Read Ebook: Famous European Artists by Bolton Sarah Knowles

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 104 lines and 105404 words, and 3 pages

On entering school the children are introduced to a person whose profession is to teach. How easy now it would be to obtain a child's confidence, how easy to lead a child to believe that there is no hidden knowledge, no subject which is taboo, no function of a healthy body which is unhealthy, and no process of Nature which cannot be made an interesting and helpful study. To impart an unnecessary sense of shame to a child is a shocking outrage from which a sensitive soul never recovers. Exceptional children will require exceptional care but the average child need never know from experience the meaning of sexual shame. Healthy boys and girls will learn that as their parents made them they will one day themselves qualify for all those joys, pains, excitements and interests which are so intimately wrapt round the functions of parenthood. To prepare boys and girls to become parents may seem a big proposition. I am convinced it is practicable, desirable and in the best interests of the race. The human relationship, the human parentage, the human processes should be the foundation of natural history lessons. Botany and biology should be interesting because of their relation to humanity. Information about the human processes of life and sex should not be made contingent on the possibility of divulging it in scattered fragments incidental to remarks on the habits of polar bears or the functions of the stamen and pollen of the flower.

On this subject at least there is no possibility of permanent secrecy. The plan for Eugenic school-teaching is only a plea for the wise, discreet well-timed truth from a capable and trusted source, against indiscreet and often indecently ill-timed half-truth from the worst sources. Children need to be informed, warned and helped.

Why should it be regarded as indecent to give kindly warning against disease? Children are often over sensitive about fancied or discovered differences between themselves and other children, and about natural developments or even small defects which the uninformed mind magnifies into first-class abnormalities. They would often be reassured by learning of the enormous varieties which can exist within the average and the normal. Children should neither be frightened by the well-meant exaggerations which sometimes are used to warn children and growing youth from the very real evil results of self-abuse, nor should such evils be encouraged by a prudish ignoring of the possible danger. Masturbation can be shown to stand in the way of all that youth rightly values in its present happy school life and play, it can be proved to prevent the accomplishment of what every healthy school ideal demands as the future functions of maturity. Restraint is impossible because onanism is essentially a secret vice, and therefore when these appeals to reason, idealism, self-respect, and self-interest fail everything fails. Fear is opposed to the very basis of school honour. If the nobler motives are inadequate the physician is required rather than the teacher, for there is a pathological reason for such abnormal minds. The danger of contracting sexual diseases must be very carefully taught. The body must be saved but the soul must not be simultaneously lost. Sexual disease problems must not be mixed up with sexual morality, or we shall pervert the noblest part of youth. Sexual disease should be referred to, like all other sexual questions, as incidental to the whole subject of the body and its functions, abuses and diseases. The idea that any disease may justly be regarded as a fitting "punishment" for any particular crime, is as evil in its effect as it is vicious in its principle. To encourage the notification of every disease, especially the worst, is a public duty we can only evade at enormous cost in innocent lives. Grappling with the sexual scourge called syphilis is horribly hindered by the reticence, concealment and shame, directly or indirectly to be traced to a mistaken ethic about Nemesis.

The Eugenic education of girls is generally easier than that of boys for many reasons. Girls see more than boys of the management of a home, they are used to children younger than themselves, they are fond of babies and will nurse dolls for an amusement, deriving much pleasure from a pastime fraught with Eugenic suggestiveness. Later on certain signs of adolescence precipitate explanations and stimulate inquiry. There is no need for any restrictions of the facilities women enjoy educationally. As with boys the best education should be given to those girls who show capacity for using it. It has never been claimed that culture should be withheld from a man, as inconsistent with fatherhood; motherhood must not be made an excuse for denying education. The safest policy is to make preparations for Life independent of preparations for a Career. The don and the bluestocking have to live, so have the cowboy and the cook. All must have the universal knowledge whereby they may serve their race as healthy parents of healthy children, even though the college, the study, the ranch and the kitchen have their own particular technicalities to be mastered by the interested individuals.

Of study in general Eugenics will find much to say. It is impossible to neglect any branch of knowledge. The human will no less than human necessity presses forward in every direction. We may be like King Solomon surrounded by material wealth and possessions, but, like him, if we are forced to choose between them and knowledge, the noblest thing within us will cry for knowledge. We must learn to discriminate between knowledge-values, and endeavour to frame our study-time so that even the least of us may be encouraged to learn all that we can. For those who can rapidly digest huge continents of study the prizes of scholarship are assured. It is not in the interests of Eugenics that knowledge should be acquired with this rapidity by those constitutionally unfitted for the strain. An educational system devised for men may not necessarily be suited to women equally anxious to know and willing to give as long a period to study. It may be found practicable on Eugenic grounds to give more facilities than we do for broken studies, for studies which go slower and last longer, and for studies where the honours are not given to those who can cram most in the least time.

