Volume I Part 3 (1/2)
science must continue to solve the problem of a fitter sanitary and hygienic environment for the congested and densely populated zones of habitation. Philanthropy must not continue to be wholly misdirected, it must extend its aid to the deserving healthy and fit, as well as to be exclusively the protecting agency of the diseased and unfit. If life is the only wealth, and the preservation of childhood the highest duty of society and the state,--which it would seem to be, since the continuance and preservation of the race is obviously essential to the continuance of the state itself,--the life of every child must be considered an economic as well as a moral trust. If, therefore, every child is sacred, every mother is equally sacred. If every child is to be cared for, every mother must be cared for. If the state cannot afford to provide for what is imperatively essential to its own continuance, it might as well go out of existence, as it inevitably will in the end on any other basis, and as all preceding states have done.
Mothers must not be dependent upon their children's labor for their maintenance, because if children are compelled to work, they will not be able to work in the future,--and adult efficiency is necessary to the well-being of the individual, the race, and the state.
No mother should work, because in the care of her children she is already doing the supreme work. The proper care of children is so continuous and exacting a task, and of such importance to posterity, that it must be regarded as the highest and foremost work--and adequate in itself--and its efficiency must not be hampered by mothers having to do anything else.
Motherhood must not be financially insecure, because this would defeat its eugenic purpose. Society, therefore, as a matter of self-preservation, must ensure to woman her mental and economic security. Civilization's margin is large enough to provide this. We spend large amounts on luxuries and evils which are contrary to the genesis of self-preservation, while motherhood is its basic necessity. When public opinion is educated in the essentials of eugenics much of this can be, and will be diverted to a n.o.bler purpose. The total cost necessary to ensure the adequate care of dependent [19]
motherhood would be a mere fraction of the national expenditure, and not a t.i.the of what we spend in pension allowances yearly. The latter is regarded as an honorable debt and is at best the direct product of a decadent ideal, while motherhood const.i.tutes the very germ of the only altruistic idealism for all the future.
We concede, therefore, that the children and the mothers must be provided for, not only as a product of the true construction of the ethics of sociology, but in obedience to the fundamental law of a moral system of eugenics. We must go further and a.s.sert that children must be cared for through the mother. It has been the practice to divorce the improvident mother from her dependent children. This has been demonstrated to be not only an altruistic fallacy. It has proved to be an economic blunder.
There is another type of evil which largely menaces the eugenic ideal of motherhood. It is those cases where married women who have children are compelled to be the bread winners of the family as well as its mothers. No woman can earn support for herself and children outside of her home and competently a.s.sume the responsibilities of motherhood at the same time.
Whatever aid a mother renders to the state, as a result of effort in factory or shop, is of infinitely less value, from an economic standpoint, than her contribution as mother in caring for her own children in her own home. A careful study of infant mortality, and the conditions of child life, so far as survival value is concerned, condemns in the strongest and most vital sense this whole practice. The preservation of the race is the essential requisite, and it is the vital industry of any people. Any seeming economic necessity which destroys that industry is one that will contribute largely to the downfall of the people as a race.
EUGENICS AND THE HUSBAND.--The question of the husband's moral and parental obligation, as dictated by the marriage inst.i.tution and const.i.tution, may be left out of this discussion. We may a.s.sert, however, that we do not believe the eugenic principle intends, in devising ways and means for [20]
the adequate protection, in its completest sense, of motherhood, to relieve the father of any of his moral or parental obligations. These obligations will be justly defined, and as previously stated, will be the subject of special state legislation. No legislation of an economic character can detract from the performance of a moral obligation, and by no process of sophistication can modern statesmans.h.i.+p accomplish the dethronement of motherhood. The duty of the father is to support his children and the mother of his children, and the duty of the state is to see that this is done. The fundamental law of the eugenist must be to recognize that fatherhood is a deliberate and responsible act, for which a fixed accountability must be maintained. Whatever legislation is undertaken in this connection must be with the object in view of strengthening the efforts of the right kind of father and husband, and of rendering more difficult the path of the irresponsible father and husband. If the supreme duty of a state is the maintenance of justice, its whole effort in the future will be to legislate in harmony with the eugenic principle.
