When one first learns of the declining birth-rate among college women and men he feels appalled, but immediately the question flashes up, if this is the superior stock, and up to date it has died out or is dying out rapidly, whence then this ever augmenting rush of young folk who fairly deluge our universities and colleges to-day? Does it not rather point to the fact that in our own country at least, the man who will and can take a college education successfully is not so much the product of breeding from college men, but of a prosperity which leaves a sufficient surplus in the family exchequer to enable sons and daughters to go to college, and is it not reasonable to suppose that there is yet an abundant stock back of these who similarly await but the golden touch of opportunity? When we consider such men as Carlyle, Lincoln and a host of others who were not the sons of collegians, although we may be university pedigreed ourselves we can not but feel doubtful of the validity of a premise which takes a college stock unqualifiedly as having any considerable monopoly of innate superiority. After all, college can mean little more than opportunity, and the obtaining of such opportunity in this world of economic maladjustments and accidents of social position is too largely a matter of chance, at least in America, to stamp the possessors of these advantages, on this criterion alone, as of inborn superiority. Undoubtedly much that is intrinsically good now slumbers in the lower strata of society because of lack of favorable environment to call forth the latent possibilities.
Native Ability, Independence and Energy Eugenically Desirable.—Although we can not sift out with certainty the superior from the inferior in our normal population by the property test or the educational standard alone, it is undoubtedly true that, on the whole, native ability, independence and energy are present to a higher degree in our well-to-do and prosperous families than in the stocks which merely hold their own or which gradually decline, and there is no gainsaying the fact that in so far as the lower classes are where they are through actual deficiency—and there are enormous numbers in this category—they threaten our very existence as a race. It is imperative that the great middle class in particular establish in some way a selective birth-rate, by increased fertility on their own part, and diminished fecundity on the part of inferior stocks, which will offset or more than offset the disproportionate increase of the socially unfit.
Four Children to Each Marriage Required to Maintain a Stock.—It is estimated that under present conditions an average of at least four children should be born to each marriage if a stock is to maintain its numbers undiminished. Some of our most valuable strains are falling far short of this average. In a statistical table on the relative fertility of different stocks, prepared by Pearson, we find the mentally defective, criminal, deaf-mute and degenerate stocks heading the list with averages ranging from five to seven children per family, while the American graduate (based on Harvard statistics) and the English intellectual types average less than two children per marriage. While the death-rate is higher in the undesirable classes mentioned, it is by no means enough higher to compensate for the difference in birth-rates. Thus while certain very desirable types are not maintaining themselves genetically, other extremely undesirable ones are rapidly more than replacing themselves. Investigations made by Heron in London show that this condition as regards English desirables did not exist sixty years ago; then the richer a community was in professional men and well-to-do families, the higher was the birth-rate.
Factors Contributing to Low Birth-Rate in Desirable Strains.—Most students of the subject believe that the fecundity of much of the best blood in our country has reached such a low ebb as to threaten the whole fabric of our commonwealth. How to correct this is the pressing problem to which no one has found a solution. However much one may deplore it the fact remains that always in the history of the civilized world with the rise of material conditions in any class of a population there has come an accompanying limitation of child-birth. Explain this as we may in modern times—whether as an awakened individualism which looks only to the immediate interest of the individual as against the ultimate interest of the race, or a desire for luxuries or for a better opportunity for smaller numbers of children, or as a determined effort of the wage earner to better his conditions, or to the feminist movement with its accompaniment of a greater personal freedom of married women and the recognition of the fact that marriage and child-bearing are often bars to employment, or to general increasing pressure of economic burdens—in brief whatever the cause or causes, there is no denying the fact of a diminishing birth-rate among our abler men and women. Moreover, no amount of coaxing, cajoling or dire prophecy seems to avail in altering the conditions. Various partial remedies, many of them of questionable practicability, have been proposed, but so far there has been no far-reaching effort made to put any of them into effect. It has been suggested that society return to the simple life so that our young folk may marry earlier and live more easily on limited means, but so far few volunteers have appeared to lead the procession. While there is no doubt that present economic conditions tend to penalize parenthood, the simple life will not return for the mere asking. It has been pointed out that the father is in unfair competition with the bachelor and is also unfairly taxed in comparison, and some would therefore tax unmarried men more heavily. Others would pay a direct bounty on reproduction, but it is probable that such rewards would merely stimulate families of the lower types to increased fruitfulness. And so one panacea after another may be weighed and found wanting.
