Sometimes a whole platoon of ancestors appears to have been moved backward or forward en bloc, not, we may be sure, capriciously, but in obedience to some law that we do not understand. I know a man to whose character not an ancestor since the seventeenth century appears to have contributed an element. Intellectually he is a contemporary of John Dryden, whom naturally he reveres as the greatest of poets. There was another who inherited his handwriting from his great-grandfather, although trained to “the Spencerian system” that he tried vainly to acquire. Furthermore, his handwriting followed the same order of progressive development as that of his great-grandfather. At the age of twenty he wrote exactly as that ancestor did at the same age, and, although at forty-five his chirography was nothing like what it was even ten years before, it was accurately like his great-grandfather’s at forty-five. Discovery of some old letters showed him how his great-grandfather wrote, and accounted for the dissimilarity of his own handwriting to that of any known member of his family, or his teachers.
To suppose that such individual traits as the configuration of the body, the color of the hair and eyes, the shape of hands and feet, the thousand-and-one subtle characteristics that make family resemblances, are transmissible, and that the form, texture and capacities of the brain which fix the kind and degree of natural intellect, are not transmissible, is illogical. We see that certain actions, such as gestures, gait, and so forth, resulting from the most complex concurrences of brain, nerves and muscles, are hereditary. Is it reasonable to suppose that the brain alone of all the organs performs its work according to its own sweet will, free from congenital tendencies? Is it not a familiar fact that racial characteristics are persistent?—that one race is stupid and indocile, another quick and intelligent? Does not each generation of a race inherit the intellectual qualities of the preceding generation? How could this be true of generations if it were not true of individuals?
As to stirpiculture, the intelligent and systematic breeding of men and women with a view to improvement of the species—it is a thing of the far future. It is hardly in sight. Yet, what splendid possibilities it carries! Two or three generations of as careful breeding as we bestow on horses, dogs and pigeons would do more good than all the penal, reformatory and educating agencies of the world accomplish in a thousand years. It is the one direction in which human effort to “elevate the race” can be assured of a definitive, speedy and adequate success. It is hardly better than nonsense to prate of any good coming to the race through (for example) medical science, which is mainly concerned in reversing the beneficent operation of natural laws and saving the inefficient to perpetuate their inefficiency. Our entire system of charities is open to the same objection; it preserves the incapables whom Nature is trying to “weed out.” This not only debases the race physically, intellectually and morally, but constantly increases the rate of debasement. The proportion of criminals, paupers and the several kinds of “inmates” augments its horrible percentage yearly. On the other hand, our wars destroy the capable; so thus we make inroads upon the vitality of the race from two directions. We preserve the feeble and extirpate the strong. He who in view of this amazing folly can believe in a constant, even slow, progress of the human race toward perfection ought to be happy. He has a mind whose Olympian heights are inaccessible—the Titans of fact can never scale them to storm its ancient, solitary reign.
THE RIGHT TO WORK
All kinds of relief, charitable or other, doubtless tend to perpetuation of pauperism, inasmuch as paupers are thereby kept alive; and living paupers unquestionably propagate their unthrifty kind more diligently than dead ones. It is not true, though, that relief interferes with Nature’s beneficent law of the survival of the fittest, for the power to excite sympathy and obtain relief is a kind of fitness. I am still a devotee of the homely primitive doctrine that mischance, disability or even unthrift, is not a capital crime justly and profitably punishable by starvation. I still regard the Good Samaritan with a certain toleration and Jesus Christ’s tenderness to the poor as something more than a policy of obstruction.
Who is more truly “deserving” than an able-bodied man out of work through no delinquency of will and no default of effort? Is hunger to him and his less poignant than to the feeble in body and mind whom we support for nothing in almshouse or asylum? Are cold and exposure less disagreeable to him than to them? Is not his claim to the right to live as valid as theirs if backed by the will to pay for life with work? And in denial of his claim is there not latent a far greater peril to society than inheres in denial of theirs? So unfortunate and dangerous a creature as a man able and willing to work, yet having no work to do, should be unknown outside the literature of satire. Doubtless there would be enormous difficulties in devising a practicable and beneficent system, and doubtless the reform, like all permanent and salutary reforms, will have to grow. The growth, naturally, will be delayed by opposition of the workingmen themselves—precisely as they oppose prison labor from ignorance that labor makes opportunity to labor.
It matters not that nine in ten of all our tramps and vagrants are such from choice, and are irreclaimable degenerates as well; so long as one worthy man is out of employment and unable to obtain it our duty is to provide it by law. Nay, so long as industrial conditions are such that so pathetic a phenomenon is possible we have not the moral right to disregard that possibility. The right to employment being the right to life, its denial is, in a sense, homicide. It should be needless to point out the advantages of its concession. It would preserve the life and self-respect of him who is needy through misfortune, and supply an infallible means of detection of his criminal imitator, who could then be dealt with as he deserves, without the lenity that finds justification in doubt and compassion. It would diminish crime, for an empty stomach has no morals. With a wage rate lower than the commercial, it would disturb no private industries by luring away their workmen, and with nothing made to sell, there would be no competition with private products. Properly directed, it would give us much that we shall not otherwise have.
It is difficult to say if our laws relating to vagrancy and vagrants are more cruel or more absurd. If not so atrocious they would evoke laughter; if less ridiculous we should read them with indignation. Here is an imaginary conversation:
The Law: It is forbidden to you to rob. It is forbidden to you to steal. It is forbidden to you to beg.