[21]
CHAPTER III
”I hope to live to see the time when the increased efficiency in the public health service--Federal, State and munic.i.p.al--will show itself in a greatly reduced death rate. The Federal Government can give a powerful impulse to this end by creating a model public health service.”
EX-PRESIDENT TAFT.
EUGENICS AND EDUCATION
THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS INADEQUATE--OPINIONS OF DR. C. W.
SALEEBY, ELLA WHEELER WILc.o.x, LUTHER BURBANK, WILLIAM D. LEWIS, ELIZABETH ATWOOD, DR. THOMAS A. STORY, WILLIAM C. WHITE, DR. HELEN C.
PUTNAM--DIFFICULTY IN DEVISING A SATISFACTORY EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM--EDUCATION AN IMPORTANT FUNCTION--THE FUNCTION OF THE HIGH SCHOOL--THE HIGH SCHOOL SYSTEM FALLACIOUS--THE TRUE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION.
The fundamental law of eugenics demands that all education be exerted for parenthood. We have proved that the child is not only essential to the life of the state, but is the state. Consequently any function other than parenthood is a non-essential so far as organic existence is dependent upon it. Education can, therefore, have no higher or more righteous motive than as a contributory agency in the perpetuation of the function upon which all existence depends. If the only function of education is to make one a worthy citizen, or to make him, or her, self-supporting, or able to bear arms in defense of his country, rather than a perfect link in the complete chain of enduring life, its purpose is being perverted. It is not sufficient to provide a girl, for instance, with an exclusive environment which regards her simply as a muscular ent.i.ty, as is the tendency in some of the ”best” girls' schools to-day; nor to fit her as a domestic or society ornament; nor must she be regarded simply as an intellectual machine, as is done under the system styled ”the higher education of women.” Any one of these is an example of misdirected excess and is [22]
only part of the whole. None of these systems strives to develop the emotional side of the complex female character, and any educational system which ignores the emotions is not only inadequate but reprehensible in the highest degree. The ideal which will strive for education for ultimate parenthood will more completely solve the question of complete (eugenic) living.
THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS INADEQUATE.--There is no question that education, as conducted at the present time, is one of the most disastrous inst.i.tutional fallacies of modern civilization. In support of this contention, we are prompted to quote at length from various authorities bearing on this subject.
Dr. C. W. Saleeby, an international authority on education, writes as follows:
”A simple a.n.a.logy will show the disastrous character of the present process, which may be briefly described as 'education' by cram and emetic.
It is as if you filled a child's stomach to repletion with marbles, pieces of coal and similar material incapable of digestion--the more worthless the material the more accurate the a.n.a.logy--then applied an emetic and estimated your success by the completeness with which everything was returned, more especially if it was returned 'unchanged,' as the doctors say. Just so do we cram the child's mental stomach, its memory, with a selection of dead facts of history and the like (at least when they are not fictions) and then apply a violent emetic called an examination (which like most other emetics causes much depression) and estimate our success by the number of statements which the child vomits onto the examination paper--if the reader will excuse me. Further, if we are what we usually are, we prefer that the statements shall come back 'unchanged'--showing no sign of mental digestion. We call this 'training the memory.' The present type of education is a curse to modern childhood and a menace to the future. The teacher who cannot tell whether a child is doing well without formally examining it, should be heaving bricks, but such a teacher does not exist.
In Berlin they are now learning that the depression caused by these [23]
emetics (examinations) often lead to child suicide--a steadily increasing phenomenon mainly due to educational overpressure and worry about examinations.
”Short of such appalling disasters, however, we have to reckon with the existence of this enormous amount of stupidity, which those who fortunately escaped such education in childhood have to drag along with them in the long struggle towards the stars. This dead weight of inertia lamentably r.e.t.a.r.ds progress.
”If you have been treated with marbles and emetics long enough, you may begin to question whether there is such a thing as nouris.h.i.+ng food; if you have been crammed with dead facts, and then compelled to disgorge them, you may well question whether there are such things as nouris.h.i.+ng facts or ideas.”
The gifted writer, Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x, in an editorial in the _New York American_, expressed herself recently in the following terms:
”A wave of dissatisfaction is sweeping over the country regarding our school system. And eventually this will cause a change to be made. The larger understanding of mothers regarding education will result in the personal element entering into the training of children.