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American Sexual Health Association / American Social Hygiene Association
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Accessed: 3/4/20

American Sexual Health Association
Operates in the US
Abbreviation: ASHA
Formation: 1914
Type: NGO
Purpose: Information and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases (STDS)
Region served: United States
Website [1]

The American Sexual Health Association (ASHA) is an American non-profit organization established in 1914, that cites a mission to improve the health of individuals, families, and communities, with an emphasis on sexual health, as well as a focus on preventing sexually transmitted infections and their harmful consequences. ASHA uses tools such as education, communication, advocacy and policy analysis activities with the intent to heighten public, patient, provider, policymaker and media awareness of STI prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment strategies.

History

ASHA was born out of the early 20th century social hygiene movement. At the beginning of the twentieth century venereal disease (VD), or what we now call sexually transmitted diseases or infections (STDs/STIs), was a prevalent concern for social health organizations. Sexuality was not an acceptable topic for polite conversation in Victorian society, and VD largely remained behind a veil of shame. At the same time, however, reports of rising incidence rates for syphilis and gonorrhoea gave cause for serious concern. For example, by one perhaps inflated but widely accepted estimate in 1901, as many as 80 percent of all men in New York City had a gonorrhoea infection at one time or another. Early efforts to eradicate "social diseases" focused on prostitution on one hand, as both a threat to the family as a source of infection, and the threat to public health on the other, with the focus on addressing the problem through both medical and educational means.

In 1913, at a conference in Buffalo, New York, several organizations dedicated to fighting prostitution and venereal disease joined together to form the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA). The association was established to stop the venereal disease epidemic through public education on STIs and working to break down the social stigma attached to VD. In 1914, ASHA established its national headquarters in New York City. Founders and supporters included Charles Eliot, president of Harvard University; Jane Addams of Chicago's Hull House; Edward Keyes, Jr., M.D.; Dr. Thomas N. Hepburn, leader of the Connecticut social hygiene movement; Grace Dodge, philanthropist; John D. Rockefeller, Jr., initial financial contributor; and Dr. William Freeman Snow, Stanford University professor and secretary of the California State Board of Health.

Bureau of Social Hygiene

From 1911 to 1934, the Bureau of Social Hygiene (BSH) funded research and sought to influence public policy on a number of issues related to sex, crime and delinquency. Although the BSH received contributions from a number of organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), the Bureau was largely dependent upon the patronage of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (JDR Jr.), who created the organization to address many of his own personal concerns and interests.

Research and Reform

The idea for the BSH originated in 1910, following JDR Jr.’s participation in a grand jury investigation of white slavery in New York City. Motivated by frustration with temporary public commissions that could only recommend governmental action, JDR Jr. established a permanent and private body to deal directly with a variety of social ills, including prostitution, corruption, drug use and juvenile delinquency.


Pamphlet produced by the Bureau of Social Hygiene: "Commercialized Prostitution in New York City" 1916

The goals and projects of the BSH evolved over time. Its earliest efforts concentrated on surveying the scope of prostitution in New York City and the reform of young women involved in the trade. The BSH commissioned George Kneeland to study various aspects of prostitution in New York City and offered Katherine Bement Davis of the Bedford Hills Women’s Reformatory the resources to study the impact of prostitution on young women and the possible paths to reform. The BSH also devoted significant efforts to sex education, sponsoring the publication of materials related to sexual health and working with state departments of health to disseminate these materials among the general public.

The Root of the Problem

In 1917 [Katherine Bement] Davis was named general secretary of the BSH, and her appointment transformed the organization. She believed that prostitution could not be fully addressed without a deeper understanding of human sexuality. To promote this understanding, Davis spent years advocating for more scientific research into human sexuality. This advocacy helped to create a partnership between the BSH and the National Research Council (NRC) and to form the NRC’s Committee for Research in the Problems of Sex.

