Organized unofficial initiative must lead the way, however, in social experiment, in fostering new measures of reform, until the State adopts them. Suggestions, relative to local quarantine organizations, gathered from many sources of social wisdom, are given in another chapter. When such a measure as Perfect Social Quarantine is the aim of organization it is well to insist upon adoption by the State by all possible means. Voluntary taxation of one one-hundredth of the income of half of a community, as suggested, will accomplish a Perfect Social and Sanitary Quarantine. Families voluntarily tax themselves twenty per cent. of income for comfortable houses alone. One-twentieth of this single item, properly applied, would accomplish Perfect Social and Sanitary Quarantine and make living anywhere comfortable.
And finally, the chief menace of the lying hypothesis, expressed by the assumption of the necessity of a "hopelessly submerged," or Have-To-Be-Bad or Have-To-Be-Miserable class, is that it is not much of a stimulant to charity and is an anesthetic to public and individual conscience.
Conscience is an expression of Character. Conscience is Character, and anything that helps to dull conscience helps to kill character; and, as character is the only firm foundation on which a republic can stand, indifference to neglect is an influence which must wash away, in time, the very foundations of liberty and happiness.
Pessimists constantly echo the cry of the necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad class. Do not listen to this cry. If it is true under present methods of indifferent and uncertain protection it need not be so. You can correct the fault in a generation. Listen to Mayor Van Patten, to Chief Crowley, to Mr. Hart, and to the state secretaries of the National Conference of Charities and Correction of Canada and the United States. These altruists know. Pessimism, assumption and many a stereotyped tradition lie. Don't listen to the lie. There is better news in Truth. Seek the Truth about your fellowmen and helpless waifs and learn that a social quarantine such as we propose, protecting childhood between the age of earliest perceptions and that of reasonable public school age, will give them a choice between good character and habit and bad character and habit, and that ninety-eight per cent. of the "hopelessly submerged ten per cent." will choose the good and become useful citizens.
This is what we mean by a Perfect Social Quarantine, and this is the menace of a Have-To-Be hypothesis by which to dull the conscience and kill the character of our republic.
Ninety-eight per cent. of the ten per cent. defective characters have been saved after becoming warped, and saved by the methods of the kindergarten. What would not the same method of character-building accomplish in the way of protection instead of correction? It would also prevent deep scars being marked on the tender soul matrices confided to our care.
SUSPICION REMOVED.
One excuse for the assumption of a Have-To-Be-Bad class lurks under the suspicion of irremedial hereditary taint. This suspicion has been proved to be without foundation.
Heredity is race memory. Physical heredity is memory and perpetuation of physical characteristics, like legs, arms, senses, color, etc., but is constantly being modified by environment. Mental heredity does not follow the physical but is a sensitive undeveloped film which holds itself a blank in the darkness but develops in the light of environment. While physical heredity goes on adding to its proportions, if allowed to normally develop, newly-born mentality must be attended by example, books, or other monuments, to start it on the plane of intelligence of its progenitors or it becomes as blank as that of a savage; with force, but no aim. The remarkable mental difference of children, while there is strong physical resemblance, in a family, denies the close continuity or potency of mental heredity in the matter of equipment and tendencies, which constitute the basis of character. The force is there but each is a distinct, new and important message from the Creator, given us to interpret and cultivate according to the best intelligence available to us.
Note: The careful observations of Ernest Bicknell, Esquire, (secretary of the Indiana Board of State Charities, at the time the observations were made, but at present secretary of the Associated Charities of the City of Chicago,) relative to the transmission of Feeble Mind in parents to their offspring, only serve to strengthen our assertion relative to mental heredity.