It is impossible for any view of Eugenics in relation to education to ignore the terrible danger of child-labour. Economic consideration of this subject is common enough; it is time that Eugenics made its voice heard in denunciation of a system which cannot fail to demoralise the race if persisted in. The energy of a growing youth is required for building up his own constitution, and if his early labours are spent in occupations inconsistent with physical development he becomes a stunted weakling from whose loins we cannot expect the issue of a noble race. In the case of girl-labour the trouble is intensified, partly because the occupations of young girls are mostly of a description requiring a bodily posture which works untold evil in their future health and fitness. Needlework, laundry-work and typewriting are cases in point. Housework, with which every young girl should be familiar at a reasonably early age, becomes an intolerable check to womanly growth when overdone. Factory life and "home" labour are equally objectionable where children are forced by parental pressure, or the exigences of economic circumstance to earn bread for themselves or to contribute to the family sustenance.

I close this chapter abruptly, fully realising that Eugenic zeal has carried me beyond any narrow view of elementary education, and will inevitably lead the nation into economic controversy. The history of all reform encourages us to persevere. Neither fears of expense, nor metaphysical considerations of parental duty, nor sentimental objections to State intrusion have prevented a nation pledging all its resources, taking sons from mothers and husbands from wives, and using land, railways and stores to prosecute a war deemed necessary for national defence. I am convinced that we have only to realise the national danger and we shall heartily follow the Eugenic lead, even if it costs us the price of a fifth-rate war.

EUGENICS AND THE MODERN FEMINIST MOVEMENT

Eugenics is not essentially concerned with the right to vote nor is Eugenics specially interested in such abstract questions as the relative voting qualifications of the sexes. If these things really weighed at all Eugenics would naturally favour fitness instead of sex as the qualification for electoral enfranchisement. At present Eugenics views the feminist movement from the point of view of political power as a means to national efficiency. This standpoint is the more natural because there is every reason to believe that while the objective of the feminist is nominally Votes for Women it is actually an assertion of woman's all-round equality with men. I believe it will be a perilous enterprise, fraught with grave danger to the State if women successfully organise as a sex-party, prepared to study every question from the special interests or supposed interests of women. However much this definite policy may be repudiated it is a genuine danger, to which a prolonged suffrage agitation is bound, ostensibly or unintentionally, to contribute. It is to the interest of all who do not take a sex-party view of citizenship to abbreviate this struggle. It seems illogical, unnatural and undesirable that there should be a sex-basis of citizenship rights. All deprecation of anything even remotely approaching a sex-war is an argument for the acknowledgment of Women's claim to electoral equality with men. It is incredible that the mere extension of the franchise can create a revolution; a revolution is historically rather to be expected from refusing the suffrage to a class containing intelligent, capable law-abiding adults.

Let us not deceive ourselves, however, as to the real meaning of the claim for women's electoral emancipation. Whether that demand is granted or not the moral and intellectual driving-force of the agitation comes from a genuine reforming spirit, which will succeed with or without the vote in elevating woman to a position more worthy of civilisation than she has hitherto occupied. So much is certain to those who recognise in Mrs. Chapman Catt, Dr. Anna Shaw and the English Suffragettes the inspiration of Mary Woolstonecraft, the radical pioneer who first said "Woman must be free." A conspiracy of men to hinder women's emancipation might provoke a sex-war, the granting of such freedom as women claim can only end in mutual honour. Women will learn to realise and respect the differences between men and women when those differences do not wear the unmistakable taint of inequalities. The Eugenists' hope is for a peaceful solution, for the peace of the home is the hope of the child. The child is apt to be forgotten when men and women quarrel.