The Committee for Research in Problems of Sex was established in 1921 following a proposal by Davis and Earl F. Zinn “[t]o undertake systematic comprehensive research in sex in its individual and social manifestations, the prime purpose being to evaluate conclusions now held and to increase our body of scientifically derived data.”[1] The proposed fields of research included the psychological and physiological aspects of the “sex instinct,” abstinence, masturbation, contraception, venereal disease and sexual relationships. Importantly, these fields of research were to be explored not only from medical and biological perspectives but also from a sociological perspective.


Yale University - endocrinology continuous extractor, 1940

Yet to the dismay of both Zinn and Davis, throughout the 1920s the Committee remained a relatively conservative organization controlled primarily by men trained in the medical sciences rather than the social sciences. The Committee repeatedly funded studies that focused on topics of animal biology and sexuality while ignoring proposed studies on human sexuality. In addition to being uncomfortable with topics of human sexuality and fearing a public backlash, committee members also expressed a general distrust of the social sciences. Davis encountered significant obstacles from BSH trustees who sought to distance the BSH from its work in sex research and direct it towards topics deemed less controversial. Bowing to internal pressures, Davis retired in 1928, and with her retirement the BSH became more deeply involved in the field of criminology.

Beginning in 1931 the BSH planned its own demise by allowing all of its outstanding grants expire. By 1933 all BSH grants had concluded, and the organization effectively ceased operations, although it was not formally dissolved until 1940. Research into sex, including grants to fund the study of endocrinology and the work of Alfred Kinsey, was subsequently taken up by the RF [Rockefeller Foundation].

Notes:

[1]Outline Presented by Mr. Zinn, Earl F. Zinn, undated, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), Rockefeller Family Boards, RG III 2 O, Box 7, Folder 50.

-- Bureau of Social Hygiene, by The Rockefeller Foundation Digital History

Bureau of Social Hygiene

The Bureau of Social Hygiene resulted from the appointment of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to a Special Grand Jury to investigate white slavery in New York City in 1910. In conferences taken in the course of this investigation, Mr. Rockefeller, Jr. became convinced that for a lasting improvement of conditions a permanent organization was needed. On March 22, 1911, The Committee of Three, including Mr. Rockefeller, Paul Warburg and Starr J. Murphy [counsel for the Rockefeller Foundation and personal legal adviser of John D. Rockefeller for 17 years] met. The name "Bureau of Social Hygiene" was first used in October of that year, but was not used consistently until 1913.

In 1913 the Bureau was incorporated and its purpose was stated as " ... the study, amelioration, and prevention of those social conditions, crimes, and diseases which adversely affect the well being of society, with special reference to prostitution and the evils associated therewith." The Bureau would engage in research and education, publish reports, and employ and/or cooperate with other public or private agencies to obtain these goals. The emphasis in the years from 1911 until the reorganization of 1928 was mainly on prostitution, the control of vice, and their relationships to police organization. Narcotics was also an early interest.

The General Secretary during the early years was Katharine Bement Davis. She resigned in 1928 and Lawrence B. Dunham was appointed Director. In 1929 the certificate of incorporation was amended and the emphasis on prostitution was dropped. From 1929-1934 the Bureau developed an interest in criminology. Studies and projects were still conducted in narcotics and social hygiene during this time.

The Bureau functioned through grants. It was not a foundation and had no set endowment. In the early years, financial backing came from several sources including Paul Warburg, the New York Foundation, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Mr. Rockefeller was always the main contributor. Grants were occasionally channeled through the Bureau from the Spelman Fund of New York and the Rockefeller Foundation. Grants were most often long range, covering periods of from three to five years. The Bureau did not interfere in the conduct of a project once the money had been granted, but it was careful in its selection of projects and kept in close touch for the duration of the grant.

The Bureau ceased making new appropriations in 1934 and by mid 1937 all the previous commitments had been brought to a close. Annual meetings were held until 1940 when the Bureau was dissolved on November 13th.

Associated With:
• American Birth Control League.
• American Social Hygiene Association.
• British Social Hygiene Council.
• Bureau of Social Hygiene (New York, N.Y.)
• Flexner, Abraham, 1866-1959.
• Fosdick, Raymond B., 1883-1972.
• Frankfurter, Felix, 1882-1965.
• Glueck, Sheldon, 1896-
• Harrison, Leonard Vance, b. 1891.
• Hoover, J. Edgar 1895-1972.