The Educated Public Must Be Made to Realize the Situation.—It seems probable that the most success will be met with through the slow and unspectacular methods of education. The necessity of the situation must be driven home so that it becomes part and parcel of the collective intelligence of the educated public. Different ideals of life will have to be established in the young. If knowledge of the facts of heredity is thoroughly disseminated among the people and ideals regarding parenthood are fostered, then much will have been accomplished by the psychic power of suggestion alone toward the end desired.
Utilization of Family Pride as a Basis for Constructive Eugenics.—There are few more powerful incentives to make the best of one’s abilities, or few greater deterrents from vice than family pride; and there is no reason why this same sentiment may not be aroused in behalf of unborn generations. The sentiment of caste or aristocracy in some form is well nigh universal in mankind. The family of Mr. A came over in the Mayflower and is therefore worlds above the family of Mr. B, who arrived fifty years later. Mr. X’s income is $5,000 a year, Mr. Y’s only $1,500. The poor family in the front suite of the tenement regards itself as far superior to the one in the rear. Among criminals the professional house-breaker feels himself to be of higher caste than the sneak-thief, and in turn is surpassed by the bank-burglar. Even in the insane asylum the feeling is rampant. With such a wide-spread tendency for a foundation the creation of a sentiment of eugenic aristocracy is by no means a visionary undertaking.
The Tendency for Like to Marry Like.—Even now there is a decided though unconscious tendency for like to marry like and thus create particular strains. We have lines, for instance, which produce notably families of scholars, others which yield mainly statesmen, and still other strains of inventors, of financiers, of naval men, of soldiers, and of actors respectively. And there is little doubt that people, with the facts of inheritance of ability once before them, will be led to act more or less in accordance with their knowledge. On the other hand, due apparently to the same unconscious tendency for like to marry like, we find produced criminalistic, feeble-minded, deaf-mute and tubercular stocks. The first type of family is often termed aristogenic and the second or defective type, cacogenic.
Public Opinion as an Incentive to Action.—Much of our social conduct is the result of the pressure of public opinion, yet so accustomed are we to this that we ordinarily do not feel it as a hardship. There is little doubt that similarly the more wholesome attitude toward parenthood advocated by the eugenist would be taken as a matter of course, once the idea became prevalent. It would come to be one of those socially preconceived ideas which are as much actualities and which become unconscious guides to action no less certainly than do the more obvious personal habits of the individual. And just in the degree that we as a race get the “feeling” that intellect, morals and skill are highly desirable attributes in marriage selection, just in that degree will one’s affections in their earlier stages gravitate toward individuals who possess such qualities in high degree. In the main, those stocks which have shown by ancestral as well as personal achievement their superiority will tend to insure most certainly a continuation of this superiority in offspring.
Choosing a Marriage Mate Means Choosing a Parent.—Although marriages, as all young folks know, are made in Heaven, it is interesting to see what a vast number of these foreordained matches coincide with propinquity in college, in church, or in the same social set. Moreover, children are born here on earth. The one thing of all things that the eugenist desires is for these young folk to get a clear-eyed vision of the fact that in choosing a marriage mate they are also choosing the future father or mother of their children with all that this implies.
The Best Eugenic Marriage Also a Love Match.—A few recent writers, who show an utter misconception of what the aim of modern eugenics is, have raised the cry of give us the old-fashioned love match instead of the eugenic marriage, as if the eugenist’s ideal of moral cleanliness, freedom from transmissible physical taints or mental enfeeblement, and an attitude of special approval toward marriages which bring together individuals of more than average mental or spiritual endowment, had anything in it that was inimical to love. No one better than he realizes the sordid depths to which marital relations devoid of mutual affection and regard must reach. Certainly there is nothing in the eugenic ideal when its full import is understood that can shock the sensibilities of the most delicate-minded. Indeed it is people of fine susceptibilities who will be the first to feel repugnance toward a marriage which means mental or physical deterioration of their own blood.