There are undoubtedly many property questions mixed up with the electoral claim, and the former have a genuine Eugenic side to them. It is not in the interests of the race that mothers should be in any doubt as to their immunity from financial worry during child-birth pains, or that they should have to consider any merely sordid question in deciding whether or not a perfectly healthy mother should increase the nation's stock of perfectly fit citizens. The position of a wealthy man's wife in the present day is often an anomalous one. Where the husband was rich at the time of his wedding, marriage-contracts usually protect the wife's interests to some extent. In the much commoner cases of gradually increasing wealth, of wealth coming unexpectedly or as the result of years of protected operations, the wife depends absolutely on her husband's good will. Often enough her exertions have helped to find this fortune. Her influence on his life is frequently an indispensable asset. Her care of the children she has borne give her a sentimental claim which justice cannot ignore. It is intolerable that husbands becoming rich men should be entitled to speculate and gamble with the whole of what should be considered the joint capital of the family, without obtaining the consent of the actual working partner. He should be at liberty neither to "deal" unauthorisedly with what might be considered the family's share of his fortune, nor to alienate by testamentary legacy anything beyond a fair proportion away from those who have the first claim upon his goods. In order to defraud his creditors or for less criminal reasons a man has often used his wife as a convenient banker. It will be easier to check this species of cheating when the wife herself becomes a creditor.

In the poorest circles where man and woman are equally destitute of worldly wealth this woman's property question is too inseparably mixed with the whole economic problem to be stated solely in terms of Eugenics. Eugenics does not profess to point out the lines on which the problem of poverty is to be solved. Eugenics only says that certain conditions have to be observed if we want the race to improve and to save the nation from absolute decay. It is up to our politicians to find the means by which these conditions can be observed. A nation converted to the gospel of Eugenics will not boggle at providing the means for saving itself.

Middle-class women have a genuine grievance which is becoming articulate. The women-workers claim equal wages for equal work, and married women claim wages for the work they perform as housekeepers, nurses or cooks, or all three. If there is anything at all in the idea of attracting the best workers by high wages the women will win. It will be a misfortune to Eugenics if for any monetary reason the best women are attracted to commercial careers rather than to domestic duties, but women-workers will succeed by combination while wives will win only if legislation favours them. Legislation must and will be forthcoming to prevent the comparative attractiveness of motherhood from sinking still lower in the scale than at present.

The most important question which many suffragists are preparing to face is to whom shall women look for their support. There is of course for the daughters of the rich an inheritance which places them above the vulgar struggle which ninety per cent. of our women have to face. For this great majority the alternatives to State-maintenance are generally speaking marriage or the labour-market. There is much to be said for the State-provision of maintenance for motherhood, which is elsewhere referred to. The principle is neither new nor revolutionary. Most States make some provision of the kind, and this State-provision is often excellent in efficiency but frequently quite demoralising in the restrictions with which it is hedged. Obviously with no Eugenic inspiration State-helps of the kind can never be anything but a stop-gap which self-respecting women will not seek voluntarily and which will always be given grudgingly. Its conditions will no longer degrade but will tend towards race improvement by encouraging the fit and warning the weak and diseased. For this double purpose the State will employ ladies to visit poor mothers so as to make sure that at least no mother shall want for food, shelter and the best medical attention, while she is assisting in what will be universally regarded as the highest and best interests of the nation. If State-subventions of this kind are beset with restrictions, what are we to say to "charitable" enterprises. Some few are ideal institutions, the vast majority are only justifying their existence by doing badly what would be otherwise left undone. Some exist merely because medical students must have some experience of maternity cases, sometimes the accommodation for mothers is so scanty compared with the number of students that many score of students attend a single mother, whose experience in such a case is not an enviable one.

Neither charity nor the present limited State-aid touch the larger question. It would almost seem as if the State and the charities had a grudge against motherhood. It is as if some monstrous misunderstanding of Malthusianism had led these authorities to believe that the interests of the race demanded the accentuation of the primal course. "In sorrow," indeed, do the poor "bring forth children." There is a prejudice too against the noblest emotions of motherhood. Cases are common where the relieving authorities, public or voluntary, faced with the absolute inability of a parent to contribute towards a child's keep, undertake the child's care under conditions which exclude the parents' continued interest in the child's welfare. A mother unexpectedly widowed is "relieved" of her four young children who are sent sometimes to different orphanages, often at a distance from the mother who loves them and who would be their very best guardian. She has to find work amongst strangers to support herself, while losing money every "visiting day" if she can anyway get to see her children, whose aggregate keep costs actually more than would comfortably maintain them and their mother under ideal conditions. It is this almost fiendish masculine administration of the maternal functions of the public authorities which women most vehemently protest against. There seems no remedy for it except a recognition that a man cannot be a mother, not even a step-mother.