Subjects:
• Birth control
• Correctional institution
• Crime and criminals
• Criminal behavior, prediction of
• Criminal investigation--Scientific
• Criminal law
• Criminal psychology
• Criminal statistics
• Drug control
• Eugenics

-- Bureau of Social Hygiene, by Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC)

World War I

ASHA's early worked focused on education and awareness efforts within the armed forces. ASHA worked with the US War Department during World War I when VD occurrences surged among soldiers. Their efforts included educating soldiers about venereal diseases and their transmission and attempting to eliminate prostitution, which was believed to be the primary vehicle for VD transmission among the armed forces. ASHA was successful in shutting down many of the prostitution rings that traditionally surrounded military bases. Due to its contribution to the war effort, ASHA gained national attention and succeeded in creating public awareness of VD.

Between the wars

During the 1920s, ASHA served as a central coordinator for the local or regional committees, doctors, public health officials, and social welfare agencies that were combating sexually transmitted infections. In addition, ASHA published the Journal of Social Hygiene and the Social Hygiene Bulletin, conducted studies on the prevalence of syphilis, undertook surveys on VD, published synopsis of laws concerning prostitution, and supported legislation that required a premarital exam for syphilis. The program also promoted character and sex education as a means of preventing the spread of STIs. The ASHA educational program emphasized preparation for a wholesome family life, avoiding VD, and physical as well as moral fitness.

ASHA had developed into a mature organization by the 1930s with an effective network of supporting local organizations. ASHA also was involved in cooperative projects with a variety of organizations. In a single year, ASHA collaborated with the Federal Council of Churches [the predecessor organization of the World Council of Churches] and the National Congress of Parents and Teachers to promote sex education programs and materials; provided leadership for efforts by the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection to consider the social hygiene elements of child health; conducted institutes for public health nurses under the auspices of the National Organization of Public Health Nursing; and provided data to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in preparation for Indian Health Programs.

World War II


American Social Health Association World War II poster

During World War II, ASHA fulfilled a role reminiscent of its work during World War I, serving on the VD Coordinating Committee for the US military and working against prostitution. ASHA's efforts contributed to a 50% drop in VD infection rates in the military during the first years of the war. In 1944, the military began using penicillin as a cure for syphilis and by the late 1950s it was believed that syphilis was no longer a serious health threat. As a result, the Journal of Social Hygiene discontinued publication.

Journal of Social Hygiene
by American Social Hygiene Association.
Albany, N. Y. : Boyd Printing Co., inc.,

• 1914 (v.1 n.1)
• 1915 (v.1 n.2 - v.1 n.4)
• 1916 (v.2 n.1 - v.2 n.4)
• 1917 (v.3 n.1 - v.3 n.4)
• 1918 (v.4 n.1 - v.4 n.4)
• 1919 (v.5 n.1 - v.5 n.4)
• 1920 (v.6 n.1 - v.6 n.4)
• 1921 (v.7 n.1 - v.7 n.4)
• 1922 (v.VIII n.1 - v.VIII ind.)
• 1923 (v.IX n.1 - v.IX n.9)
• 1924 (v.10 n.1 - v.10 ind.)
• 1925 (v.11 n.1 - v.11 ind.)
• 1926 (v.12 n.1 - v.12 n.9)
• 1927 (v.13 n.1 - v.13 n.9)
• 1928 (v.14 n.1 - v.14 n.9)
• 1929 (v.15 n.1 - v.15 n.9)
• 1930 (v.16 n.1 - v.16 n.9)
• 1931 (v.17 n.1 - v.17 n.9)
• 1932 (v.18 n.1 - v.18 n.9)
• 1933 (v.19 n.1 - v.19 n.9)
• 1934 (v.20 n.1 - v.20 n.9)
• 1935 (v.21 n.1 - v.21 n.7-9)
• 1936 (v.22 n.1 - v.22 n.9)
• 1937 (v.23 n.1 - v.23 n.9)
• 1938 (v.24 n.1 - v.24 n.9)
• 1939 (v.25 n.1 - v.25 n.9)
• 1940 (v.26 n.1 - v.26 n.9)
• 1941 (v.27 n.1 - v.27 n.9)
• 1942 (v.28 n.1 - v.28 n.9)
• 1943 (v.29 n.1 - v.29 n.9)
• 1944 (v.30 n.1 - v.30 n.9)
• 1945 (v.31 n.1 - v.31 n.9)
• 1946 (v.32 n.1 - v.32 n.9)
• 1947 (v.33 n.1 - v.33 n.9)
• 1948 (v.34 n.1 - v.34 n.9)
• 1949 (v.35 n.1 - v.35 n.9)
• 1950 (v.36 n.1 - v.36 ind.)
• 1951 (v.37 n.1 - v.37 n.9)
• 1952 (v.38 n.1 - v.38 n.9)
• 1953 (v.39 n.1 - v.39 n.9)
• 1954 (v.40 n.1 - v.40 n.9)

