Inheritance of ability (chart condensed and incomplete) in three markedly able families (from Kellicott after Whetham):
1, Charles Darwin; 2, his cousin, Francis Galton, founder of the modern eugenic movement.
Systems of Mating Impracticable in the Main.—By systems of mating, it should be said, is not meant the arbitrary marrying of two individuals willy-nilly, but rather it is the prevention from marriage of two individuals having similar defects. In general the facts at our command indicate that in the majority of cases the offspring from a marriage of an insane, feeble-minded or epileptic person with a normal individual free from all neuropathic taints are normal or at most show but slight effects of the taint. But what normal individual would knowingly marry into such a stock? With few exceptions such traits where inheritable are apparently negative, that is, not represented by some positive abnormal factor but due to the lack of some element or elements necessary to the proper working of the normal brain. In the offspring of such a union the necessary missing factors are supplied by the normal parent. Or in Mendelian phraseology, the defective traits are recessive and are dominated by the normality of the other parent. Such offspring, however, while apparently normal of body are not normal of germ-plasm, inasmuch as half of their germ-cells will carry the abnormality of the defective parent as earlier explained ([page 119]) under Mendelism. We have already seen ([page 119]) how by continually marrying into strong strains the liability to recessive defect can be diluted out until the descendants are no more likely to have defective children than are members of our ordinary population. If, however, as is estimated in Bulletin No. 5 of the Eugenics Record Office, about thirty per cent. of our general population already carry recessive neuropathic taints, it certainly is a hazardous proceeding to attempt thus to breed out nervous defects unless one is absolutely sure of the normality of the strain into which it is proposed to marry. The great difficulty is in determining whether or not there is a defective ancestry in a given stock. We have at present no criteria for identifying normal individuals who have defective germ-plasm. As a practical test, however, if no defect has appeared in the stock for three or four generations back, the marriage would be relatively as safe as are the marriages of our average population to-day.
Corrective Mating Presupposes Knowledge of Eugenics.—But such a scheme of corrective mating presupposes a relatively high degree of intelligence and judgment on the part of the participants, and this is just what we do not have and in the nature of things can not get, in the types of feeble-minded, epileptic and degenerate strains we are striving to eliminate. All our evidence shows that when unrestricted there is a marked tendency for feeble-minded to mate with feeble-minded, degenerate with degenerate. About sixteen per cent. of the feeble-minded, in fact, come from consanguineous marriages. If we try to legislate them into specific types of marriage then we encounter the same futility pointed out under our discussion of restrictive legislation, they will produce offspring without the formality of marriage.
In certain cases of insanity and in other than neuropathic defects one can see how the system might be inaugurated with greater prospects of success, but even then a knowledge of the principles of eugenics would be necessary to the participants, or in other words we could only accomplish our end through our fifth proposition, education.
Segregation Has Many Advocates.—As to the third proposition, segregation during the reproductive period, this seems to have a larger number of advocates than any other coercive measure. While on theoretical grounds it is plausible enough, when we face the actual putting of the method into practise we are confronted by the fact that tremendous sums of money would be required to sequestrate and maintain colonies or industrial refuges.
When one realizes that no state now provides for more than a small minority of its defectives, and knowing also of the pressure that must be brought to bear on legislatures to secure sufficient funds to provide for these cases of extremest urgency, one can not be overly optimistic about the practicability of extensive sequestration.
E. R. Johnstone, the superintendent of a large training school for feeble-minded in New Jersey, points out that no state in the Union is providing for many more than one-tenth of her feeble-minded and epileptics. If his estimate is true, to place in institutions, treat and train all its feeble-minded and epileptics would even now almost swamp any state treasury. But what will it be in the future if we permit this unrestricted nine-tenths to go on and multiply their kind?
Leaving out of account the enormous sums spent in private charities even now from one-fifth to one-seventh the total public expenditures of almost any one of our states is going to maintain its defectives, dependents and criminals. From the 1912 report of the secretary of state, in the state of Wisconsin, for instance, I learn that of the total expenses for 1912, sixteen per cent. was for charitable and penal institutions. The situation is even worse in some other states. Think of it! Think what a large total of expense it becomes! And the expense is far secondary from the humanitarian standpoint to the misery involved.
In the Survey of May 24, 1913, we find Mr. Hastings H. Hart, Director of the Department of Child Helping of the Russell Sage Foundation, proposing very specifically “a working program for the extinction of the defective delinquent,” which involves segregation during the reproductive period. He gives the number of feeble-minded under public care as 20,000 in institutions for the feeble-minded, 16,000 in almshouses, 5,000 in hospitals for the insane, and 26,000 in prisons and reformatories, or a total of 67,000 already under custodial care. And he asserts that as nearly as can be judged, this is one-third of the feeble-minded persons in the United States.