Eugenics : twelve university lectures

Front matter

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CORNELL UNIVERSHY LIBRARY

Contents

EXPLANATORY NOTE FOREWORD . . . .

PAGE V

ix

Foreword

When Sir Francis Galton founded, in London, the Eugenic Laboratory known by his name. National Eugenics was declared to be " the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally."

The problems of eugenics are as old certainly as historically recorded human life. They were discussed, in some of their fundamental features at least, among the Hebrews at the time when the Bible was written. Plato deals with them in a famous chapter in the Republic. But the attempt to create an actual science of eugenics was first made toward the end of the nineteenth century after the principle of evolution had become widely accepted and thoughtful men and women had adopted the creed that man himself, like all other objects, animate and inanimate, is subject to the reign of natural law.

The progress of physics, chemistry, and biology has made possible so many beneficial practical applications of these sciences that human beings, more than ever before in the world's history, have come to appreciate the value of accurate knowledge as a guide to conduct. Wherever man has begun to know scientifically, he has found himself also, better than before, able to predict; he has gained the power to control. This increase in

X FOREWORD

power to control has only whetted an appetite which appears to be insatiable ; man now strives for ends which his ancestors would have regarded as presumptuous in him to try to reach. Thus, to-day, he not only utilises these forces of nature to improve the conditions under which he lives, but he is determined, if possible, to beget a better and a nobler race to succeed him.

The crude selective processes of nature have through the struggle for existence and the elimination of the less fit gradually led up from lower man to the man of our time. But modern man is a sympathetic being. He tries to prolong the life of the defective and the diseased. Instead of killing the criminal, he attempts to reform him. Instead of allowing children who have a feeble resistance to tuberculosis to die, he keeps them alive and they grow up, perhaps to transmit their weakness to offspring. He prevents epidemics. He limits the exterminating influences of alcoholism, and of poverty. Thus modern charity, modern philanthropy, and modern medicine combine to interfere with that selective death-rate which, biologists tell us, has, hitherto, played an Important role in race-betterment.

In view of this remarkable change in conditions, thoughtful men are asking themselves a new question. It Is this : — Can man, from now on, through the use of his Intelligence, learn enough about the Influences of heredity and environment to permit him consciously and successfully to act In the direction of a selective birth-rate which will compensate, or more than compensate, for the race-impairment threatened by his conscious Interference with the selective death-rate? So-

FOREWORD xi

called eugenlsts are optimistic and believe that he can; they assert that he already knows enough to permit of some practical applications of the eugenic science. Though granting that man will never be able consciously to direct the processes of improvement of his racial qualities in any way comparable to the control exercisable by experimental breeders of plants and animals, they feel that through the scientific study of heredity and dissemination of knowledge among the people, ideals may be gradually fostered regarding parenthood which will go far toward Improving the Inherent qualities of the human race.

Certainly, a vast deal of nonsense Is being talked and written about eugenics. The word is In the mouths of many laymen, who have no conception of Its real meaning. The quack doctors of society have seized upon it, exploiting its popularity, to advance in favour their own pet panaceas for social reform. True eugenics is, at present, in less danger from its avowed enemies than from those who masquerade as its friends. Hasty and ill-advised legislation Is preceding not only the cultivation of public opinion, but also that solid foundation of demonstrable fact which alone would justify law-making. Surely much harm may easily result from eugenic zeal without sufficient eugenic knowledge !

It is gratifying to know that careful studies of eugenic problems are now being made in this country. The organisation of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor marks the opening of a new period in eugenic study and in education along eugenic lines in the United States. Those who harbour eugenic Ideals xii FOREWORD

should be under no illusion, however, as to the rapidity with which real progress can be made. It will take a long time to lead even the more thoughtful of the people into a full understanding of the nature and importance of the principles of eugenics, and there does not seem to be any probability that the people as a whole will in the near future be led to think or act in accordance with these principles.

It was a recognition of the need of educating younger people of the better sort regarding eugenics that led Mrs. Huntington Wilson to provide a lecture on the subject in each of a large number of American universities last year. The present volume makes certain of those lectures generally available, and the perusal of them will doubtless lead many readers to pursue the subject further.