Apart from the maternal side of woman's life there is her individual life to consider, and while this is of enormous importance to herself its chief interest to Eugenists is that only out of healthy and happy conditions of womanhood can a noble motherhood be expected to grow. Slave-mothers are apt to breed slave-children, and still worse for the race slave-women are disinclined to become mothers. It is of course unfair to see no distinction between slavery which professes no fine sentiment towards its chattel objects, and the refined system which places woman on a pedestal and worships her but denies her the elementary rights of citizenship. The Eugenist ideal of marriage is the union of equality, two citizens joining together in love and wisdom and with such sanction of the State and the Church as may be, with resultant harmony of life and its fruit in an increase of the truest wealth any State can possess, namely well-conceived, well-formed, and well-matured men and women.

In the Eugenist State there will be a determined enmity to the increased generations of the criminal, the weak-minded and the diseased. But if reform is forced on women by men, instead of being the spontaneous decision of a genuine democracy, the grossest tyranny will be perpetuated . A benevolent despotism might be endured in its disposition of the issues of war, the production of wealth, or the distribution of honours, nothing but the sovereign will of the people can be tolerated in the Eugenic field, and here if nowhere else woman being essentially concerned must have an equal voice with man. Where women cannot be convinced that Eugenic reform is in the interests of the race we must trust to personal persuasion, individual example and such public opinion as we are capable of influencing. The powers of the State must not be invoked in the face of popular protest, it will be to the interests of Eugenists that such protest shall be able to express itself in the ballot-box instead of by surreptitious evasion or mob-law.

The double standard in morals must go. Whatever our standard may be it must be colour-blind as regards sex. The modern feminist movement is in harmony with Eugenic science, in insisting on this point being made clear. For ages past masculine hypocrisy has been able to exact from the opposite sex a crushing worship of Mrs. Grundy, by the simple expedient of ruling men out of the conventions they dictated to women.

The time has come for a candid reconsideration of moral problems on the basis of sex-equality. It may be that some fine sentiments will vanish, perhaps women will descend from the dizzy height where they are supposed to dwell. Truth at least will gain, pretence will give place to reality and we shall be capable of postulating a new and better morality based on the essential facts of life. To the consideration of the best possible life for men and women must be added the Eugenic claims of the race. We live and die but the race continues, heirs of our perfection, inheritors of our defects. We pass, but we must think of those to whom this heritage passes. The strong woman mated to the strong man is proud of a posterity which will do them honour. The woman-movement aims at removing the obstacles to this endeavour. The tragedy of the woman's life is when either her own or her husband's unfitness to bear anything but a tainted stock is disregarded by law, custom and the brutality of lustful bestiality. She who might be, as she desires to be, the guardian of the nation's truest interests, is overpowered and compelled to be the medium of national pollution. This knowledge strengthens the women's agitation; the determination to end such a shameful degradation makes the women's movement irresistible.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EUGENICS

This little volume would sadly fail to convey its author's meaning if dogmatism stood in the way of persuasion, or authority seemed to be claimed for the tentative suggestions herein outlined. There is no immediate danger that Eugenic principles will suddenly rush society into extreme action. The probabilities are quite in the opposite direction. We shall continue to see what has always been observed by thinkers, namely, "Decency and custom starving truth, and blind authority beating with his staff the child which might have led him." Valuable experiments are delayed by prejudice, and Eugenists have only too good ground for complaint that the scientific spirit is thwarted by prejudiced opposition to new ideas. The very absence of dogmatism which characterises the genuine thinker serves as the basis of opposition in his experiments. Because he does not glibly guarantee universal success like a patent-pill advertiser nothing whatever is done to obtain a criterion of judging how far his reasonable proposals can succeed. The failure of all other attempts to improve the race may force upon the public the necessity of Eugenic experiments. As has been said more than once, philanthropy has failed, politics has failed, rescue work has failed, perhaps Eugenics may not fail, for it is based on the impregnable rock of science, it proceeds on the sound lines of prevention, it aims to start at the beginning of things, to build up a new race if not of supermen at least of sound healthy human beings.

Abortion and infanticide are equally condemned by Eugenists, although on different grounds. Infanticide is murder. It destroys the life of an actual human being. Infanticide, though doubtless less reprehensible in degree than the lethal chamber idea, is in principle indistinguishable therefrom. It is the antithesis to the idea of Eugenics. The state which can contemplate child-murder without horror is far indeed from being a humane State. Sensitiveness to suffering is a sign of civilisation. Wherever we find a live human being, however hopeless its condition may appear, universal experience has shown us that man's advance from savagedom depends on his using all his resources to save the final spark of life which remains. "While there's life there's hope" is a maxim which is based on the greatest need of mankind. Eugenics deplores waste of effort that this entails, but there can be no doubt about its rightness or its justification by the universal consensus of progressive races. Abortion may be condemned on religious and moral grounds, but the overwhelming weight of medical opinion against it is based on physiological reasons. No woman can be guilty of this practice without the greatest risks of physical damage. She jeopardises her life immediately and she generally deteriorates her capacity for future usefulness. Eugenics will find a sphere of usefulness in the spread of this piece of saving knowledge. Unmarried mothers and mothers in all spheres of society are terribly ignorant of the dangers of this common death-trap. The mere fact that the sale and procuration of drugs and use of means for purposes of abortion are criminal acts is not sufficient. The idea is prevalent that it is only the police who have to be evaded. Our laws are not empiric, but their reason is seldom apparent to those who are expected to obey them. A few drugs, or a few pills--how easy it all seems--and how fatal. Eugenists do not want the law altered, but they want the added deterrent of reason. There may be a chance of evading the law, there is none of evading the bodily injury which inevitably accompanies abortion.

