251. Eugenics and the Social Utopia"

BY GEORGE P. MUDGE

With regard to man, it is now clear that what medicine, social reform, legislation, and philanthropy have failed to accomplish can be achieved by biology. Tell the student of genetics what type of nation we desire, within the limits of the characters which the nation already possesses, and confer upon him adequate powers, and he will evolve it. It is not too much to say that if he were instructed to evolve a "fit" nation-that is, one of self-restrained and self-supporting individuals—in the course of a few generations there would be neither workhouses, hospitals, unemployables, congenital criminals, or drunkards.

Students of eugenics will turn with interest to the concluding pages of Professor Bateson's book; there he deals with the sociological application of the science of genetics. We commend every advocate of social panaceas and of legislative interference with natural processes to read this part of the book. In a few well-chosen sentences he gives expression to the judgment of every biologist, alike of the present and the past, who has given to social problems adequate and unbiased thought. For nothing is more evident to the naturalist than that we cannot convert inherent vice into innate virtue, nor change leaden instincts into golden conduct, nor "transform a sow's ear into a silken purse," by any known social process. Our vast and costly schemes of free compulsory education, of county council scholarships and evening classes, which are among these social processes supposed to possess the magic virtue of transforming the world into a fairy land, may be a delusion and a danger. And so, too, may be all the other well-intentioned but costly panaceas that harass, and tax, and eventually destroy the fit in order to attempt for they can never achieve the salvation of the unfit.

252. Immigration and Eugenics**

BY WALTER E. WEYL

We must not forget that these men and women who file through the narrow gates at Ellis Island, hopeful, confused, with bundles of misconceptions as heavy as the great sacks upon their backs-we

"Adapted from a review of Bateson's Mendel's Principles of Heredity, in The Eugenics Review, I, 137 (1909).

Adapted from "New Americans," in Harper's Monthly Magazine, CXXIX, 615-616. Copyright (1914).

elastic; the road from bottom to top is not so short and not so unimpeded as it once was. We cannot any longer be sure that the immigrant will find his proper place in eastern mills or on western farms without injury to others-or to himself.

The time has passed when we believed that mere numbers was all. Today, despite the whole network of Americanizing agencies, we have teeming, polyglot slums, and the clash of race with race in sweatshop and factory, mine and lumber camp. We have a mixture of ideals, a confusion of standards, a conglomeration of clashing views on life. We, the many-nationed nation of America, bring the Puritan tradition, a trifle anæmic and thin, a little the worse for disuse. The immigrant brings a Babel of traditions, an all too plastic mind, a willingness to copy our virtues and our vices, to imitate us for better or for worse. All of which hampers and delays the formation of national consciousness.

From whatever point we view the new America, we cannot help seeing how intimately the changes have been bound up with our immigration, especially that of recent years. The widening of the social gamut becomes more significant when we recall that with unrestricted immigration our poorest citizens are periodically recruited from the poor of the poorest countries of Europe. Our differences in education are sharply accentuated by our enormous development of university and high schools at one end, and by the increasing illiteracy of our immigrants at the other.

America today is in transition. We have moved rapidly from one industrial world to another, and this progress has been aided and stimulated by immigration. The psychological change, however, which should have kept pace with this industrial transformation, has been slower and less complete. It has been retarded by the very rapidity of our immigration. The immigrant is a challenge to our highest idealism, but the task of Americanizing the extra millions of newcomers has hindered progress in the task of democratizing America.

H. THE QUALITY OF POPULATION

249. The Breeding of Men13

BY PLATO

"Then tell me, Glaucon, how is this result to be attained? For I know that you keep in your house both sporting dogs and a great number of game birds. I conjure you, therefore, to inform me

"Adapted from The Republic, V, 459–460 (385 B. c.).

whether you have paid any attention to the breeding of these animals."

"In what respect?"

"In the first place, though all are well bred, are there not some which are, or grow to be, superior to the rest?"

"There are."

"Do you then breed from all alike, or are you anxious to breed as far as possible from the best?"

"From the best."

"And if you were to pursue a different course, do you think that your breed of birds and dogs would degenerate very much?"

"I do."

"Good heavens! my dear friend," I exclaimed, "what very firstrate men our rulers ought to be, if the analogy holds with respect to the human race."

"Well, it certainly does."

"The best of both sexes ought to be brought together as often as possible, and the worst as seldom as possible, and the issue of the former unions ought to be reared, and that of the latter abandoned, if the flock is to attain first-rate excellence."

"You are perfectly right."

