function performed by the highest and last-formed +brain-cells. These brain cells may be undeveloped either from want of +exercise, that is, education, or from hereditary weakness, or, having +been developed may have undergone degeneration, under the influence of +alcohol, or from hereditary or acquired disease.</p> + +<p>Motor impulses, as the springs of action, are common to all animals. In +the lower animals inhibition is external, and never internal or +subjective. In man it may be internal or external.</p> + +<p>It is internal or subjective in those whose higher brain centres are +well developed and normal. Their auto-inhibition is such that all their +motor impulses are controlled and directed in the best interests of +society.</p> + +<p>It is external only in those whose higher brain centres are either +undeveloped or diseased. These constitute the criminal classes. Their +motor impulses are unrestrained. They offer a low or reduced resistance +to temptation.</p> + +<p>Weak or absent resistance in the face of a normal motor impulse whose +expression injuriously affects another, is crime, and a criminal is one +whose power of resistance to motor impulses has been reduced by disease, +<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>hereditary or acquired, or is absent through arrested development.</p> + +<p>A confirmed criminal is one in whom the frequent recurrence of an +unrestrained impulse injurious to others has induced habit.</p> + +<p>Auto-inhibition is defective or absent, and society must in her own +interest provide external restraint, and this we call law.</p> + +<p>Criminals are, therefore, mental defectives, and may be defined for +sociological purposes as those in whom legal punishment for the second +time, for the same offence, has failed to act as a deterrent.</p> + +<p>M. Boies, in "Prisoners and Paupers," says that conviction for the third +time for an offence, is proof of hereditary criminal taint.</p> + +<p>The existence of motor impulses in the human animal is normal. They vary +in strength and force. We cannot eradicate, we can only control them.</p> + +<p>They may become less assertive under the constant control of a highly +cultivated inhibition, but it is only in this way that they can be +affected at all. They may be controlled, either by the individual +himself or by the State. Our reformatories are peopled by young persons +whose distinguishing characteristic is that inhibition is undeveloped or +defective. This defect may be due to want of education, but it is more +often hereditary.</p> + +<p>Two things only can be done for them. This faculty of inhibition can be +trained by <a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>education, or external restraint can be provided by law.</p> + +<p>But the distinguishing characteristic of all defectives, within or +without our public institutions, is defective inhibition,—they are +unable to control the spontaneous impulses that continually arise, and +which may indeed be normal.</p> + +<p>Impulses may be abnormal from hereditary predisposition, as <i>e.g.</i> the +impulse to drink, but only through strengthening inhibition can these +impulses be controlled,—their existence must be accepted.</p> + +<p>But whether the defect is an abnormal impulse, or a normal impulse +abnormally strong, or an abnormally weak or defective inhibition, the +condition is hereditary, and such defectives propagate their kind.</p> + +<p>It has been shown that they are more fertile than any other classes +because of the very defect that makes them a danger to society.</p> + +<p>The defective restraint that allows them to commit offences against +person and property, also allows their procreative impulse unrestrained +activity.</p> + +<p>Defectives, therefore, are not only fertile, but they propagate their +kind, and a few examples will serve to show to some extent the +fertility, and to an enormous extent the hereditary tendencies, of the +unfit.</p> + + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/092.png" alt="Case results of two families" title="Case results of two families" /></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a></p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/093.png" alt="Who Prevent" title="Who Prevent" /></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a></p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/094.png" alt="Case results of two families" title="Case results of two families" /></div> +<p><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a></p> + + + + +<p><i>The above diagrammatic histories of eight families are taken from Dr. +Strahan's "Marriage and Disease."</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">The Multiplication of the Fit in Relation to the State</span>.</h4> + + +<p><i>The State's ideal in relation to the fertility of its subjects</i>.—<i>Keen +competition means great effort and great waste of life</i>.—<i>If in the +minds of the citizens space and food are ample multiplication works +automatically</i>.—<i>To New Zealanders food now includes the luxuries as +well as the necessities of life</i>.—<i>Men are driven to the alternative of +supporting a family of their own or a degenerate family of +defectives</i>.—<i>The State enforces the one but cannot enforce the +other</i>.—<i>New Zealand taxation</i>.—<i>The burden of the bread-winner</i>.—<i>As +the State lightens this burden it encourages fertility</i>.—<i>The survival +of the unfit makes the burden of the fit</i>.</p> + + +<p>The multiplication of the fit is of the first importance to the State. +It supplies competent producers and courageous defenders, and the more +of these, consistent with space and food (using these terms in their +fullest significance), the better off the State.</p> + +<p>If healthy happy citizens are the State's ideal, then limitation of +population well within the space and food will be encouraged. If +national wealth and prosperity in its material aspect are the State's +ideal, the harder the population presses on the means of subsistence the +sooner will that ideal be realised. For it cannot be denied, that the +greater the stress <a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>and hardship in life, the more strenuous the effort +put forth to obtain a foothold. The greater the competition the keener +the effort, and the higher the accomplishment; while to ensure an +adequate supply of labour in time of great demand there must always be a +surplus.</p> + +<p>The waste of life must always be greater; but what of that! National +wealth is the ideal—the maximum amount of production. Child labour, and +women labour, are called in to fill the national granaries, though +misery and death attend the process.</p> + +<p>If this be the ideal of the State, life is of less value than the +product of labour, for it can be more easily and readily replaced.</p> + +<p>But the ideal of the perfect state is not wealth but the robust +happiness of its members.</p> + +<p>The happiness of its members is best promoted by the maximum increase in +its numbers, consistent with ample space and food. With ample space and +food multiplication works automatically, being kept up to the limit of +space and food by the procreative instinct.</p> + +<p>If it can be shown that multiplication is not sufficiently stimulated by +this instinct, then it must be concluded that, <i>in the minds of the +citizens</i> the space and food are not ample.</p> + +<p>In New Zealand the procreative impulse does not keep multiplication at +an equal pace with the apparent supply of food and space, and this is +due, as has been shown, to the <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>fact that our citizens are not satisfied +that the supply <i>is</i> ample.</p> + +<p>They have come to enlarge the definition of "food," and this term now +includes luxuries easily obtainable for themselves and their families.</p> + +<p>But the luxuries of life and living can only be easily obtained when +individual effort to obtain them is unhampered. Every burden which a man +has to bear (only the best are here referred to,—the fit members of the +State) limits his power to provide for himself, and any he may bring +into the world.</p> + +<p>If the State decrees that a citizen shall support himself, his mate, and +his progeny, well and good,—if he has no other burden to bear, no other +responsibility, he knows exactly where he is and what he has to do, and +directs his energies and controls his impulses, and enlarges his desires +to suit his tastes and purposes.</p> + +<p>But if the State decrees that a citizen shall not only support all for +whose existence he is responsible, but also all those unable to support +themselves, born into the world in increasing numbers as congenital +defectives, and manufactured in the world by legalised drinking saloons, +and by pauperising charitable aid and benevolent institutions, then our +self-respecting right-respecting citizen must decide whether he will +forego the luxury and ease that he may enjoy, and rear the normal +family, or curtail his own <a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>progeny, and support the army of defectives +thrown upon society by the State-encouraged fertility of the unfit.</p> + +<p>It has already been shown, that in this colony the best fit to multiply +are ceasing to do so, because of a desire to attain a social and +financial stability that will protect them and their dependents from +want or the prospect of want. There is every reason to believe, that +when this stability is assured the normal family soon follows.</p> + +<p>The love of luxurious idleness and a passion for excitement, which were +typical of the voluntarily barren women of ancient Rome, have little +place with us, as a cause of limited nativity.