Inter-Racial Marriage.—Some of the dangers of racial deterioration which threaten us because of our laxity regarding immigration have already been indicated. It is high time that we give this whole question the most serious consideration of which we are capable. From the rate at which immigrants are increasing it is obvious that our very life-blood is at stake. For our own protection we must face the question of what types or races should be ruled out. Aside from the dangers which lie in the defective or unsuccessful types already discussed in Chapter IX, many students of heredity feel that there is great hazard in the mongrelizing of distinctly unrelated races no matter how superior the original strains may be. Unfortunately there is a great lack of reliable data on this point. The mulatto of our own country, the Eurasians in India and the mixed races of South America are, according to the testimony of many observers, eloquent arguments against such hybridization. Agassiz remarked on this point as follows:
“Let any one who doubts the evil of the mixture of races and who is inclined from mistaken philanthropy to break down all barriers between them come to Brazil. He can not deny the deterioration consequent upon the amalgamation of races, more wide-spread here than in any other country in the world, and which is rapidly effacing the best qualities of the white man, the Indian, and the negro, leaving a mongrel nondescript type deficient in physical and mental energy.”
Of the American mulatto one not infrequently meets with the assertion that he is on the average inferior mentally, morally and physically to either the white or the negro race. Thus Doctor J. B. Taylor[17] states that, “It is demonstrated by well-attested facts that these hybrids of black and white are vastly more susceptible to certain infections; their moral as well as physical stamina is lower than that of either original race.” Others would deny that conclusive evidence to this effect exists. However, it is certain that under existing social conditions in our own country only the most worthless and vicious of the white race will tend in any considerable numbers to mate with the negro and the result can not but mean deterioration on the whole for either race.
There is certainly not one iota of evidence that the crossing of any two widely different human races will yield superior offspring in any respect and there are many indications that such intermixture lowers the average of the population. Our evidence derived from plant and animal breeding is also against pronounced crosses. The inferiority of the mongrel is universally recognized. No sane farmer, for example, would seek to improve his Jerseys or his Herefords by crossing one with the other. It is true that in pure breeds of plants and animals we sometimes venture on a cross to introduce some new desirable character but we follow up such mixture by a rigid selection in which is eliminated all but the rare individuals having the desired characteristics, and we continue this elimination generation after generation to fix our characters again. It is obvious that no such selection as this would be possible among the progeny of human crosses.
It clearly becomes our duty then to determine as accurately as possible the degree of non-relationship between races it is inadvisable to transcend in inter-racial marriages. We are certainly taking great risks in accepting in any considerable numbers those races we can not assimilate to advantage into our own stock.
War.—The deteriorating effect of war on national physique and vigor has been so frequently cited by eugenists[18] and is so obvious as scarcely to require further comment. It should be pointed out, however, that where, as is the case at present in Great Britain, armies are assembled from volunteers, instead of by conscription, there is the greatest danger from the eugenic standpoint, since not only physical but moral qualities are involved. For it is the brave, the generous, the individual with a high sense of duty who goes forward to the slaughter leaving the cowardly, the selfish or the indifferent to father the race. With the awful deadliness of modern warfare upon exhibition before our very eyes to-day, the extreme seriousness of such selective action must be evident to every thoughtful person.
Human Conservation.—We talk much in recent years of conservation; but what are our forests and frontiers, our minerals and our waterways, compared with our national health and life-blood? No farmer would think of setting aside a diseased or physically defective animal for breeding purposes, yet the same man together with the majority of mankind is wholly oblivious to similar faults when it comes to the mating of human beings. But is it not as important to look to fitness in man as in Poland China hogs or Holstein cows? Certainly the various strains are as marked and breed as true in the human family as in our live stock. Why face complacently in our own families what we would not tolerate in our piggery?
From the expenditure of comparatively small sums in studying the inheritance of various qualities in wheat, corn and other grain, improvements based on the laws of genetics have been secured which are enormously increasing our agricultural output and thereby adding to our national wealth. But if it costs relatively little to discover and conserve millions of dollars’ worth of hereditary qualities in our plants and animals, what are we to think of ourselves, an intelligent people who, knowing that “every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit,” still go on placidly permitting the production of defectives and delinquents? Can we continue to drink the sluggish blood of the pauper and the imbecile into our veins and hope to escape unscathed?
We are all familiar with the fate of Babylon, Assyria, Persia, Egypt and Rome. Why not America? Certainly we have no pledge of special immunity from Divine Powers. If so, what then is the meaning of our 366 hospitals for insane which cost us annually $21,000,000; our 63 institutions for feeble-minded costing us over $5,000,000; our 1,300 prisons maintained at a cost of more than $13,000,000; our 1,500 hospitals whose annual maintenance requires at least $30,000,000; our 115 schools or homes for deaf and dumb; our 2,500 almshouses with an annual expense account of $20,000,000 and our 1,200 refuge homes costing annually several millions of dollars more? To say that we spend annually over $100,000,000 on the custody of insane, feeble-minded, paupers, epileptics, deaf, blind and other charges is expressing the situation very conservatively.
Kindness in the Long Run.—There is no one I think who will not admit that the sympathy and charity of the human heart are its noblest virtues. But we must face the problem of what is kindness in the long run. Havelock Ellis well says, “The superficially sympathetic man flings a coin to the beggar; the more deeply sympathetic man builds an almshouse for him so that he need no longer beg; but perhaps the most radically sympathetic of all is the man who arranges that the beggar shall not be born.”