"Then we shall have to ordain certain festivals at which we shall bring together the brides and bridegrooms, and we must have sacrifices performed, and hymns composed by our poets in strains appropriate to the occasion; but the number of marriages we shall place under the control of the magistrates, in order that they may, as far as they can, keep the population at the same point, taking into consideration the effects of war and disease, and all such agents, that our city may, to the best of our power, be prevented from becoming either too great or too small."

250. Derby Day and Social Reform"

SIR: Which is wrong the breeder of race horses or Mr. LloydGeorge? Would racing men do better with their animals if they adopted all the methods which Parliament has imposed upon us in recent years as the right way to improve the efficiency of the human race? How would it be if they swept up the whole equine progeny of the country, each generation as it came, and applied social reform to it-if they provided it with stables sanitarily inspected, if they

"A letter published in the London Times, May 26, 1909.

caused all its units to pass under the hands of certified trainers, if they pensioned off the old hacks, and provided bank holidays for the young, and, finally, if they left the whole question of the breeding of the beasts to chance? If English racing men adopted our governmental system, is it not certain that English race horses would be beaten everywhere by horses bred by selection? Yet no one suggests any interference with the breeding of the human race. It is only royal marriages that have to be publicly approved. My suggestion that the same kind of interference should be applied to the marriages of peers has not exactly "caught on." In their case the hereditary principle is accepted but not scientifically applied.

Not only does Parliament in its so-called wisdom fail to apply science to the production of hereditary legislators, but in all recent social legislation it has actually penalized the fitter classes in society in the interests of the less fit. The least fit in the country are the old people who have failed to provide any savings against their old age, and that large class of cheats who manage to pretend that they are in that case. An as yet uncounted number of millions sterling is now to be taken year after year from the fitter classes and doled out to these unfittest. No one can tell how many children that would have been born to these fitter parents will now have to go unborn. The old people used to be supported by their relations, who presumably inherited a like unfitness; those relatives, now indirectly endowed, can now produce more children in place of the fitter children. whose entry into the world has been blocked. All so-called social legislation tends to act in the same way. The birth rate of the fitter is diminishing year by year and we calmly sit by and watch the consequent degeneration of our race with idle hands. We take the human rubbish that emerges and give it compulsory education, housing acts, inspection of all sorts and at all seasons, at the expense of the fitter class, and imagine that better results will ensue than if we left the whole business alone. Are we right? Or are the horse breeders right? They have demonstrably improved the race of horses, and with great rapidity. The old system of "let alone" also improved, though more slowly, the race of men. It is only the modern system of penalizing the fit for the sake of the unfit that seems to be put in action simultaneously with, if it does not cause, an observed race-degeneration.

I am, Sir, yours faithfully,

MARTIN CONWAY

251. Eugenics and the Social Utopia15

BY GEORGE P. MUDGE

With regard to man, it is now clear that what medicine, social reform, legislation, and philanthropy have failed to accomplish can be achieved by biology. Tell the student of genetics what type of nation we desire, within the limits of the characters which the nation already possesses, and confer upon him adequate powers, and he will evolve it. It is not too much to say that if he were instructed to evolve a "fit" nation-that is, one of self-restrained and self-supporting individuals-in the course of a few generations there would be neither workhouses, hospitals, unemployables, congenital criminals, or drunkards.

Students of eugenics will turn with interest to the concluding pages of Professor Bateson's book; there he deals with the sociological application of the science of genetics. We commend every advocate of social panaceas and of legislative interference with natural processes to read this part of the book. In a few well-chosen sentences he gives expression to the judgment of every biologist, alike of the present and the past, who has given to social problems adequate and unbiased thought. For nothing is more evident to the naturalist than that we cannot convert inherent vice into innate virtue, nor change leaden instincts into golden conduct, nor "transform a sow's ear into a silken purse," by any known social process. Our vast and costly schemes of free compulsory education, of county. council scholarships and evening classes, which are among these social processes supposed to possess the magic virtue of transforming the world into a fairy land, may be a delusion and a danger. And so, too, may be all the other well-intentioned but costly panaceas that harass, and tax, and eventually destroy the fit in order to attempt for they can never achieve the salvation of the unfit.

252. Immigration and Eugenics1o

BY WALTER E. WEYL

We must not forget that these men and women who file through the narrow gates at Ellis Island, hopeful, confused, with bundles. of misconceptions as heavy as the great sacks upon their backs-we

45

Adapted from a review of Bateson's Mendel's Principles of Heredity, in The Eugenics Review, I, 137 (1909).

"Adapted from "New Americans," in Harper's Monthly Magazine, CXXIX, 615-616. Copyright (1914).