</p> + +<p>Men and women reason out, that they cannot bear all the burdens that the +State imposes upon them, support an increasing army of paupers, and +lunatics and defectives, and non-producers, and that luxuriously, and at +the same time incur the additional burden of rearing a large family.</p> + +<p>Let us examine these burdens, and see if the complaint of our best stock +is justified.</p> + +<p>The amount raised by taxation in New Zealand (including local rates) +during the year 1902-03, amounted per head of population (excluding +Maories) to £5 4s. 7d. The bread-winners in New Zealand number according +to official returns, 340,230, and the total rates and taxes collected +for the year 1902-03 <a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a>amounted to £4,174,787 or £12 5s. 4d. for each +bread-winner for the year.</p> + +<p>On March 31st, 1901 (the last census date) there were 23.01 persons per +thousand of population over 15 years of age, unable to work from +sickness, accident and infirmity. Of these 12.72 were due to sickness +and accident, and 10.29 to "specified infirmities."</p> + +<p>The proportion of those suffering from sickness and accident in 1874 was +12.64 per 1000 over 15 years, practically the same as for 1901, while +disability from "specified infirmities" (lunacy, idiocy, epilepsy, +deformity, etc.)—degeneracies strongly hereditary—rose rapidly from +5.32 in 1874 to 10.29 in 1901, or taking the total sickness and +infirmity, from 17.96 in 1874 to 23.01 in 1901.</p> + +<p>On the last census date there were 340,230 bread-winners, and 12,747 +persons suffering from sickness, accident, and infirmity, or 26 fit to +work and earn for every one unfit.</p> + +<p>The cost to the Colony per year of—</p> + + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="The cost to the colony of people suffering sickness"> +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='center'>£</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1.</td><td align='left'>Hospitals, year ended 31st March, 1903</td><td align='right'>138,027</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>2.</td><td align='left'>Charitable Aid (expended by boards), year ended 31st March, 1903</td><td align='right'>93,158</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>3.</td><td align='left'>Lunatic Asylums, year ended 31st Dec, 1902 (gross)</td><td align='right'>85,238</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'>Lunatic Asylums, year ended 31st Dec, 1902 (nett)</td><td align='right'>64,688</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>4.</td><td align='left'>Industrial Schools, year ended 31st Dec, 1902</td><td align='left'> </td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> Government Industrial Schools for neglected and criminal children</td><td align='right'>21,708<a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> Government Expenditure on Private Denominational Industrial Schools</td><td align='right'>2,526</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>5.</td><td align='left'>Police Force, year ended 31st March, 1903</td><td align='right'>123,804</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>6.</td><td align='left'>Prisons, year ended 31st March, 1903</td><td align='right'>32,070</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>7.</td><td align='left'>Criminal Courts (Criminal Prosecutions), year ended 31st March, 1903</td><td align='right'>16,813</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>8.</td><td align='left'>Old Age Pensions (pensions only for persons over 65 years of age, who<br /> have been 25 years in the Colony, and who make a declaration of <br />poverty, including departmental expenses)</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'>212,962</td></tr> + +</table><br /></div> + + +<p>A total of £705,756. This constitutes the burden due to defectives and +defects in others, a handful of workers have to bear in a sparse +population of 800,000 souls in one of the finest countries on which the +sun of heaven ever shone.</p> + +<p>The burden which the fit have to bear has often been referred to by Dr. +MacGregor, who states in one of his reports, "Wives and husbands, +parents of bastards, all alike are encouraged by lavish charity (falsely +so called) to entirely shirk their responsibilities in the well grounded +assurance that public money will be forth-coming to keep them and their +families in quite as comfortable position as their hardworking and +independent neighbours."</p> + +<p>The state can not decree that men shall marry, or that women shall +marry, or that women shall procreate. All it can do is to discover why +its subjects are not fertile, and remove the causes so far as it is +possible.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>As people become educated they become conscious of their limitations, +and endeavour to break through them and better their conditions.</p> + +<p>The more difficult this process is, the less likely will men and women +be to incur the burden of a large family. The more the conditions of +existence are improved, the more completely is each man's wish realized, +and the more readily will he undertake the responsibilities of a family.</p> + +<p>If the State can and will lighten the burden of taxation and modify the +strain and stress of life, it will indirectly encourage procreation.</p> + +<p>No direct encouragement is possible. It was tried and it failed in +Sparta, it was tried by Augustus and it failed in Rome, it must fail +everywhere, for the most willing and the most ready to respond to any +provision made to encourage increase, are the unfit, and it is the +fertility of the unfit that is the very evil that has to be attacked.</p> + +<p>It is the fertility of the unfit that makes the burden of the fit, and a +tax on bachelors, or a bonus on families, would be responded to by the +least fit, long before it affected those whose response was anticipated, +and the problem sought to be solved would only be aggravated thereby.</p> + +<p>No encouragement whatever can the State afford to give to the natural +increase of <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>population till it has successfully grappled with the +propagation of defectives.</p> + +<p>The burden of life would be lessened by nearly one-third if the +fertility of defectives could be stopped.</p> + +<p>The State would have to support only those who acquired defects, the +scars of service more honourable than wealth, in their efforts to +support themselves and families, and these would be few indeed, if +inherited tendencies could be eliminated or reduced to a minimum.</p> + +<p>It is the purpose of this work to attempt to describe a method that will +help to bring about this end.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/104.png" alt="Lunatics per thousand of the population" title="Lunatics per thousand of the population" /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">The Multiplication of the Unfit in Relation to the State.</span></h4> + + +<p><i>Ancient methods of preventing the fertility of the unfit.—Christian +sentiment suppressed inhuman practices—Christian care brings many +defectives to the child-bearing period of life.—The association of +mental and physical defects.—Who are the unfit.—The tendency of +relatives to cast their degenerate kinsfolk on the State.—Our social +conditions manufacture defectives and foster their fertility.—The only +moral force that limits families is inhibition with prudence.—Defective +self-control transmitted hereditarily. Dr. Mac Gregorys cases.—The +transmission of insanity.—Celibacy of the insane is the prophylaxis of +insanity in the race.—The environment of the unfit.—Defectives +snatched from Nature's clutch.—At the age of maturity they are left to +propogate their kind</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> humanitarian spirit, born 1900 years ago, effectually +checked all inhuman practices for disposal of the unfit. Christ is the +Author of this spirit. The noisy triumph of His persecutors had scarcely +died away before His conception of the sanctity of human life found +expression in the mission of those Roman maidens who in His name devoted +their lives to collecting exposed infants from the environs of their +city—that they might rear and educate them and bring them to the +Church.</p> + +<p>Not only has it done this, but it has taught society that its first and +highest duty is to its weaker brethren, who constitute the unfit.<a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a> All +our modern institutions are based on this sentiment, and what is the +result? Weaklings are born into the world and the weaker they are the +more carefully are they tended and nursed. The law of the struggle for +existence, <i>i.e.</i>, the law of Justice is suspended or modified, and the +unfit are allowed to live, or at least allowed to live a little longer, +long enough indeed to propagate their kind.</p> + +<p>Hospitals and Homes and Charitable institutions all combine their +energies, and direct their efforts to nurture those whom the laws of +nature decree should die.</p> + +<p>Sympathy and not indignation is aroused when a defective is born, and +the result of all the effort which that sympathy evokes is that the +little weakling and thousands such are safely led and tended all the way +to the child-bearing period of life, only to repeat their history, in +others.</p> + +<p>Not only do defects "run in families," but they run in groups, and a +physical defect such as club-foot, cleft palate, or any arrested +development, is apt to be associated with some mental defect, and it is +the mental more than the physical defects of individuals that prevent +them being self-supporting helpful members of society.