Among the books arid articles dealing with eugenics the following may be mentioned as especially suitable for those approaching the topic for the first time : —

1. Karl Pearson, The scope and importance to the 3tate of the science of national eugenics, Lond., 191 1.

2. Karl Pearson, The groundwork of eugenics, Lond., 19 1 2.

3. Karl Pearson, The problem of practical eugenics, Lond., 19 1 2.

4. D. S. Jordan, The heredity of Richard Roe, Boston, 191 1.

5. W. E. Kellicott, The social direction of human evolution, N. Y., 191 1.

6. C. B. Davenport, Heredity in relation to eugenics, N. Y., 1912.

7. H. A. Miller. The Psychological limitations of eugenics. Pop. Sci. Mo,, April, 19 14.

FOREWORD xiii

8. H. H. Goddard, The Kallikak Family, N. Y., 1912.

9. The various publications of the Eugenics Record OfEce, Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y.

Much good, it must be believed, will result from efforts directed toward increasing our knowledge of heredity and toward educating the people as a whole concerning the facts of heredity. When people are made familiar with the facts, they will, themselves, find the way practically to apply them. Thus, the cultivation of a healthy public opinion regarding marriage and parenthood will, it seems probable, be more efficient in promoting eugenics than anything that can be done by way of legislation, at any rate at present. As knowledge increases, it seems likely that more and more people will voluntarily apply to reputable physicians for their approval before undertaking marriage or the responsibility of parenthood. Already a number of clergymen favour the plan by which applicants for marriage, submit voluntarily, along with their licenses, medical certificates of health and fitness.

Lewellys F. Barker.

EUGENICS:

Twelve University Lectures

THE EUGENICS PROGRAMME AND PROGRESS

IN ITS ACHIEVEMENT

C. B. DAVENPORT

Eugenics is a branch of applied biology which looks toward the improvement of racial qualities. The corner stone of the science is the biological fact that man is not a single homogeneous " species " but is composed of numerous elementary species — or the potency of such — ; races which are often concealed on account of the extensive, almost universal, hybridisation that is going on in mankind. The programme of eugenics is to secure in our population as large a proportion as possible of persons belonging to the strains whose traits are of the greatest value to our social order.

Since the term is sometimes loosely applied, it is necessary to state expressly that eugenics is to be distinguished from sex hygiene; though it Is easily seen that venereal disease has certain relations to eugenics, among others, in leading many young women of good stock to fear the consequences of marriage, to refrain from it, and so to fail to perpetuate their excellent traits. Eugenics is likewise not " prenatal culture," though there is no doubt that the protection of the fetus from alcoholic and other poisoning and from infection is a good thing for the development of the child after birth and for him as a potential parent. The dignity of the connotation of the term eugenics has caused it to be seized by a great variety of enterprises, such as baby shows and contests, and even pure milk committees. These are all useful undertakings, but it does a grave harm to the progress of a matter of the greatest public concern to appropriate its name for another and a special interest, because It confuses the public as to the real scope and aims of eugenics. In the long run it will be bad for the undertakings that are improperly appropriating the name; for the public is rapidly coming to discriminate between the proper and the false content of the term and to feel unkindly toward the propaganda that is assuming a name falsely.

The interests of eugenics in the different countries are in the hands of various societies. The American Breeders' Association (now The American Genetic Association), started in 1903, early organised a committee on eugenics which, in 19 10, was expanded into a section of eugenics. Its work has been done with the assistance of a number of sub-committees (or committees) and especially with the Eugenics Record Office. The Association publishes the Journal of Heredity. In June, 191 1, and again in June, 19 12, a conference of eugenical field workers was held at Cold Spring Harbor, and in June, 19 13, at a third conference, a Eugenics Research Association was organised to comprise those engaged in, and those superintending, eugenics field work and also scientific students of eugenical data. In England, the Eugenics Education Society was established in 1909, maintains a quarterly magazine called The Eugenics Review, organises courses of lectures, and was instrumental in carrying out an International Eugenics Congress in London, 19 12, of which, by the way, the next meeting is to be held in New York City, September, 19 1 5. The English Eugenics Education Society has branches in New Zealand. In Germany, Dr. Ploetz has organised an Internationalle Gesellschaft fiir Rassenhygiene of which the Archiv fiir Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie is the organ. In France a national society was organised a year ago ; in Hungary one was established last spring.