I have already shown that Malthusian arguments do not appeal to Eugenists. This is not to say that Malthusian methods are also condemned. Malthusian prognostications have not been fulfilled, its statistics have been superseded, and its conclusions modified by the process of the suns. The world does not contain too many people, it only contains too many of the wrong sort of people. Production has not only kept pace with population, it has raced it. Intensive cultivation, new treatments of the soil, scientific rotation of crops and scientific agriculture rendering rotation unnecessary, new economic inducements to cultivate hitherto waste lands, discoveries and inventions of all kinds have taken away from Malthusianism the unduly pessimistic philosophy with which it once tried to frighten the race. Malthusianism will always be remembered with gratitude, however, for its practical methods and for its refusing to confuse marriage with procreation. That distinction still needs to be borne in mind because otherwise half our Eugenic efforts will be wasted by directing ourselves to a problem which does not exist. It is impossible to assail the proposition that a moral married life is consistent with a prudential check on increased population. This prudential check need not necessarily be a material one. Even a Tolstoyan may be a married man. Abstinence in due season in the case of normal adults is or may be Nature's plan for increasing virility at other seasons. The most prolific parents may be pardoned for resting occasionally from their protracted persistency of race-production. Eugenists object to weakening virility by sacrificing fitness for mere numbers, but it is in the essence of their demand that the race shall, "increase and multiply and replenish the earth." The objection to anything remotely resembling infanticide must have some definite proof of its sincerity. Eugenists denounce the New Decalogue of current morality which says:

"Thou shalt not kill,--but needs not strive Officiously to keep alive."

The Eugenist does not desire to detract from the responsibility of parenthood, but rather to increase it. On the other hand whatever steps may be taken against neglectful, vicious or unnatural parents, the race interests demand that the child shall not suffer. A new responsibility must be added to parentage--the parent of the race is the State, which must be vigilant to protect the child from the faults and follies of fathers who fail in their most essential duties. A child should be guaranteed loving parents or failing these a never failing foster-parent, in a paternal State.

In the recognition of its duties as Step-mother, the State will in self-defence protect its maternal arms from the influx of undesirables. The universal endowment of Motherhood may be a socialist dream rather than a Eugenic practical proposal, but even the Eugenists' demand for the State to act as step-mother involves an expenditure which will probably amount to the cost of a national war. It is part of our case that the money spent is an investment certain to pay big dividends in the shape of increased national efficiency. It is in any case inevitable. Public sentiment cannot tolerate this idiotic waste of the noblest of all raw material. It will be not the least of its advantages that the State will at length be directly interested, financially and therefore most deeply, in stopping the supply of the unfit--a bad investment at the best, requiring a maximum of trouble, and a continuous source of damage. The sterilisation of the unfit has become a regular experience in a number of States. It has outlived its detractors wherever it has been practised. It remains necessary now only to convert its objectors in other States, and to gradually extend its beneficent operation and the sphere of its activities. Naturally it begins with the habitual criminal. Of absolute success in the States where it has been tried it will be far more effective when it is applied in the more populous centres and when it becomes impossible for the permanently criminal to escape its attention. Sterilisation as now recommended and performed by our highest scientific authorities is in no sense cruel, it is not even painful. It must not be confounded with the mutilations of earlier centuries, it leaves the person operated on possessed of every faculty for use and capacity for happiness, it only takes away the power of reproduction. The first extension of the plan has been to the certified hopeless idiot. These two classes and the inmates of homes for incurable drunkards represent a very easy definition of those who should be treated to this operation. In the case of the criminal it will enable very great mercy to be extended. Sterilisation will not be a mere added infliction of a degrading punishment, it will substitute an awful warning for a long imprisonment. Only those criminals will be sterilised whose chronic criminality is proved after repeated convictions and form a study of what facts are ascertainable as to their hereditary history. They will leave the jail knowing that society regards them as unworthy to be parents, or if they themselves are also too dangerous to be let at large their close confinement will be rarely necessary.