</p> + +<p>In the "North American Review" for August, 1903, Sir John Gorst declares +that:—</p> + +<p>"The condition of disease, debility, and defective sight and hearing, in +the public <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>elementary schools in poorer districts, is appalling. The +research of a recent Royal Commission has disclosed that of the children +in the public schools of Edinburgh, 70 per cent, are suffering from +disease of some kind, more than half from defective vision, nearly half +from defective hearing, and 30 per cent, from starvation. The physical +deterioration of the recruits who offer themselves for the army is a +subject of increasing concern. There are grounds for at least suspecting +a growing degeneracy of the population of the United Kingdom, +particularly in the great towns."</p> + +<p>The following table gives the charges before Magistrates in our +Courts:—</p> + + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Statistics for Magistrates Courts"> +<tr><td align='left'>Year.</td><td align='left'>Proportion per thousand of</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>mean population.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1894</td><td align='right'>24.76</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1897</td><td align='right'>26.87</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1898</td><td align='right'>29.42</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1899</td><td align='right'>29.48</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1900</td><td align='right'>31.54</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1901</td><td align='right'>33.20</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1902</td><td align='right'>35.19</td></tr> +</table></div> + + +<p>Now who are the unfit? Are they more fertile than the fit? and do they +propagate their kind?</p> + +<p>The following defects constitute their victims members of that great +class of degenerates who are unfit to procreate healthy normal +offspring. Many of these conditions are partly congenital and partly +acquired, but in the majority of defectives a transmitted taint is +present.<a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a></p> + +<ul style='list-style-type: none'> + +<li>I. Congenital defects:— + <ol> + <li>Idiocy.</li> + <li>Imbecility.</li> + <li>Criminal Taint.</li> + <li>Insanity.</li> + <li>Inebriate Taint.</li> + <li>Pauperism.</li> + <li>Deaf Mutism.</li> + <li>Epilepsy.<br /> </li> + </ol> +</li> + +<li>II. Acquired defects:— + <ol> + <li>Crime.</li> + <li>Insanity.</li> + <li>Epilepsy.</li> + <li>Inebrity.</li> + <li>Confirmed Pauperism.</li> + </ol> +</li> + +</ul> + +<p>With the exception of the very young and the very old, all members of +society, who have to be supported by others, constitute the unfit. Many +are supported by friends and relatives, but year by year, it is becoming +more noticeable, that the moral guardians of the unfit are shirking +their responsibility and handing their defective relatives over to the +State and demanding their gratuitous support as a right.</p> + +<p>Dr. MacGregor, Inspector of Asylums and Hospitals, N.Z., in his report +for 1898, p. 5, says:—</p> + +<p>"As if the State had a vested interest in the degradation of its people, +I find that they, as fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, are +<a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>responding to our efforts to sap their self-respect by doing their +utmost to throw the cost of maintaining their relatives on the +ratepayers. I constantly hear the plea urged that as taxpayers and old +colonists they have a right to send their relatives to State +institutions."</p> + +<p>Our social conditions manufacture defectives, and foster their +fertility. The strain and stress of modern competition excite an anxiety +and nervous tension under which many break down, and much of the +insanity that exists to-day is attributable to nervous strain in the +struggle of life.</p> + +<p>The strong attractive force of one social stratum upon the next below, +excites in the latter a nervous tension which predisposes to a breakdown +in the face of some adversity.</p> + +<p>The passion for ease and luxury, and the dread of poverty tend to +overstrain the nervous system, and numberless neurotic defectives fall +back upon society, and give themselves up to the propagation of their +kind.</p> + +<p>Our charitable aid institutions tend largely to swell the numbers of the +great unfit.</p> + +<p>Dr. MacGregor in one of his valuable and forcible reports upon our +charitable aid institutions, says:—</p> + +<p>"Our lavish and indiscriminate outdoor relief, whose evils I am tired of +recapitulating,—our shameless abuse of the hospital system,—the +crowding of our asylums by people in their dotage, kept there because +there is no <a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>suitable place to send them to, and many of them sent by +friends anxious only to be relieved of the duty of supporting and caring +for them,—what is it all coming to?"...</p> + +<p>"The practical outcome of our overlooking the continued accumulation of +degenerates among our people by our fostering of all kinds of weakness +will necessarily be, if it continues, that society will itself +degenerate. Taxation will increase by leaps and bounds, and the +industrious and self-respecting citizens will rebel, especially if +taxation is expected to meet all the demands of a legislature that puts +our humanitarian idea of justice in the place of charity."</p> + +<p>It has already been urged that there is no evidence of any physiological +defect in any class of society interfering with fertility. Sexual +inhibition, from prudential motives is the real cause in New Zealand.</p> + +<p>Sexual inhibition implies well-developed self-control, the very force in +which almost all defectives are most deficient, and the absence of which +makes them criminals, drunkards and paupers. In almost all defectives +too, prudence is conspicuous by its absence.</p> + +<p>The only moral force we know of, that has curtailed, or will curtail, +the family within the limits of comfortable subsistence, is sexual +inhibition with prudence. But this force is absolutely impossible +amongst defectives.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>It is not only a powerful force among the normal, but with us to-day it +is powerfully operative. Amongst the defectives it does not and cannot +exist.</p> + +<p>Apart from observation and statistics, therefore, it can be shown that +the birth-rate amongst the unfit is undisturbed. They marry and are +given in marriage, free from all restraint save that of environment, and +worst of all they propagate their kind.</p> + +<p>Dr. Clouston says (Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases, 4th Ed., p. +330) "As we watch children grow up we see that some have the sense of +right and wrong, the conscience, developed much sooner and much stronger +than others; just as some have their eye teeth much sooner than others; +and looking at adults, we see that some never have much of this sense +developed at all. This is notoriously the case in some of those whose +ancestors for several generations have been criminals, insane or +drunkards." Again (p. 331) "We know that some of the children of many +generations of thieves take to stealing, as a young wild duck among tame +ones takes to hiding in holes, and that the children of savage races +cannot copy at once our ethics nor our power of controlling our actions. +It seems to take many generations to redevelop an atrophied conscience. +There is no doubt that an organic lawlessness is transmitted +hereditarily."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a>Mr. W. Bevan Lewis says (A text-book of Mental Disease, p. 203) "It is +also notable, that in a large proportion of cases, we find the history +of ancestral insanity attached to the grand-parents, or the collateral +line of uncles and aunts, significant of a more remote origin for the +neurosis. The actual proportion of cases revealing strongly-marked +hereditary features (often involving several members of the subject's +ancestry), amounts to 36 per cent;" while Mr. Briscoe declares (Journal +of Mental Science, Oct. 1896) that 90% of the insane have a heredity of +insanity.</p> + +<p>The following table from Dr. MacGregor's reports gives an account of two +families in New Zealand and their Asylum history.</p> + + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Asylum history of two families"> +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='right'>Cost per head.</td><td align='left'> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Number.</td><td align='left'>Name.</td><td align='right'>Rate £1 Per week.</td><td align='right'>Total Cost.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'>Family of B (Brothers).</td><td align='right'>£ s. d.</td><td align='right'>£ s. d.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>I.</td><td align='left'>A.B.</td><td align='right'> 80 2 0</td><td align='left'> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>II.</td><td align='left'>C.B.</td><td align='right'>274 4 0</td><td align='left'> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>III.</td><td align='left'>D.B.</td><td align='right'>230 2 0</td><td align='right'> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>IV.</td><td align='left'>E.B.</td><td align='right'> 8 2 0</td><td align='right'> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>V.</td><td align='left'>F.B.</td><td align='right'> 8 2 0</td><td align='right'> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='right'>————</td><td align='right'>600 12 0</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'>Family of C.</td><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>I.</td><td align='left'>A.C. (wife)</td><td align='right'>472 2 0</td><td> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>II.</td><td align='left'>B.C. (husband of A.C.)