Of institutions, there is the Francis Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics at London, directed by Professor Karl Pearson ; it issues a Treasury of Human Inheritance and other publications. In America, Alexander Graham Bell founded, about 1888, the Volta Bureau which has fulfilled the function of a clearing house for family data relating to the deaf. In October, 19 10, there was started at Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y., the Eugenics Record Office, made possible by the interest and the gifts of Mrs. E. H. Harriman. This office trains field workers who study, for state (and other) institutions, the family histories of the inmates. It has also a staff employed on special investigations. It preserves and indexes family records thus secured and also the " Records of Family Traits " and scattered data supplied by numerous volunteers. Its publications consist of a Bulletin series (11 numbers) and Memoirs in quarto (two numbers already issued). Besides Mrs. Harriman, the work has been supported by Mr. John D. Rockefeller and others. Its scientific work is directed by a board consisting of Alexander Graham Bell, chairman; William H. Welch, vice-chairman; Lewellys F. Barker, Irving Fisher, E. E. Southard and

C. B. Davenport, secretary. The superintendent is H. H. Laughlin.1

Of books on eugenics and human heredity many havebeen written by Galton, Saleeby, Ellis and the Whethams in England; by Jordan, Kellicott, Woods and others in America. Of books on heredity (including eugenics) may be mentioned those of Bateson, Castle, Punnett and Walter.

Studies in eugenics soon reveal the importance of " race " and, as stated above, lead to the conclusion that any population is a hybrid mixture of numerous incipient races. There are not many pure races. Even Africa has been penetrated through and through by Arabs and other non-black peoples. Even the American Indians were not a homogeneous people. Now these different species have different mental and physical characteristics and in so far as they have entered into the blood of any country (as they have into the blood of the United States) they complicate the topic of eugenics — a subject which is concerned so largely with hereditary traits.

Eugenics has also relations with families and the study of genealogy. For as there are racial characteristics so there are also family characteristics, and these are maintained, despite widespread hybridisation, by two processes ; first by consanguineous marriages which are commonest in islands, mountain valleys, rural com-

1 Since this lecture was delivered Mrs. Huntington Wilson has provided for educational extension work in connection with the Eugenics Record OfHce, and the services of A. E. Hamilton, M.A., have been secured for this purpose. Lectures on eugenics will be given before such clubs, societies, churches and educational institutions as may request them.

munitles and places with a minimum of intermigrations, and second by homogamy, or " like marrying like," which holds everywhere. The consequences of the latter process are to create families of statesmen (Harrison), of financiers (Morgan of Connecticut), of scholars (Edwards-Dwight), of inventors (Wilkinson), of soldiers (Lee of Virginia), of naval men (HuU-Foote), of actors (Jefferson). Such may be called aristogenlc. On the other hand there are produced families of the feeble-minded, of the criminalistic, of deaf-mutes, of the tubercular. Such families may be called cacogenic. Cacogenic families are illustrated by the Jukes, the Ishmaelites, the Nams, the Hill Folks, and the Kallikaks. These examples of aristogenic and cacogenic families are evidence of a real social stratification in our population. Despite our boasted ideal of social equality, the unconscious factors of marriage selection, stronger than paper theories, have brought about the persistence of many family characteristics.

Eugenics rests on heredity, for permanent social improvement depends on the acquisition by the race of good hereditary traits. The great advance that eugenics is making to-day depends largely on improved methods of studying heredity which give results that are more utilisable than by the old methods. By these methods our knowledge of heredity in plants and animals has enormously increased; new laws, new points of view have been gained and new methods of analysing data have been acquired. As a result of these studies we know that iris-pigment, dark hair-pigment, curly hair, dark skin colour, normal mental development, normal mental " stamina," normal resistance to epileptic convulsions are all positive traits. When absent from both parents their absence is to be expected in all children. When present in, either parent their presence is to be expected in at least half the children. Other traits which are more or less probably inherited as positive characters are short stature, slenderness, inability to express oneself adequately in music, painting, literature and mechanics.

Among diseases the normal condition seems probably to be the positive (dominant) condition in the following : — hereditary ataxia, astigmatism, otosclerosis, Thomsen's disease, alkaptonuria, and, possibly, in nonresistance to consumption.

In other diseases the abnormal condition seems to be the positive (dominant) condition. This is true with more or less probability in Huntington's chorea, coloboma, or imperfect closure of the iris ( ?) , microphthalmia, cataract, displaced lens, corneal opacity, ptosis and other imperfections of the muscles of the eyeball and lid (?), retinitis pigmentosa, night-blindness, epidermolysis bullosa (?), tylosis (or skin thickening), monilothrix (or beading of the hair) spottedness of hair coat, epistaxis or nosebleed ( ?) , teleangiectasis, diabetes insipidus, hypospadias (males only), achondroplasia, or imperfect development of the skeleton, syndactylism, polydactylism, and brachydactylism?