The Eugenist does not propose to extend the operation of sterilisation beyond the classes above mentioned. It does not, however, regard these as exhausting the categories of undesirable procreators. Already there are numerous suffering and semi-cured adults whose children would inherit the diseases, weaknesses, and evil tendencies of their ancestors. Tuberculosis, syphilis and St. Vitus's Dance sufferers are specimens of this class. As Eugenics advances we may learn more of the racial poisons, and a scientific black-list may be drawn up of those hereditary taints which inflict most harm on the community. Doctors should have to notify the authorities of these diseases and the patient should be encouraged to frankness and helped to a cure. In all such cases kind but firm warning must be given against procreation. The failure to heed such warning should inevitably result in imprisonment--a very short term will suffice, for with Eugenics established as a rule of society, the State could afford to be patient. The elimination of the unfit would make rapid strides, and the offspring of tainted parents evading the law in one generation would be less and less likely to escape in the next generation.

It may be that the State will be contented with the negative side of Eugenics. It may be that it is the more important because we are daily increasing the elements which if not checked will destroy our civilisation. Negative Eugenics is as imperative a necessity as the protection of our coasts from invasion or the destruction of potato blight.

Positive Eugenics represents the attempt to encourage breeding from every healthy stock. Its methods will vary with the views of society from time to time. Its machinery will be by State-interference or by private experimental enterprise according as socialist or individualist ideals are current. I do not wish to commit Eugenists who are by no means agreed on this point, but my personal view is that individual experiments cannot possibly go far beyond public opinion, whereas, "the State can do no wrong" if it endows, undertakes and is responsible for experiments limited in extent but far reaching in principle, so long as such experiments are based on scientific probabilities and are supported by enlightened competent judges and do not outrage the humane sentiment of the race. Drastic individual experiments, involving however few people, will always be subject to interference at critical moments by mobs, governments, vigilance societies, etc. It is not wise to ignore this factor; it is not necessary even to deprecate it; nay, it has its advantages. The omnipotence of the State rests not merely in its power of arms; a State experiment, even though not initiated by the people, can be stopped by the people. The electors' power ultimately to interfere makes for tolerance.

While drastic experiments must be left to democracy acting through its elected governors, there is ample scope for other features of positive Eugenics. One of these is the endowment of worthy young couples too poor otherwise to marry. The ideal of celibacy stands self-condemned. Where successful it means race-suicide, where unsuccessful it means hypocrisy and a thousand other horrors. What then can we think of the fact that millions of dollars have been spent in endowing monasteries, nunneries, brotherhoods and all the other ancient and modern forms of celibate stultification of probably perfectly potential parents. Add to these millions the other millions spent in endowing the worst and least capable in prisons, asylums and in often demoralising charities. Then bear in mind that the endowment of the healthy for Eugenic purposes, for the regeneration of mankind, is absolutely unknown. A millionaire who loves his kind could scarcely do better with his money than the establishment, under proper supervision, of a fund which would encourage human efficiency. There is no fame so lasting as the glory which would attach to such a fund. It would be greater than a Nobel name, its prizes would be more keenly competed for than for "Marathon" or "America" cups. Its winners would become a new aristocracy, and for the first time in the history of the world noble families would be founded on a blending of ancestral and personal merit, aristocratic, indeed, because the best become personally powerful, but absolutely democratic in that neither class, caste nor creed are allowed to count in the selection. From this aristocracy a new knighthood might be formed. Degeneration would mean exclusion. Improvement would mean increased honours. New standards of efficiency, mental, moral and physical, would be evolved for the guidance of the race. An American model of this kind would speedily find imitators abroad. The real struggle for race supremacy would be concentrated on the Eugenic groups. Competitions, challenges and contests between national groups might eclipse in interest all the other exhibits in future International Expositions.

