8—They contribute largely to the ranks of the wastrel and the hooligan. In such ways, and to such a degree these persons injure the community. But it is particularly to be noted that therein the community also injures them. The fact is obvious to all of us here. The injury wrought by the present relations between the community and these unfortunate persons is mutual, they injure it and it injures them. And not until we recall the words of Burke, in the light of modern genetics, shall we realize the full measure of this injury, for as that great thinker said, a community is “a partnership, not only between those who are living, but between those who are living and those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” To the foregoing indictment of the present state of things, and remembering that whatever is inherent is transmissible, I therefore add:
9—They become parents and thus contribute incalculably to the maintenance of these evils after we are dead, but not after we are responsible. P. 49–50.
But it does not suffice to pursue positive methods, the encouragement of parenthood on the part of the worthy, and negative methods, the discouragement of parenthood on the part of the unworthy, if there be any agencies in the world which are forever turning worthy stocks into unworthy stocks. If there be such racial poisons, plainly we must stand between healthy stocks and their influence. By the term racial poisons I mean to indicate those agents, whatever they may be which, in greater or less degree, injurious to individuals as individuals, prejudices their subsequent parenthood. The racial poisons are very various, they include substances inorganic, such as lead, organic, such as alcohol, and organized, such as the living causes of certain forms of disease. Circulating in the parental blood, they reach and injure the racial tissues, or germ-plasm. P. 56.
WOMEN AND LABOR. New York Evening World, May 8, 1917.
With American industry preparing to put women into the places of male workers called to the war, it is a rather surprising thing to learn that there already are 7,438,686 women in the United States who earn their own living. Of these no less than one-fourth are married. Here are the figures: Single, 4,401,000; married, 1,890,626; widowed or divorced, 1,147,060.
In 1900 only 4,833,630 women left their homes to work, showing an increase of approximately one-half since then.
In 1890 the married formed 14.3 per cent. of all women sixteen years of age and over engaged in gainful occupations. By 1900 this proportion had increased to 15.9 per cent. From 1900 to 1910 it jumped to the unprecedented proportion of 25.4 per cent. While there were important variations, the great increase was not confined to any one occupation or group of occupations, nor to any one State or group of States. In every occupation examined the married formed a larger proportion of all women sixteen years of age and over in 1910 than in 1900.
The proportions were exceptionally high in the South and Arizona—50.8 per cent. in South Carolina, 46.8 per cent. in Georgia, 46.7 per cent. in Florida, 47.4 per cent. in Alabama, 54.2 per cent. in Mississippi, 45.6 per cent. in Arkansas, 40.7 per cent. in Arizona. In contrast, the proportion was only 15.8 per cent. in Connecticut, 15.1 per cent. in Pennsylvania, 13.1 per cent. in Wisconsin, 11.9 per cent. in Minnesota, and 15.7 per cent. in Iowa.
The unusually large proportion of married women engaged outside their homes in the South is explained by the number of negroes living in that section of the country. The total of white women working for a living in the same States is perhaps smaller than in any other part of the United States.
Even more significant than the great increase in the proportion which the married form of all women sixteen years of age and over engaged in gainful occupations is the marked increase in the proportion of all women so employed.