BREEDING BETTER MEN.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1018, 6 January 1911, Page 3

BREEDING BETTER MEN.

■ $ EUGENICS EDUCATION SOCIETY'S REPORT. TEIE QUESTION DISCUSSED.

Tho Eugenics Education Socioty, in its campaign for" tho breeding of better strains of men, has issued a spccial report oil Poor. Law reform, an incubus of England's for the last century. Discussing the subject, the Melbourne Age" says: The difficulties of relieving poverty in the Old Country have baffled some of the best humanitarians and thinkers who have devoted themselves to the problem. The hardest of these, tho almost inextricable' intermixture or tho two types of poor, the worthy, decent people.who are prevented against their will from earning a living by circumstances over which they have no control, such as sickness, commercial depics.r.ons, and tho destruction of industries, and at the othc-r extreme the unworthy, disreputablo people who are paupers in spirit, and settle down without shame or compunction to eat as much of the bread of lazy idleness as is supplied to them. This last is the class that has given rise to that'bitter saying that any country can raise as many paupers as it is willing to pay for

Ths Pauper. . policy advocated by the eugenists is to attack boldly this extreme typo of the degraded pauper. They have begun by investigating tho facts. They have traced the pedigrees of pauper families, show nig that there is a tendency for pauper to marry with pauper and to beget paupers. Thcro .is a pauper type, just as there is a criminal. In tho study of one of theso beggar's pedigrees, it is shown that ten mendicants of this one stock have so far consumed £2229 out of the money provided under the ioor Ls.w. The scions of this prolific lmc of beggars seem likely to carry on the par'asito habits of the family, the ease recalls the elaborate German investigation of the descendants of Ada Jurkc, who was born in 1740 and lived well known to the police on to a good old age. Out of 834 descendants 703 were tracod as to thoir careers: —106 born illegitimate, 142 beggars, 61 in charitable institutions, 161 prostitutos; 76 criminals, including 7 murderers. The bill paid by the public for the support of this family during 75 years in benevo.ent asylums and gaols was estimated at £250,000.

Criminal strains. Tho difference between tho typical pauper and the criminal is this, that tho pauper lays himself a. limp burden upon society, whereas the criminal activity attacks the community 011 which he preys. But the pauper often carries in him the taint of crime. Thieving is tho worst vice proved against tho pauper in tho eugenist report. Drunkenness is,a common 0110, too. Enfeebling disease and weakness of intellect accompany a good deal of pauperism. But the trait running through them all is persistent laziness. Tho one keon thing /about them is their sccnt for charitable relief. A strong case cited is that of a woman who had borne eight illegitimate children to four different men. At tho public expense she was provided with comfortable lying-in wards, skilled medical attendance, and good food; her children have been reared and educated. Certainly our social feeling prompts us to do much for tho first child of such a mother once it has been called into existence. But why should such a woman be allowed to repeat her offence against society eight times? Surely the second or third repetition of her unsocial act ■ should bo taken as evidence of an abnormality that is dangerous to community. It would be much better in every way to keep such a woman detained after ttir- birth of tho third illegitimate child till sho had reached an age when she could bear 110 more. As there is a tendency for illegitimate children, when thev grow up to bccomb the parents ot illepitimato children, the _ elaboiate charitable support of this woman amounts to a deliberate encouragement of tho perpetuation of bastardy.

Multiplying the Unfit. Such being somo of tho facts relating to pauperism—that is, to desoncdly disreputablo poverty —the eugenist deduction is to prevent its,continuance by detaining tho confirmed pauper in tho samo.way as a feeble-minded person and with the same refusal of tho normal individual's right to reproduce his kind. No doubt society will have to procced cautiously in applying theso drastic restrictions to undesirables of all sorts. But, just as it would bo recognised to be a rank abuse of tho conception of liberty to arguo that plague or small-pox patients should be allowed freo entry into tho country without quarantine, we are coming to

tho it will bo rccoguised to bo a parody of the principlo of individual rijlits to leave ■ the proved criminal aid pauper the right to pass 011 his ta,ilt into tho next generation. Of courss, even when the undesirables are proliic they are partly suppressed by natural causes; for instance, tho death-rate amongst illegitimate children is vcyy heavy. The criminal is seldom a £o>d father, and the kind of woman :!ia) mates with him rarely has tho maiings of a good mother in her. Pernajs motherhood brings out tho host tlijt she is capablo of, but that is often far below tho normal standard of character for a woman. In this way Nature does her part in the suppression or undesirables through their defective parental qualities. Hut modem charity steps in with its efforts to rear every child that is born. Its conception of the sanctity of human life has a very high value indeed. But it needs the support of a wisely-directed effort to prevent tho birth of undesirables who will absorb all this tender human affection of charity only to return it with tho cynical lazy selfishness of the mendicant born with a' broken spirit.

A Falsa Policy. There are still people who believe that tho born criminal or pauper can be educated into a perfect man or woman. This, is because fine types have emerged from the pauper ranks. H. M. Stanley, the African explorer, spent a good part of his childhood in a Welsh workhouse. But tho fact that such a man emerged from tho surroundings of dire poverty is really no excuse for our false policy of allowing those who instead of emerging have sunk into a more confirmed laziness to marry and beget their like, or to do tliis without marrying. By all means let us increase our efforts to sift out human worth from tile entanglements of a cramping poverty, but at the same time let us lake rational steps to prevent the accumulation of moral dross amongst tho poor. It is really the hardest part of tho lot of the deserving poor that they find themselves compelled to herd with those who are failures physically and morally, and to bo classed with them. A noble and ideal zeal actuates those ■charitable souls who devote themselves to rescuo work among poor children. Tho hope that cheers them is that of releasing potential human worth from tho clutch of a degrading soualor. Some cherish the delusion that even the squalor can be raised into splendour by the proper social effort. This is where the eugenist's contribution to the principles of charitable effort is of service. The correct policy to go with the rcscuo of worth from unworthy surroundings is to stop, where passible, tho inflow of low grade human stuff from undesirable sources. Tho criminal, tho lunatic, the idiot, the pauper, and their like, in return for their comfortable support in circumstances where they l can do themselves and the community no active harm, must all be called upon to abstain from passing on their defective strain to tho next generation. Tho principlo is freely admitted, though laxly administered, in the case of lunatics. It needs extension. At the present time wo aro hearing rather too much about the State's duty to the individual. Tho individual's duty to the State needs emphasising all round. That duty in, the case cf all incompetent doDendonts' upon society is that they shelf not use the charity they receive as a means to help them to breed their like to be a similar burden to the future.