</td><td align='right'>418 0 0</td><td> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>III.</td><td align='left'>D.C. (daughter of A.C.)</td><td align='right'>834 2 0</td><td> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>IV.</td><td align='left'>E.C. (ditto)</td><td align='right'>1,318 2 0</td><td> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>V.</td><td align='left'>F.C. (illegitimate daughter of E.C.)</td><td align='right'>169 8 0</td><td> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>VI.</td><td align='left'>G.C. (husband of F.C.<a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>but no blood relation)</td><td align='right'>5 2 0</td><td> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='right'>————</td><td align='right'>3,216 16 0</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='right'>————</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='left'> </td><td align='center'>£3,817 8 0</td></tr> +</table></div> + + + +<p>In his report for 1897, the same writer says:—"I know of a 'defective' +half-imbecile girl, who has had already five illegitimate children by +different fathers, all of whom are now being supported by the Charitable +Aid Board, while, of course, the mother is maintained, and encouraged to +propagate more;" while in an appendix to a pamphlet on "Some Aspects of +the Charitable Aid question," he gives the following history of two +defective cases:—</p> + +<p>J.A. admitted to Lunatic Asylum, May, 1897.</p> + +<p>Three medical men report on her as follows:—"She appears imbecile, but +without delusions: natural imbecility, stupid, idiotic expression; baby +one month old; age between 30 and 40. Suffering from dementia; +lactational."</p> + +<p>J.A., husband aged 69; labourer, average earnings 15s. week. He wishes +to get admission into some Old Man's Home.</p> + +<p>This couple have six children—four girls and one boy. A. aged 12; B. +10; C. 9; D. (boy) 5; and E. 3 years. These children are all in the +Industrial School. There is also one baby, born April, 1897; has been +put out to nurse by the County Council.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>The sister of Mrs. J.A. in Salvation Army Home. There are two brothers, +whereabouts not known. The police report on this case that the whole of +the relatives of Mrs. J.A. were partly imbecile, always in a helpless +condition and state of destitution, and have been for years supported +partly by charity of neighbours and help from the Charitable Aid Boards.</p> + +<p>J.J., the father, now dead, reported as a "lazy, drunken fellow."</p> + +<p>A.J., the mother, "a drunken prostitute" (police report 1886). "Makes a +precarious living at nursing" (police report 1897); in destitute +circumstances, living with a man known as a thief.</p> + +<p>This couple had seven children—six boys and one girl:—</p> + +<p>A., committed to Industrial School, 1877; discharged from there 1890; +aged 18. Sentenced in 1896 to three years for burglary.</p> + +<p>B., committed to Industrial school for larceny in 1883; discharged from +there, 1887; aged 17.</p> + +<p>C., committed to Industrial School for breaking into and stealing, 1886; +aged 16; discharged, 1890.</p> + +<p>D., aged 14; E. 9½; and F., 7 years; were sent to Industrial School +in 1891 by the Charitable Aid Board, the father being dead and the +mother in gaol.</p> + +<p>D. was discharged last year, aged 18. F. is in hospital for removal of +nasal growth, <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>and defective eyesight. E. was admitted to a lunatic +Asylum, September, 1897. Four medical men report on him as follows:—"A +case of satyriasis from congenital defect." "His depraved habits result +of bad bringing up by his mother." "Probably hereditary." "A case of +moral depravity associated with mental deficiency, and cretinism." The +youngest of the family, a girl aged 11, is said to be dependent on her +mother.</p> + +<p>With regard to the hereditary nature of Insanity, John Charles Bucknill +and Daniel Hack Tuke, M.D.'s, in "A Manual of Psychological Medicine," +4th Ed., p. 65, says:—</p> + +<p>"Certainly, if in ever so small degree there is to be a stamping out of +insanity, we must act on the principle, better let the individual suffer +than run the risk of bequeathing a legacy of insanity to the next +generation.... With regard to males, marriage would no doubt be highly +beneficial in many instances, <i>and if the risk of progeny is not run, +may well be encouraged</i>."</p> + +<p>Esquirol, quoted by Bucknill and Tuke, p. 58, says:—"Of all diseases +Insanity is the most hereditary."</p> + +<p>Bucknill and Tuke, p. 647, say:—</p> + +<p>"Of marriage it may be said that the celibacy of the insane is the +prophylaxis of Insanity in the race, and although a well chosen mate and +a happy marriage may sometimes postpone or even prevent the development +of insanity in <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>the individual, still no medical man, having regard to +the health of the community, or even of that of the family, can possibly +feel himself justified in recommending the marriage of any person of +either sex in whom the insane diathesis is well marked."</p> + +<p>Again (pp. 647 and 648) "It is thus that the seeds of mental diseases +and of moral evils are sown broadcast through the land; and other new +defects and diseases are multiplied and varied with imbecilities, and +idiocies, and suicidal and other propensities and dispositions, leading +to all manner of vice and crime. The marriage of hereditary lunatics is +a veritable Pandora's box of physical and moral evil."</p> + +<p>The least fit, then, are the most fertile, and the most fertile are +subject to the common law of heredity, and the defects are transmitted +to their offspring, often accentuated by the intermarriage which their +circumstances favour or even necessitate.</p> + +<p>But this is not all. The least fit have the worst environment, and in +the worst possible surroundings the progeny of the unfit multiply and +develop. They are born into conditions, well described by Dr. Alice +Vicery, in a paper on "The food supplies of the next generation." +"Conditions in which the food, warmth, and clothing which are necessary +for the mere maintenance of the functions of the body in their normal +state, cannot be obtained; in which men, women, and children are forced +to <a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>crowd into dens wherein decency is abolished, and the most ordinary +conditions of healthful existence are impossible of attainment; in which +the pleasures within reach are reduced to bestiality and drunkenness; in +which the pains accumulate at compound interest in the shape of +starvation, disease, stunted development, and moral degradation in which +the prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of +unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's grave."</p> + +<p>What possible hope can there be for the progeny of defectives born with +vicious, criminal, drunken or pauper tendencies, into an environment +whose whole influence from infancy to maturity tends to accentuate and +develop these inherited defects?</p> + +<p>In this pitiable stratum of human society, vice and misery, as checks to +increase, reign supreme, but as no other check exists, fertility is at +its maximum, and keeps close up on the heels of the positive checks.</p> + +<p>The State in her humanitarian sympathy, and in New Zealand it is +extravagant, puts forth every effort to improve the conditions of its +"submerged tenth." Insanitary conditions are improved, the rooms by law +enlarged, the air is sweetened, the water is purified, the homes are +drained. The delicate and diseased are taken to our hospitals, the deaf +and blind to our deaf-mute institutions, the deformed and the fatherless +to our orphan homes. And all <a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>are carefully nursed as tender precious +plants. They are snatched from Nature's clutch and reared as prize stock +are reared and kept in clover, till they can propagate their kind.</p> + +<p>We feed and clothe the unfit, however unfit, and then encourage their +procreation, and as soon as they are matured we foster their fertility.</p> + +<p>No want of human sympathy for the poor unfortunates of our race is in +these words expressed,—a statement simply of the inevitable +consequences of unscientific and anti-social methods of dealing with the +degenerate.</p> + +<p>No State can afford to shut its eyes to the magnitude of this problem. +The procreation of the unfit must be faced and grappled with. And the +greater the decline in the birth-rate of our best stock, the more urgent +does the solution of the problem become. For is not the proportion of +the unfit to the fit yearly increasing!</p> + +<p>It has become the most pressing duty of the State, in face of the great +change that has so rapidly come over our natural increase, to declare +that the procreation of the unfit shall cease, or at least, that it +shall be considerably curtailed and placed among the vanishing evils, +with a view to its final extinction.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">What Anæsthetics and Antiseptics Have Made Possible.</span></h4> + + +<p><i>Education of defectives in prudence and self-restraint of little +avail.—Surgical suggestions discussed.</i></p> + +<p>For the intelligent mind, which I assume has already been impressed with +the importance of such an inquiry, I think I have set forth the salient +truths with sufficient clearness, but holding that a recitation of +social faults, without a suggestion as to social reforms, is not only +useless but mischievous, I shall endeavour to show not only that the +situation is not hopeless, but that science and experience have, or will +reveal means to the accomplishment of all rationally desired ends, and +that it remains only for intelligence to enquire that sentiment may move +up to the line so as to harmonise with science, with justice, and with +the demands of a growing necessity.