Still other traits are sex-limited. Typically, such sex-limited traits show themselves only in males ; these males do not have affected children and their sons, in-

2 Italicised names are those of diseases that have been best studied, and of whose method of inheritance we are best assured. Names followed by a query (?) are those of diseases whose inheritance has not been sufficiently studied.

deed, do not carry the defect in their germ plasm. But the daughters do carry the defect in half of their germ cells and since the sons of such a woman have an equal chance of coming from tainted and non-tainted germ cells, half of the sons will show the defect. But the sisters (unless their father show the defect somatically) will not show it though half of them may transmit it to half of their sons. The following cases have not all been worked out completely; some pedigrees even show apparent exceptions, but the rule as given above seems to hold for them as a first approximation. These sex-limited traits are : colour blindness, atrophy of the optic nerve, hamophilia, muscular atrophy, multiple sclerosis, nystagmus and myopia (in some families).

While many traits of man are clearly due to a single factor, others are complex and due to two or more factors. Thus the skin pigment of the full-blooded West Coast African negro is produced under the stimulus of two duplex (four somatic) determiners. Consequently inheritance is complicated in this case.

The great work of the future in eugenics is to determine as accurately as possible the law of heredity of each human trait.

Eugenics as a social science in its application to normal stock is effective, however, only if it is applied; and if persons actually make use of its conclusions in selecting marriage mates. Here is where, in the minds of many, eugenics as an applied science is bound to fail. Every one knows, indeed, how powerful are the bonds of affection between a young man and a young woman who have fallen in love and how little influence the advice and protest of relatives and friends often has on the outcome. Nevertheless, young persons differ greatly in their control over romantic love and, above all, it is true that there is usually a long period intervening between first acquaintance and betrothal. Young persons fall in love gradually. This period should be one for considering not chiefly personal convenience or the social consequences of marriage, but for considering, above all else, the consequences to offspring. Here is where eugenic education may help with those capable of taking advantage of it.

Eugenics must inculcate the ideal of fruitful marriage of our best stock. Many of our best young men and women in college or professional schools have their personal ambitions aroused and ask themselves if marriage may not interfere with the highest realisation of their ambitions. The writer recalls discussions on this matter between graduate students over the dinner table at Harvard College. And he was personally impressed by the advice of a distinguished German professor against the marriage of those who wished to gain eminence in their professional career. Many a man at the opening of his life work vows, as Judge John Lowell of the middle of the eighteenth century did, as he was being graduated from Harvard College, that he will never marry. But nature was too strong for John Lowell and he married three times and among his descendants was the director of a great astronomical observatory, the president of Harvard College, a principal founder and promoter of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston Atheneum; the founder of the City of Lowell and its cotton mills ; the founder of the Lowell Institute at Boston; the beloved General Charles Russell Lowell and his brother, James, both of whom fell in the Civil War, and James Russell Lowell, poet, professor and ambassador; besides brilliant lawyers and men entrusted with large interests as executors of estates. Do you think John Lowell would have taken that vow could he have foreseen the future ? No, if the German professor's conclusion was correct for Germany, I do not think it holds for this country. In my own Harvard class, among the 328 members there were in 1909, 287 surviving; of whom nearly a third (31 per cent.) had not married. Of these twenty-six were in " Who's Who in America." We should expect, were " success " in professional life promoted by bachelorship to find something over a third of those in " Who's Who " to be unmarried. Actually all but two, or less than 8 per cent., were married and one of these has since married. The only still unmarried man was a temporary member of the class and Is an artist who has resided for a large part of the time in Europe. There is, therefore, no reason to believe that bachelorship favours professional success.

On the selection of marriage mates made by the rising generations depends the quality of the generation yet unborn — the generation that will be taking up the nation's burdens at the time those of us who are in middle life are dropping them. How momentous then for the nation are the betrothals that are taking place this year I Society has a right to inquire if a little intelligence has been displayed in the selections, or has it all been left to a blind Instinct or to propinquity and cohvenience. Fortunately there is evidence that many of the young people of the country do think very seriously about the consequences of the selection upon children. The Eugenics Record Office has prepared a schedule for recording family traits of both of the interested persons, that these may be filled out and submitted to the Eugenics Record Office for such advice as can be given. The task of filling out the schedule is considerable and only about two per cent, of those sent out in response to requests have (so far) actually been filled out and returned. In two cases where an adverse finding was rendered on the report we were informed that the finding would be followed, and that the engagement had been broken off. Fortunately, in most cases, there has been no obvious need for an adverse report. Of course, lack of knowledge of the inheritance of many traits limits our ability to advise. The interested pair are always given the benefit of any doubt or lack of knowledge. The main point is that there are persons who seek advice for the sake of possible children, and there are those who have had the will power and the courage to break off an engagement of a marriage which if consummated would almost certainly have resulted in defective offspring. The mating of the more intelligent of our stock Is to a certain extent under social control.