The daily work of Eugenic education is independent of these short cuts to the Eugenics millennium. The dissemination of ascertained facts about heredity is urgently necessary. It may be news to many that there are hundreds of institutions throughout our land where accurate information has been carefully collected for many years. The antecedents of inmates of prisons, asylums and "homes" have been patiently scheduled, classified and studied. Only money and public interest are wanted to make this vital information known. Investigations of this kind need also to be made universal. It is not enough that institutions should relieve the present sufferers. They can only justify their existence by contributing to our desire for the eradication of suffering. It should be made a condition of public support that the most useful kind of inquiries should be made, and be placed at the disposal of all who are interested. It is useless throwing pages of undigested statistics at the public, this is mere waste of effort. With the facts and figures in existence and accessible, centres of scientific study such as a Eugenics laboratory should be, will be able to present to the public the living issues which those dead figures mean. It would, however, be contrary to the spirit of Eugenics to confine attention to the sadder side of statistics. It is of infinite importance that we should understand and cultivate fitness, and therefore we want the systematic collection of family histories relating to our noblest, best and worthiest. Here State-interference is out of place. Voluntary work on the part of enthusiastic Eugenists would soon succeed in obtaining information of great value. Few families would refuse to impart through private channels ancestral facts, particularly as the mere inquiry would imply a compliment. The Chinese worship of ancestors would have a modern scientific interpretation, in the honour which would be won by the founders of fine families, a study of whose history would be an inspiration and a help to the race.

The advocates of Eugenics are prepared for small beginnings but they have enormous faith in its future. There is no desire and no need to exaggerate the present tentative claims. To the many it is still necessary to ask for the intellectual hospitality of impartial consideration. Even to the convinced we only appeal for judicious experiment. To the religious our work comes as a harmonious exercise of the best with which the Eternal Will of the Universe has endowed us.

To the evolutionist Eugenics represents the study and expression of Nature's plan. To the humane our work appeals as it assures mankind of a curtailment of human suffering. We lay new laurels on graves of the honoured dead and write new epitaphs glorifying the ancestors of the worthy living. We reverence the cradle containing the hope of the race, we think of past and present as the womb of the future.

MEDICAL ATTENDANCE

At present many tens of thousands of infants perish simply from inanition in the first few days or weeks after birth. In town and country alike many hundreds of thousands of families find the greatest difficulty, even when they can pay for it, in buying milk of reasonable purity and freshness, or in getting it just when they require it, or often indeed in getting it at all. The arguments in favour of the municipalisation of the milk supply are overwhelming in strength. But an even stronger case can be made out for the systematic provision by the Local Health Authority, to every household in which a birth has taken place, of the necessary quantity of pure, fresh milk, in sealed bottles, delivered every day. Whatever else is left undone, the necessary modicum of pure milk, whether taken by the mother or prepared for the child, might at any rate be supplied as the birth-right of every new-born citizen.

The next step must be the establishment of a system of maternity pensions free, universal, and non-contributory. If they be not universal, they will come as of favour, and be open to the objections rightly urged against all doles, public or private. A contributory scheme could only exist as part of a universal sick fund. If the contributions were optional the poorest mothers would get no pension at all. If they were compulsory on a fixed scale, the scheme would still further impoverish those it is intended to benefit. If the contributions were on a sliding scale, the pension would be smallest just where it is most necessary. To work out a pension scheme on the basis of compensation for loss of the mother's earnings would at once involve a sliding scale such as is in force in Germany and Austria, which would be unfair in the working, and benefit the poorest least. Moreover, the theory is fallacious, inasmuch as it views the woman as a worker and not as a mother. Let the pension be regarded rather as the recompense due to the woman for a social service, second to none that can be rendered. The time will come when the community will set a far higher value on that service than it does at present. But at present the main point is to tide the mother over a time of crisis as best we may.

How long should the pension last? The average duration of a maternity case inside a hospital appears to be a fortnight. The normal period during which upper class mothers keep their beds is three weeks, but for some time after leaving bed, the mother is incapable of any active work without harm to herself. Many internal diseases and nervous complaints as well as a good deal of the drinking among women, have their origin in getting about too soon. For some weeks at least, whether the mother nurses her baby or not, she requires much more than ordinary rest and nourishment. These considerations apply also, though in a less degree, to the period preceding confinement.

Under the law of Great Britain, the period of enforced cessation from factory work is four weeks. The same period is prescribed in Holland and Belgium. In Switzerland the period is eight weeks.

These laws, though of great value, are often cruel in the working, as they deprive the woman of wages without compensation just at the time she needs money most. The result is they are often evaded. Germany and Austria have recognised this. In Germany women are forbidden to work for six weeks after confinement. But the insurance law of Germany provides women with free medical attendance, midwife and medicine, and in addition with an allowance not exceeding seventy-five per cent of her customary wage for the six weeks. There is further a provision that pregnant women unable to work should be allowed the same amount for not more than six weeks previous to confinement. A similar insurance system exists in Austria and Hungary. In some parts of Germany, the municipality still goes further. In Cologne, the working mother is given a daily grant to stay at home and suckle her child, and visitors see that this condition is fulfilled. The Cologne system has been adopted by some municipalities in France. In Leipsic, every illegitimate child becomes a ward of the municipality, which puts it out to nurse with certified persons who must produce it for inspection on demand.