</p> + +<p>These questions of population are not new. More than two thousand years +ago, many of the wisest philosophers of all the centuries meditated +deeply upon the tendencies of the population to crowd upon subsistence, +and in many ages and <a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>many countries, the situation has been discussed +with serious forebodings for the future.</p> + +<p>In all ages thinking men have regarded war with aversion, yet with peace +and domestic prosperity other dangers arose to threaten the progress of +the race, and as the passing generations cried out for some remedy for +the ever pressing evils, thinking men have been proposing measures +somewhat harmonising with the knowledge or the sentiment of the times. +Whether we are wiser than our ancestors remains an unsettled question.</p> + +<p>The old Greeks faced the problem boldly. There were two dangers in the +minds of these ancient philosophers. There was the danger of +over-population of good citizens, and there was the danger of increasing +the burden good citizens had to bear by the maintenance of defectives. +However good the breed, over-population was an economic danger, for, +said Aristotle, "The legislator who fixes the amount of property should +also fix the number of children, for if the children are too many for +the property the law must be broken." (Politics II, 7-5.) And he further +declares (ib. VII. 16 25) "As to the exposure and rearing of children, +let there be a law that no deformed child shall live"; and the exposure +of infants was for years the Grecian method of eliminating the unfit.</p> + +<p>A century ago "Parson Malthus" dealt with over-population without regard +to the fitness of individuals to survive, and he advised the <a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>exercise +of moral restraint expressed in delayed marriage, to prevent population +pressing on the limits of food, which he maintained it invariably tends +to do. After the high souled Malthus, came the Neo-Malthusians, who, +although they retained the name perverted the teaching of this great +demographist, and some Socialist writers of high repute still advocate +the systematic instruction of the poor in Neo-Malthusian practices.</p> + +<p>The rising tide of firm conviction in the minds of present day +sociologists, that the fertility of the unfit is menacing the stability +of the whole social superstructure, is forcing many to advocate more +drastic measures for the salvation of the race. Weinhold seriously +proposed the annual mutilation of a certain portion of the children of +the popular classes. Mr. Henry M. Boies, the most enlightened analyst of +the problem of the unfit, in his exhaustive work "Prisoners and +Paupers," urges the necessity of effectively controlling the fecundity +of the degenerate classes, and he points to surgery, and life-long +incarceration as the solution of the problem. Dr. McKim, in an +exhaustive work on "Heredity and Human Progress," after declaring that +he is profoundly convinced of the inefficiency of the measures which we +bring to bear against the weakness and depravity of our race, ventures +to plead for the remedy which alone, as he believes, can hold back the +advancing tide of disintegration. He states his <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>remedy thus:—"The roll +then, of those whom our plan would eliminate, consists of the following +classes of individuals coming under the absolute control of the +State:—idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, habitual drunkards and insane +criminals, the larger number of murderers, nocturnal house-breakers, +such criminals whatever their offence as might through their +constitutional organization appear very dangerous, and finally, +criminals who might be adjudged incorrigible. Each individual of these +classes would undergo thorough examination, and only by due process of +law would his life be taken from him. The painless extinction of these +lives would present no practical difficulty—in carbonic acid gas we +have an agent which would instantaneously fulfil the need."</p> + +<p>These briefly are some of the remedies which have been advocated and in +part applied for the protection of the race from degeneracy. I quote +them, not with approval, but merely to show how grave and serious the +social outlook is, in the minds of some of the best thinkers and truest +philanthropists that have taught mankind. If the fertility of the fit +could be kept uniformly at its normal rate in a state of nature, the +race would have little to fear, for the tendency to further degeneration +and consequent extinction amongst the defective would be sufficient to +counteract their disposition to a high fertility. But in all civilized +nations, the fertility of the fit is rapidly departing from that normal +rate, <a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a>and Mr. Herbert Spencer declares, with the gloomiest pessimism, +that the infertility of the best citizens is the physiological result of +their intellectual development. I have already expressed the opinion +that prudence and social selfishness, operating through sexual +self-restraint on the part of the best citizens of the State, are the +cause of their infertility. It is impossible for the State to correct +this evil, except by lessening the burden the fit man has to bear; and +the elimination of the unfit, by artificial selection, is the surest and +most effective way of bringing this about.</p> + +<p>We have learned from the immortal Pasteur the true and scientific method +of artificial selection of the fit, by the elimination of the unfit. We +have already seen that he examined the moth, to find if it were healthy, +and rejected its eggs if it were diseased. Medical knowledge of heredity +and disease makes it possible to conduct analogous examinations of +prospective mothers; and surgery secreted in the ample and luxurious +folds of anæsthesia, and protected by its guardian angels antiseptics, +makes it possible to prevent the fertilization of human ova with a +vicious taint. It is possible to sterilize defective women, and the +wives of defective men by an operation of simple ligature, which +produces absolutely no change whatever in the subjects of it, beyond +rendering this fertilization impossible, for the rest of life. This +remedy for the great and growing evil <a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>which confronts us to-day is +suggested, not to avenge but to protect society, and in profound pity +for the classes who are a burden to themselves, as well as to those who +have to tend and support them.</p> + +<p>The problem of the unfit is not new. The burden of supporting those +unable to support themselves has been keenly felt in all ages and among +all peoples.</p> + +<p>The ancients realized the danger and the burden, but found no difficulty +when the stress became acute in enacting that all infants should be +examined and the defective despatched.</p> + +<p>To come nearer home, Boeltius tells us, that, "in old times when a Scot +was affected with any hereditary disease their sons were emasculated, +their daughters banished, and if any female affected with such disease +were pregnant, she was to be burned alive."</p> + +<p>Aristotle declared (Politics Book II, p. 40) that "neglect of this +subject is a never failing cause of poverty, and poverty is the parent +of revolution and crime," and he advocated habitual abortion as one +remedy against over-population. The combined wisdom of the Greeks found +no better method of keeping population well within the limits of the +State's power to support its members than abortion, and the exposure of +infants.</p> + +<p>Since Aristotle's time abortion has been largely practised by civilized +nations. Mutilation and infibulation of females have been practised <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>by +savages with the same end in view, while vasectomy, orchotomy, and +ovariotomy, have had their avowed advocates in our own time.</p> + +<p>The purpose of all these measures was to limit population with little or +no distinction as to fitness to survive. The Spartans in ancient times, +and many social reformers of to-day have discussed and advocated the +artificial limitation of the unfit. The exposure of defective infants +was the Spartan method of preserving the physical and mental stature of +the race.</p> + +<p>The surgical operations on both sexes advocated by some social writers +of recent date, have not been received with much favour, and, as a +social reform have not been practised. As operations they are grave and +serious, profound in their effect upon the individual, and a violation +of public sentiment. Anæsthetics and antiseptics have, however, made +them possible, and if a surgical operation could be devised, simple and +safe in performance, inert in every way but one, and against which there +would be no individual or public sentiment, its application as a social +reform, would go far to solve the grave and serious problem of the +fertility of the unfit.</p> + +<p>The unfit are subject to no moral law in the matter of procreation. They +can be taught nothing, and they will practise nothing. Like the lower +animals they obey their instincts and gratify their desires as they +arise.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a>It has been seriously suggested that the poor should be systematically +taught Neo-Malthusian methods for the limitation of their offspring.</p> + +<p>The best among the poor might practise them, the worst certainly would +not, and the limitation among the best would only stimulate the +fertility of the worst. This is the most innocent and harmless of the +numerous suggestions made by reformers for controlling the fecundity of +the poor.