The Super Race: An American Problem

by Scott Nearing

The emancipation of women is another force which may be directed toward the improvement of race qualities. Women bear the race in their bodies; at least half of the qualities of the offspring are inherited from them; as mothers, they educate the children during the first six years of their lives, and then, as school teachers and mothers they play the leading part in education until the children reach the age of twelve or fourteen. The youth of the race is in women’s keeping. They shape the child clay. The twig is bent, the tree is inclined by women’s hands.

The emancipation of woman means her individualization. Both in primitive custom and in early law her individuality is merged in that of the man. “Wives,” wrote Paul, “be obedient unto your husbands, for this is the law.” Mohammedan women wear veils that they may not be seen; Chinese women bind their feet that they may not escape; the women of continental Europe spend their lives in ministering to the comfort of their liege lords. They are dependent—almost abject. From such a sowing, what must be the reaping? Into the hands of these subject creatures, men have committed the training of their sons.

Can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit? If women are inferior to men, can they be worthy to train their future superiors—their sons? If they are of a lower mentality than men, how is it that, in the school as well as in the home, men have given into their hands the power to shape the destinies of the race?

Would you have your sons trained by a free man or by a slave? Do noble civic ideals flow from a citizen of a free commonwealth, or from the subjects of a despot? Only the woman who is a human being, with power and freedom to choose, may teach the son of a free man. Emancipation has given to women the power of choice.

The women of America have been partially emancipated. In some states, they may vote, sue for divorce, collect their own wages, hold property, and transact business. Everywhere they are filling the high schools and colleges; participating in industry and entering the professions. American women are independent beings—distinctive units in a great organic society.

In so far as the qualities of the Super Man are developed and perfected by the teachings of women, they will be more effectually rounded by the emancipated woman than by the serf. The mothers of America are prepared to teach their sons and daughters because they have been taught to think the noblest thoughts and do the strongest things.

The abandonment of war removes one of the most destructive forces of the past, because war has always tended to eliminate the best of every race. In the flower of their manhood, the noblest died on the field of battle—their lives uncompleted; their tasks unfinished—leaving, perhaps, no offspring to bear their qualities in the succeeding generation. Although the law of nature is the survival of the fittest, “In the red field of human history the natural process of selection is often reversed.”[21] The best perish in war, leaving the less fit to carry forward the affairs of state, and to propagate. “The man who is left holds in his grasp the history of the future,”[22] and if, as is frequently the case, he is the one least fitted to survive, the race is constantly breeding from the unfit rather than from the fit. Where the human harvest is bad, the nation must perish. So long as war persisted, so long as the best left their bones on the battle field, while the worst left their descendants to man the state, a bad human harvest was inevitable. War ate into the heart of national vitality by destroying the nation’s best blood.

War, however, has practically ceased. The movement for peace, in which the United States, both by precept and practice, is a leader, stands as one of the signal achievements of the new century. The abandonment of war has laid a basis for the Super Race by permitting the most fit to live and to hand on their special qualities to coming generations.

In the United States, as elsewhere in the civilized world, the science of race making has recently undergone great development. While the movement began in England, it has spread rapidly, until at the present time its significance is universally recognized by scientists. The principles of artificial selection have been applied in the creation of vegetable and animal prodigies; the knowledge of biologic and selective principles is wide-spread; and the educated men and women of the United States generally understand the potency of these forces.

Important steps have already been taken to prevent the propagation of the unfit. Born criminals are in some states deprived of the power of reproduction; in most of the states, the marriage of diseased persons is prohibited; here and there attempts have been made to prohibit the marriage of any suffering from a transmissible defect. On the other hand, mentally defective persons are being segregated in institutions—guarded against the dangers which beset the men and particularly the women of weak mind. During the past two decades great strides have been made in educating the American public to a higher standard of health and efficiency. Though the science of race making, as such, has not been given a prominent place in public discussion, the principles on which race making is based have formed an important element in public education. The desire to make a Super Race in America is as yet in its infancy, but the ground has been thoroughly prepared, and a foundation laid upon which such a super-structure of desire for race making can be speedily and effectively erected.