The lowest stratum of society has, on the other hand, neither Intelligence nor self-control enough to justify the State to leave its matings in their own hands. On the contrary, the defectives and criminalistic are, so far as may be possible, to be segregated under the care of the State during the reproductive period or otherwise forcibly prevented from procreation. State laws per-

AND ITS ACHIEVEMENT ii

mitting the sterilization of institutional cases have been passed by a dozen state legislatures. There is reason for believing that if executed at all they will be administered conservatively. It is desirable that the States should proceed slowly in this matter of sterilisation as a substitute for segregation. But In some way or other the reproduction of defectives must be controlled.

But It Is not sufficient to secure good matings and cut off the bad. The eugenic marriages must be fecund and must equal or exceed the fecundity of the cacogenic matings. No fact is more startling to-day, and fraught with greater danger to the commonwealth, than the low fecundity of our best blood. From 1 193 bachelors of arts of Bryn Mawr College since 1888 there have been produced to January, 1913, 263 girls all told. Twenty years after graduation, close to the reproductive limit, 328 graduates of Harvard In my class have reproduced 195 sons to take their place. An earlier class of 278 persons, twenty-five years after graduation, had produced 141 sons, or had only about half reproduced itself; and no account is made of infant deaths. Assuming that a class matures half as many sons as it graduates and that their descendants do the sam,e for six generations, 1000 Harvard graduates of the i88o's will have sixteen male descendants of the 2o8o's. These sixteen sons will be ruled by the scores of thousands of descendants of 1000 of the Rumanians, Bulgarians, Greeks and hybrid Portuguese of the i88o's. Such figures must make one fear for the future. Some way or other the duty not only of marriage but of large families must be brought home to our eugenic stock. The young men must earnestly seek to marry and to marry well, and to deserve to marry well by living a clean, wholesome, reasonable life. And the young women must be willing to make sacrifices of their personal ambitions, their freedom, their love of ease, to do the work that none others can do and which is a patriotic service not less sublime than that rendered on the fields of battle. But the sacrifices bring their own highest reward.

As I have intimated, it is, however, not merely the number born of children of the different stocks that determine their relative number in the community but the number who survive to maturity. The survival of the eugenic in greater numbers than the cacogenic is to be sought. We hear a great deal about infant mortality and child savipg that appeals to the humanity and the child-love in us all. It is, however, always the saving of the lowest social class that is contemplated. I recall the impassioned appeal of a sociologist for assistance in stopping the frightful mortality among the children of prostitutes. But the daughters of prostitutes have hardly one chance in two of being able to react otherwise than their mothers. Why must we start an expensive campaign to keep alive those who, were they intelligent enough, might well curse us for having intervened in their behalf? Is not death nature's great blessing to the race? If we have greater power to prevent it than ever before, so much the greater is our responsibility to use that power selectively, for the survival of those of best stock; more than those who are feebleminded and without moral control.

But any programme for improving our stock is futile unless we take into account immigration and the possibility of controlling it selectively. Assuming that the annual addition to our population by births is 2,- 500,000 and that only 2,000,000 survive infancy, it is probable that between one-quarter and one-third of the annual increment of our population is through immigration. And, while we know something of the family history and " breeding stock " of those who are born here, we know practically nothing of the family stock of the million souls who immigrate here in the year. They are the greater menace to the country because they bring in so many unknown factors. Why do we so long delay finding something about the family history, the mental capacity, the moral control, of the stock from which our immigrants come? Why do we not take these things into account in passing them through our portals? Every social worker knows families in his territory all of whose children are a social menace because they are untrainable. Thousands of such persons are coming into this country every year, but we are not able to recognise them as such, by inspection. We take them into our communities and, as servants, even into our homes, when we would not take those of our own town of whose bad breeding we are aware. The eugenics programme can never disregard the, say, 30 per cent, annual increment of our population due to immigration.

Eugenics seeks to serve society and deserves a place among the agencies that tend to social amelioration. It does not minimise the value of education ; it seeks to increase the proportion, of the educable and the degree of their response to educational efforts. It is not opposed to religion ; it seeks to increase the proportion of those who can be emotionally controlled or who lend themselves more easily to religious and social influences. It does not find itself out of sympathy with efforts put forth for individual welfare. Physique, brain, and character must be cultivated; but that need must not render us blind to the fact that there are those who can not be improved by all of these social efforts and render it only the harder to help those who can be improved.

Thus the programme of eugenics stands; first, investigation; then, as knowledge grows, education. Finally, legislation based on sound public sentiment. For the carrying out of this programme the public is quite ready and indeed waiting. It is seeking to be wisely led.