</p> + +<p>Of surgical methods, castration of males, Oophorectomy or the removal of +the ovaries in women, and vasectomy, or the section of the cords of the +testicles, have all been suggested.</p> + +<p>Annual castration of a certain number of the children of the popular +classes was not long ago seriously proposed by Weinhold.</p> + +<p>Boies, in his "Prisoners and Paupers," declares that surgical +interference is the only method of dealing with the criminal, and +preventing him from reproducing his kind. He says:—"These organs have +no function in the human organism except the creation and gratification +of desire and the reproduction of the species. Their loss has no effect +upon the health, longevity, or abilities of the individual of adult +years. The removal of them therefore by destroying desire would actually +diminish the wants of nature and increase the enjoyments of life for +paupers. A want removed is equivalent to a want supplied. In other +words, such <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a>removal would be a positive benefit to the abnormal rather +than a deprivation, rather a kindness than an injury. This operation +bestowed upon the abnormal inmates of our prisons, reformatories, jails, +asylums, and public institutions, would entirely eradicate those +unspeakable evil practices which are so terribly prevalent, debasing, +destructive, and uncontrolled in them. It would confer upon the inmates +health and strength, for weakness and impotence, satisfaction and +comfort for discontent and insatiable desire."</p> + +<p>Anæsthetics have ensured that these operations may be performed without +the slightest suspicion of pain, and with careful sympathetic surgery, +pain may be absent throughout the whole of convalescence. Antiseptics +have made it possible to perform these operations with practically no +risk to life.</p> + +<p>Though castration and Oophorectomy can be performed with safety and +without pain, they are absolutely unjustifiable operations, if done to +produce sterility.</p> + +<p>Every incision and every stitch in surgery, beyond the necessities of +the case, are objectionable, and to remove an organ, when the section of +its duct is sufficient is to say the least of it, bad surgery.</p> + +<p>Vasectomy is the resection of a portion of the duct of the testicles, +followed by ligature of the ends. No doubt ligature alone would be +sufficient for the purpose, but up to the present, <a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a>a piece of the duct +has been removed, when this operation has been found necessary in the +treatment of disease.</p> + +<p>This duct is the secretory tube of the testicle, so that when it is +occluded, the secretion is dammed back, and degeneration and atrophy of +the organ are induced. It soon wastes, and becomes as functionless as +though it were removed.</p> + +<p>This operation can be performed in a Surgery with the aid of a little +Cocaine, and the patient may walk to his home, sterilized for the rest +of his natural life, after the complete loss of any accumulated fluid.</p> + +<p>Of these two operations for the sterilization of men, vasectomy is +preferable. The major operation for the purpose of inducing artificial +sterility should never for a moment be considered.</p> + +<p>But vasectomy, though surgically simple, and a less violation of +sentiment than castration, cannot be justified except in exceptional +cases.</p> + +<p>Neither of these operations makes the subjects of them altogether or at +once impotent, certainly not for years. It sterilizes and partly unsexes +them and in the end completely so.</p> + +<p>But the physical and mental changes that follow the operation in the +young adolescent are grave and serious, and a violent outrage upon the +man's nature and sentiment.</p> + +<p>Society can hope for nothing but evil from the man she forcibly unsexes; +but if he must <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a>be kept in durance vile for the whole of his life there +is little need for such an operation.</p> + +<p>The criminal cases bad enough to justify this grave and extreme measure +should be incarcerated for life.</p> + +<p>The cases, it has been thought, that fully justify this operation are +those guilty of repeated criminal assaults.</p> + +<p>Such a claim arises out of insufficient knowledge of the physiology of +sex, and the pathology of crime. Emasculation would have little +influence in preventing a recurrence of this crime, for the operation +does not render its subjects immediately impotent, nor does it change +their sexual nature any more than it beautifies their character.</p> + +<p>The instinct remains, and the power to gratify it remains at least for +some years. With the less knowledge of surgery of earlier times, a +social condition in which such a practice might be rationally +considered, is conceivable, but with the present state of our +profession, such measures would be unthinkable.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Tubo-ligature.</span></h4> + + +<p><i>The fertility of the criminal a greater danger to society than his +depradations.</i>—<i>Artificial sterility of women.</i>—<i>The menopause +artificially induced.</i>—<i>Untoward results.</i>—<i>The physiology of the +Fallopian tubes.</i>—<i>Their ligature procures permanent sterility.</i>—<i>No +other results immediate or remote.</i>—<i>Some instances due to +disease.</i>—<i>Defective women and the wives of defective men would welcome +protection from unhealthy offspring.</i></p> + + +<p>There is a growing feeling that society must be protected, not so much +against the criminal as against the fertility of the criminal, and no +rational, practicable, acceptable method has as yet been devised.</p> + +<p>The operations on men to induce sterility have been discussed and +dismissed as unsatisfactory.</p> + +<p>But analogous operations may be performed on women. And if women can be +sterilized by surgical interference, whence comes the necessity of +sterilizing both?</p> + +<p>Oophorectomy, or removal of the ovaries is analogous to castration. It +is an equally safe, though a slightly more severe and complicated +operation.</p> + +<p>It can be safely and painlessly performed, the mortality in +uncomplicated cases being practically nil.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>The changes physical and mental are not so grave as in the analogous +operation on the opposite sex, and they vary considerably at different +ages and in different cases. The later in life the operation is +performed the less the effect produced. At or after the menopause (about +the 45th year) little or no change is noticeable.</p> + +<p>In many, and especially in younger women however, grave mental and +physical changes are induced. The menstrual function is destroyed, the +appearance often becomes masculine, the face becomes coarse and heavy, +and hair may appear on the lips and chin. Lethargy and increase of +weight are often noticed, and not a few, especially in congenitally +neurotic cases, have an attack of insanity precipitated.</p> + +<p>On the same principle on which the radical operation on men was +condemned, Oophorectomy must also be condemned. It is a serious +operation, often attended with grave mental and physical disturbances, +not the least of which is the partial unsexing of those subjected to it.</p> + +<p>While these are delicate they are also pressing questions, questions +which, like the mythical riddle of the Sphynx, not to answer means to be +destroyed, yet the sentimental difficulties, are accentuated by modern +progress, for the public conscience becomes more sensitive as problems +become more grave. But as science <a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>has prepared the bridge over which +society may safely march, so, with rules easily provided by an +enlightened community all remedial measures formerly proposed—wise in +their times, probably, may now be waived aside.</p> + +<p>With our present knowlege, the simple process of tubo-ligature renders +unsexing absolutely unnecessary in order to effect complete and +permanent sterility. As the lesser operation vasectomy, is effectual in +men, so is a lesser operation, tubo-ligature effectual in women. And it +has this paramount advantage that, whereas vasectomy being an occlusion +of a secretory duct, leads to complete atrophy and destruction of the +testis, ligature of the Fallopian tube, which is only a uterine +appendage and not a secretory duct of the ovary, has absolutely no +effect whatever on that organ.</p> + +<p>A simple ligature of each Fallopian tube would effectually and +permanently sterilise, without in any way whatever altering or changing +the organs concerned, or the emotions, habits, disposition, or life of +the person operated on.</p> + +<p>The Fallopian tubes are two in number, attached to the upper angles of +the uterus, and communicating therewith. Each is about five inches in +length, and trumpet-shaped at its extremity, which floats free in the +pelvic cavity.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>Attached to the margin of this trumpet-shaped extremity, is a number of +tentacle-like fringes, the function of which is to embrace the portion +of the ovary, where an ovum has matured during or immediately after +menstruation.</p> + +<p>At all other times these tubes are practically unattached to the +ovaries. Ova may and do mature on the surface of the ovaries, but do not +always pass into the Fallopian tubes; being almost microscopic, they are +disintegrated and reabsorbed. If they do pass into a tube they are lost +or fertilized as the case may be.