These provisions enable the government of Germany to enforce the law against the employment of women in the last period of pregnancy without hardship to them. The compensation given to German mothers is already felt to be insufficient, but there is a difficulty in making it more generous arising from the fact that the system is a scheme of insurance; the benefits cannot be increased without a rise in the contribution. In a free pension scheme, this difficulty will not occur. A small beginning might be made by way of experiment to familiarise the public with the advantage of caring for maternity, with a knowledge that its scope could be extended indefinitely without dislocation of the scheme. But the period like the amount must be substantial even at first. If the pension is to have any permanent value it should extend over a period of at least eight weeks: about two weeks before and six weeks after the date on which the birth is expected to take place.

The above is a brief resum? of the essential features of the British Fabian Society's scheme for the Endowment of Motherhood. In "Fabian Tract No. 149" .50 per week is suggested as a reasonable maternity allowance.

The State Legislatures of California, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Indiana and Connecticut have already passed measures to secure this object. On February 10th, 1907, Indiana passed the following act:--

"An Act entitled an Act to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists--providing, that superintendents or boards of managers of institutions where such persons are confined shall have the authority, and are empowered to appoint a committee of experts, consisting of two physicians, to examine into the mental condition of such inmates.

"Whereas heredity plays an important part in the transmission of crime, idiocy, and imbecility, therefore, be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana, that on and after the passage of this act, it shall be compulsory for each and every institution in the State entrusted with the care of confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists, and imbeciles, to appoint upon its staff, in addition to the regular institution physician, two skilled surgeons of recognised ability, whose duty it shall be, in conjunction with the chief physician of the institution, to examine the mental and physical condition of such inmates as are recommended by the institutional physician and board of managers.

"If in the judgment of this committee procreation is inadvisable and there is no probability of improvement of the mental condition of the inmate, it shall be lawful for the surgeons to perform such operation for the prevention of procreation as shall be decided safest and most effective. But this operation shall not be performed except in cases that have been pronounced unimprovable."

In August, 1909, the Connecticut State Legislature enacted the following:--

"An Act concerning operations for the prevention of Procreation.--Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened:

"Section 1.--The directors of the State prisons and the superintendents of State Hospitals for the insane at Middletown and Norwich are hereby authorised and directed to appoint for each of said institutions, respectively, two skilled surgeons, who, in conjunction with the physician or surgeon in charge at each of said institutions, shall examine such persons as are reported to them by the warden, superintendent, or the physician or surgeon in charge, to be persons by whom procreation would be inadvisable.

"Such board shall examine the physical and mental condition of such persons, and their record and family history so far as the same can be ascertained, and if in the judgment of the majority of said board, procreation by any such person would produce children with an inherited tendency to crime, insanity, feeble-mindedness, idiocy, or imbecility, and there is no probability that the condition of any such person so examined will improve to such an extent as to render procreation by such person advisable, or, if the physical or mental condition of any such person will be substantially improved thereby then the said board shall appoint one of its members to perform the operation of vasectomy or o?phorectomy, as the case may be, upon such person. Such operation shall be performed in a safe and humane manner, and the board making such examination, and the surgeon performing such operation, shall receive from the State such compensation, for services rendered, as the warden of the State prison or the superintendent of either of such hospitals shall deem reasonable.

"Section 2.--Except as authorised by this act, every person who shall perform, encourage, assist in or otherwise promote the performance of either of the operations described in Section 1 of this Act, for the purpose of destroying the power to procreate the human species: or any person who shall knowingly permit either of such operations to be performed upon such person--unless the same be a medical necessity--shall be fined not more than one thousand dollars, or imprisoned in the State prison not more than five years, or both."

In California, in 1909, the legislature passed a statute which provides that whenever in the opinion of the medical superintendent of any State hospital, or the superintendent of the California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble-minded Children, or of the resident physician in any State prison, it would be conducive to the benefit of the physical, mental or moral condition of any inmate of such home, hospital or state prison, to be asexualised, then such superintendent or resident physician shall call into consultation the General Superintendent of State Hospitals and the Secretary of the State Board of Health, and they shall jointly examine into all the particulars of the case, and if, in their opinion, or in the opinion of any two of them, asexualisation will be beneficial to such inmate, patient, or convict, they may perform the same.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet