The Fertility of the Unfit | Page 5

by the fertility
of the unfit; and the maintenance in idleness and comfort of the great
and increasing army of defectives constitutes the fit man's burden. The
unfit in the State include all those mental and moral and physical
defectives who are unable or unwilling to support themselves according
to the recognised laws of human society. They include the criminal, the
pauper, the idiot and imbecile, the lunatic, the drunkard, the deformed,
and the diseased. We are now face to face with the startling fact that
this army of defectives is increasing in numbers and relative fertility.
Consider what 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 5½ more mouths than he could have done at the rates prevailing
in 1877.
Notwithstanding the