</p> + +<p>It can be seen that the function and vitality of the ovaries are in no +way affected by the tubes. The ovarian function goes on, whether the +tubes perform their function of conveyance or not, and if this function +can be destroyed, life-long sterility is assured. There is no abdominal +operation more simple, rapid and safe, than simple ligature of the +Fallopian tubes. It may be performed by way of the natural passage, or +by the abdominal route, the choice depending on various circumstances. +If the former route be taken, there may be nothing to indicate, in some +cases not even to a medical man, that such an operation has been +performed.</p> + +<p>The Fallopian tubes have been ligatured by Kossman, Ruhl and Neuman for +the sterilization of women with pelvic deformities; but all testify to +the danger of subsequent abnormal <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>or ectopic pregnancy, and several +instances are given. Mr. Bland Sutton relates a case in an article on +Conservative Hysterectomy in the British Medical Journal.</p> + +<p>After numerous experiments on healthy tubes, I have found that simple +ligature with even a moderate amount of force in tying will cut the tube +through in almost any part of its length. The mucous lining is so thrown +into folds that its thickness in relation to the peritoneal layer is +considerable. Because of this, the tube when tied alone is brittle, and +a ligature applied to it will very easily cut through, and either allow +of reunion of the severed ends or leave a patent stump. In a recorded +case in which pregnancy occurred after each tube was ligatured in two +places, and then divided with a knife, a patent stump was no doubt left.</p> + +<p>In order to obviate this danger the peritoneal layer must be opened, and +the mucous membrane, which is quite brittle and easily removed, must be +torn away for about one quarter of an inch. A simple cat-gut or silk +ligature lightly tied would then be sufficient to insure complete and +permanent occlusion.</p> + +<p>Nature often performs this operation herself, with the inevitable and +irrevocable result, lifelong sterility, with no tittle of positive +evidence during life of its occurrence.</p> + +<p>Here are a few examples:—A young married woman has a miscarriage; it is +not severe, and <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>she is indiscreet enough to be about at her duties in a +day or two, but within a few days or so she finds she must return to +bed, with feverishness and pelvic pain. Before a month is past she is up +and quite herself again. But she never afterwards conceives. What has +happened? To the most careful and critical examination nothing abnormal +is detected. Her general health, her vitality, her emotional and sexual +life, her youthful vigorous appearance, all are unimpaired. But she is +barren, and why? A little inflammation occurred in the uterus and spread +along the tubes. The sides of the tubes cohered, permanently united by +adhesive inflammation, and complete and permanent occlusion resulted.</p> + +<p>The operation of tubo-ligature is an artificial imitation of this +inflamatory process.</p> + +<p>Pelvic inflammation, sometimes very slight, following a birth, or the +same process set up by uterine pessaries used for displacements, may +induce adhesive inflammation in the tubes, and simple and permanent +sterility is the incurable result. It is a well known fact that +prostitutes are usually sterile, and this arises from the prevalence of +venereal disease, which produces gonorrhœal inflammation of the +Fallopian tubes, resulting in complete and permanent occlusion.</p> + +<p>This process could be best imitated, if cauterisation of the tubes were +a safe and reliable procedure. An electric cautery passed <a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>along the +tubes would result in a simple and speedy occlusion. But in the present +state of our gynecological knowledge this appears impracticable.</p> + +<p>We have therefore at our hand, a simple, safe, and certain method of +stopping procreation by the sterilization of women by tubo-ligature.</p> + +<p>This operation would entail no hardship on women. It is so easy, safe +and painless, that thousands would readily submit to it to-morrow, to be +relieved from the anxiety which a possible increase in their already too +numerous families excites. Hundreds of women and men to-day are living +unnatural lives, because of their refusal to bring children into the +world with the hereditary taint they know courses in their own veins.</p> + +<p>Many men are living loose and irregular lives, amongst the easy women of +society, because the indiscretion of their youth has damned them for +ever with a syphilitic taint, which they could not fail to transmit to +their progeny.</p> + +<p>Many virtuous men and women are living a life of abstinence from even +each other's society, because their physician has taught them something +of the law of heredity. Would not all these women readily submit to +sterilization?</p> + +<p>As it produces no mental nor moral, nor physical change, it violates no +law, and outrages no sentiment. It is an outrage upon society, and a +greater upon an innocent helpless victim <a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a>to bring a defective into the +world; it is a moral act to prevent it by this means.</p> + +<p>And of all the methods yet suggested or devised, or practised, +tubo-ligature is the simplest, most effective, and least opposed to +sentiment and prejudice.</p> + +<p>It will of course be asked:—What about criminals and defective men? Let +their wives be sterilized. The wife of any criminal would deem it a boon +to be protected from the offspring of such a man, so would society.</p> + +<p>If he is not married, then society must take the risk, and it is not +very great. The women who will be his companions will be either +sterilized by disease or by tubo-ligature, because they are defectives. +This protection from the progeny of defective men, though not absolute, +is complete enough for all practical purposes.</p> + +<p>If all defective women and the wives of all defective men are +sterilized, a greater improvement will take place in the race in the +next 50 years, than has been accomplished by all the sanitation of the +Victorian era.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Suggestions as to Application</span>.</h4> + + +<p><i>The State's humanitarian zeal protects the lives and fosters the +fertility of the degenerate.</i>—<i>A confirmed or hereditary criminal +defined.</i>—<i>Law on the subject of sterilization could at first be +permissive.</i>—<i>It should apply, to begin with, to criminals and the +insane.</i>—<i>Marriage certificates of health should be +required.</i>—<i>Women's readiness to submit to surgical treatment for minor +as well as major pelvic diseases.</i>—<i>Surgically induced sterility of +healthy women a greater crime than abortion.</i>—<i>This danger not remote.</i></p> + + +<p>The fertility of the unfit goes on unrestrained by any other check, save +vice and misery. The great moral checks have not, and cannot have any +place with them. But the State is, by its humanitarian zeal, limiting +the scope and diminishing the force of these natural checks amongst all +classes of the community, but especially amongst the unfit, so that its +policy now fosters the fertility of this class, while it fails to arrest +the declining nativity of our best citizens. The greater the fertility +of the unfit, the greater the burden the fit have to bear, and the less +their fertility.</p> + +<p>The State's present policy therefore, fosters the fertility of the +unfit, and discourages the fertility of the fit. This disastrous policy +must be changed without delay. The State can <a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a>arrest the gradual +degradation of its people, by sterilizing all defective women and the +wives of defective men falling into the hands of the law. Mr. Henry M. +Boies in "Prisoners and Paupers" suggests life-long isolation. He +says:—"It is time however that society should interpose in this +propagation of criminals. It is irrational and absurd to occupy our +attention and exhaust our liberality with the care of his constantly +growing class, without any attempt to restrict its reproduction. This is +possible too, without violating any humanitarian instinct, by +imprisonment for life; and this seems to be the most practicable +solution of the problem in America. As soon as an individual can be +identified as an hereditary or chronic criminal, society shall confine +him or her in a penitentiary at self-supporting labour for life.</p> + +<p>"Every State should have an institution, adapted to the safe and secure +separation of such from society, where they can be employed at +productive labour, without expense to the public, during their natural +life. When this is ended with them, the class will become extinct, and +not before. Then each generation would only have to take care of its own +moral cripples and defectives, without the burden of the constantly +increasing inheritance of the past. When upon a third conviction the +judicial authorities determine the prisoner to belong to the criminal +class, the law should imperatively <a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a>require the sentence to be the +penitentiary for life, whatever the particular crime committed."</p> + +<p>M. Boies defines a criminal as one in whom two successive punishments, +according to law, have failed to prevent a third offence.</p> + +<p>If such a criminal is a woman, she should be offered the alternative of +surgical sterility or incarceration during the child bearing period of +her life; if a man, his wife should be offered this remedy against the +procreation of criminals in exchange for her husband, on the expiry of +his sentence, or the protection of divorce.