The Fertility of the Unfit | Page 5

a burden is the criminal. Every community is more or less terrorised by him; our property is liable to be plundered, our houses invaded, our women ravished, our children murdered. To restrain him we must build gaols, and keep immense staffs of highly paid officials to tend him in confinement, and watch him when he is at liberty. Notwithstanding these, crime is rife, and is rapidly increasing. Says Douglas Morrison:--"It is perfectly well known to every serious student of criminal questions, both at home and abroad, that the proportion of habitual criminals in the criminal population is steadily on the increase, and was never so high as it is now.... The population under detention in reformatory institutions is increasing more rapidly than the growth of the community as a whole, and, as far as it is possible to see, the juvenile population in prisons is doing the same thing." Havelock Ellis ("The Criminal," p. 295), Boies, and McKim, all corroborate this testimony. "Among the three or four millions of inhabitants of London, one in every five dies in gaol, prison, or workhouse." ("Heredity and Human Progress," p. 32.)
All these defectives are prolific, and transmit their fatal taints. "In a certain family of sixteen persons, eight were born deaf and dumb, and one at least of this family transmitted the defect as far as the third generation." ("Heredity and Human Progress.") A murderer was the son of a drunkard; of three brothers, one was normal, one a drunkard, and the third was a criminal epileptic. Of his three paternal uncles, one was a murderer, one a half idiot, and one a violent character. Of his four cousins, sons of the latter, two were half idiots, one a complete idiot, and the other a lunatic.
There is an agricultural community of about 4000 in the rich and fertile district in the valley of Artena, in Italy, who have been thieves, brigands, and assassins since 1155 A.D. They were outlawed by Pope Paul IV., in 1557, but they still live and flourish in their crime, the victims of a criminal inheritance. The ratio of homicides in Italy and Artena is as 9 to 61; of assault and battery as 34 to 205; of highway robbery as 3 to 145; of theft as 47 to 111. Professor Pellman, of Bonn University, has traced the careers of a large number of defectives, and shown their cost to the State. Take this example:--A woman who was a thief, a drunkard, and a tramp for forty years of her life, had 834 descendants, 709 of whom were traced; 106 were born out of wedlock, 142 were beggars, and 64 more lived on charity. Of the women, 181 lived disreputable lives. There were in the family 76 convicts, 7 of whom were convicted of murder. In 75 years, this family cost their country in almshouses, trials, courts, prisons, and correctional establishments about ￡250,000. The injury inflicted by this one family on person and property was simply incalculable.
In New Zealand, the ratio of those dependent upon the State, or on public or private support, has gone up from 16.86 per thousand of population, over 15 years of age in 1878, to 23.01 in 1901. The ratio of defectives, including deaf and dumb, blind, lunatics, epileptics, paralytics, crippled and deformed, debilitated and infirm, has gone up from 5.4 per thousand, over fifteen years, in 1874, to 11.4 in 1896, declining slightly to 10.29 in 1901. The ratio of lunatics has gone up from 1.9, in 1874, to 3.4 in 1901. This is the period of the most rapid and persistent decline in the New Zealand birth-rate; and, coincident with this period, the marriage-rate went down from 8.8 per thousand in 1874, to 5.8 in 1886, and then gradually rose to 7.83 in 1901. The number of weekly rations (Parkes's standard), purchasable by the average weekly wages of an artisan in Wellington province, has gone up from 11 to 16.5 between the years 1877 and 1897. In other words, the price of food and the rate of wages in 1897 would enable an artisan to fill 5? more mouths than he could have done at the rates prevailing in 1877.
Notwithstanding the development of civilising, Christianising, and educational institutions, crime, insanity, and pauperism are increasing with startling rapidity. The true cause is to be found deep down in biological truth. Society is breeding from defective stock. The best fit to produce the best offspring are ceasing to produce their kind, while the fertility of the worst remains undisturbed. The most striking demographical phenomenon of recent years is the declining birth-rate of civilised nations. In Germany the birth-rate has fallen from 40 to 35 per thousand of the population; in England from 35 to 30; in Ireland from 26 to 22; in France from