</p> + +<p>No woman in the child-bearing period of life should be released from an +Asylum, until this operation has been performed. If a man is committed, +his wife should have the option of divorce or be sterilized before his +release.</p> + +<p>A central Board should issue marriage certificates, after consideration +of confidential medical reports upon the health, physical condition, and +family history of the parties to a proposed marriage contract.</p> + +<p>Medical officers should be appointed in the various centres of +population by the central Board, and fees on reports should be paid +after the manner of Life Insurance fees.</p> + +<p>In fact the Life Insurance system would serve as a good model, for the +establishment of a system of marriage control, and if questions +involving a more detailed family history were added to a typical Life +Insurance report form, <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a>it could hardly be improved upon, for the +purpose of marriage health reports.</p> + +<p>If upon consideration of the medical report of the contracting parties, +in accordance with the law upon the subject, a certificate of marriage +were refused, a certificate of sterilization by tubo-ligature, forwarded +to the Board by a Surgeon, should entitle to the marriage certificate.</p> + +<p>No law should attempt to step in between two lovers, who have become +attached to each other by the bonds of a strong affection, lest a +greater evil befall both themselves and society.</p> + +<p>A marriage certificate of health should state the complete family +history as well as the physical condition of the parties to a proposed +marriage, and such certificates should be issued only by the Central +Board of Experts, who would receive the medical reports of its own +medical officers.</p> + +<p>When the principle of artificial sterilization is accepted by the State, +the organization necessary to ensure that only the fit shall procreate, +will only be a matter of arrangement by experts.</p> + +<p>One danger looms ahead however if the operative means of producing +artificial sterility are popularised.</p> + +<p>Every surgeon of experience knows how readily large numbers of married +women encourage surgical treatment for ovarian and even uterine +complaints, if they become aware that <a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>such treatment is followed by +sterility. It is not at all an uncommon thing for women in all ranks of +life, to encourage, and even seek removal of the ovaries in order to +escape an increase in the family.</p> + +<p>They become acquainted with persons who have submitted to this operation +for ovarian disease, and noting nothing but improvement in their health, +attended by sterility, their intense anxiety to enjoy immunity from +child-bearing makes them eager to submit to operation.</p> + +<p>It would be distinctly immoral to sterilize healthy women, who become +possessed with the old Roman passion for a childless life, or who simply +wish to limit their families for any selfish or personal reason.</p> + +<p>Any law which recognizes the induction of artificial sterility should +make operative interference with those fit to procreate a healthy stock +an offence.</p> + +<p>Induced sterility should rank with induced abortion, and be a criminal +offence, except in certain cases which could be defined.</p> + +<p>There is much evidence to suggest that artificial sterilization may +become as a great vice, as great a danger to the State as criminal +abortion.</p> + +<p>Artificial abortion, as commonly performed, is a much more dangerous +operation than tubo-ligature. Of the two operations, any experienced +surgeon would readily declare that the latter is the simpler and the +safer; the one less likely to <a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a>lead to unfavourable complications, and +the one, moreover, that would leave the subject of it with the better +"expectancy of life."</p> + +<p>Anæsthetics and anti-septics have made this comparison possible and +true.</p> + +<p>Any surgeon who performs tubo-ligature should be liable to prosecution, +unless he can justify his action according to the law relating to the +artificial sterility of the unfit.</p> + +<p>While the law would eventually require to be obligatory, with regard to +the absolutely unfit, it would require to be permissive in all other +cases.</p> + +<p>Many voluntarily abstain from marriage, because of a strong hereditary +tendency to certain diseases such as cancer and tubercle.</p> + +<p>There must of necessity be many on the border-land between the fit and +the unfit, and clauses permitting sterilization under some circumstances +would be required.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a></p> +<h2><a name="CONCLUSION" id="CONCLUSION"></a>CONCLUSION.</h2> + + +<p>In conclusion let us briefly review the whole position taken up in this +imperfect study of a great question.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>1. The birth-rate is rapidly and persistently declining.</p> + +<p>2. The food-rate is persistently increasing.</p> + +<p>3. The declining fertility is not uniform through all classes.</p> + +<p>4. The fertility of the best is rapidly declining.</p> + +<p>5. The fertility of the worst is undisturbed.</p> + +<p>6. The policy of the State is inimical to the fertility of its +best, and fosters the fertility of its worst citizens.</p> + +<p>7. The infertility of the best stock is due to voluntary +curtailment of the family, through sexual self-restraint.</p> + +<p>8. No such-factor does or can obtain as a check to the fertility of +the unfit.</p> + +<p>9. The proportion of the unfit to the fit is in consequence +annually increasing.</p> + +<p>10. The <i>future</i> of society demands that compulsory sterilization +of the unfit should be adopted.</p><p><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a></p> + +<p>11. No method ever tried or suggested offers the advantages of +simplicity, safety, effectiveness, and popularity, promised by +tubo-ligature.</p> + +<p>12. The State must protect itself against the collateral danger of +artificial sterilization of its best stock.</p></div> + +<p>The highest interest of Society and of the individual urgently requires +that the size of families be controlled.</p> + +<p>The moral restraint of Malthus (delayed marriage) and post-nuptial +intermittent restraint are the only safe and rational methods, that our +civilization can possibly encourage, or physiology endorse.</p> + +<p>These methods must of necessity be peculiar to the best class of people. +For the worst class of people, induced sterility, or prohibited +fertility, is an absolute necessity, if Society and civilization must +endure.</p> + +<p>Now what are likely to be the results of, first, the moral methods, and, +second, the surgical method of our curtailment.</p> + +<p>"It does not appear to me," says Dr. Billings (Forum, June, 1893), "that +this lessening of the birth-rate is in itself an evil, or that it will +be worth while to attempt to increase the birth-rate merely for the sake +of maintaining a constant increase in the population, because to neither +this nor the next generation will such increase be specially +beneficial."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a>To Aristotle, the great advantage of an abundant population was, that +the State was secured against invasion by numerous defenders.</p> + +<p>If we can find no stronger justification for a teeming population than +this to-day, we will be forced to agree with Dr. Billings, that neither +to this nor the next generation, is a great increase especially +beneficial.</p> + +<p>But the moral effect of judicial limitation is very great. If men and +women can marry young, one great incentive to vice is removed. If +married people can bear their children when they can best support them, +they will marry when their bodies are matured, and bear their families +when their finances are matured.</p> + +<p>For children well provided for, and educated, and born after full +physical and mental maturity in their parents, turn out the best men and +women.</p> + +<p>If the conditions of life are made easy, if ease and comfort are +tolerably secured to all, if the strain and stress of life are reduced, +if hardship, poverty, and want are reduced to a minimum, the sexual +instinct and parental love in human nature, so far unimpaired by any +known force, are powerful enough to keep the race alive, and insure a +progressive development.</p> + +<p>The greater the proportion and the fertility of the defective, the less +hope for the future. If the fertility of the unfit be reduced to a +<a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a>minimum, not only will many dreadful hereditary diseases be eradicated, +but the fertility of the fit will receive a powerful stimulus, because +of the great diminution there will necessarily be in the burdens they +will have to bear.</p> + +<p>The advantages of sterility to the unfit themselves will, on the whole, +be incalculable. They are self-evident, and need not be dwelt on here.</p> + +<p>The whole sum of human happiness would in this way be most assuredly +increased, and the aim and object of all social reform be to some extent +at least, realized.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><i>Printed by Whitcombe and Tombs Limited</i>—G11227</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fertility of the Unfit +by William Allan Chapple + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FERTILITY OF THE UNFIT *** + +***** This file should be named 16254-h.htm or 16254-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/2/5/16254/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ah Kit, Irma Špehar, Janet Blenkinship +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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