Kinsey era

The release of the Kinsey reports on sexual behavior in 1948 and 1954 created national controversy. ASHA played a prominent role in the debate, organizing a national conference to bring together leading authorities in the fields of psychology, statistics, education, medicine, law, religion, anthropology and sociology to exchange views as to the significance of Kinsey's new information. The goal was to look at the information as scientific data instead of pornography. As Walter Clark, ASHA president from 1937 to 1951, commented, "The truth never harms . . . And it seems reasonable to hope that when today's older generation, conditioned against frankness in sex matters, passes away and today's youth takes over tomorrow's world, the truth about sex shall indeed make them free—free of the diseases, the exploitations, the ignorance and superstitions which for ages have burdened and blighted society."

Also in the 1950s, ASHA began to distribute a comprehensive annual questionnaire to health officers across the country. The responses, tabulated by ASHA and analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were published annually as Today's VD Control Problem, continuing under ASHA auspices until 1975. Today's VD Control Problem provided the statistical basis for testimony before Congress, as ASHA returned year after year to urge adequate federal appropriations for STD control.

The 1960s and 1970s

As ASHA began to recognize that the STD issue connected with other issues, it reflected its broader approach in a name change, moving from American Social Hygiene Association to American Social Health Association in 1960. Among the issues of concern identified by ASHA was the link between STDs and drug use. In 1961 ASHA launched a new program that was the first to focus on the prevention of narcotic addiction and the treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts. The agency evaluated existing programs, issued position papers and informational booklets, maintained a clearinghouse, and sponsored four community-based pilot projects.

By the 1970s, though, additional novel problems led to soaring STD rates, including the sexual revolution, more international travel, gay liberation, birth control for women, and increasing drug use. Scientists were also recognizing more sexually transmitted pathogens, and viral STDs were making an appearance as well, from herpes simplex virus (HSV) to human papilloma virus (HPV). ASHA's public outreach efforts in this era included the creation of the Herpes Resource Center in 1979, the first program in the U.S. for people living with a viral STD. ASHA also established the National VD Hotline, where trained volunteers offers scientifically accurate information and support. ASHA also launched its first modern public awareness campaign, VD is For Everybody.[1] Working with the National Advertising Council, ASHA called attention to the alarming increase in the number of STDs by means of radio, television, and print public service announcements.

During the 1980s, ASHA continued to educate the public about sexually transmitted infections, primarily by means of telephone information and referral hot-lines, such as the National STD Hotline and the National AIDS Hotline. ASHA established the latter hotline in 1986, at that time the largest health-related hotline in the world. By the 1990s, the hotline was answering more than 1.5 million calls per year. The association also continued to advocate for public policies to combat STDS and increased funding for research. The identification of the AIDS virus added a new area of concern to the association's fight against sexually transmitted infections.

ASHA Today

ASHA continues its mission to improve the health of improving the health of individuals, families and communities with a focus on preventing sexually transmitted diseases and their harmful consequences, and has broadened its efforts into the field of sexual health. Its current programs include:

STI Resource Center, that provides information, materials and referrals to the public who have questions or concerns about sexually transmitted infections. Through its telephone hotline and online message boards, the Center answers questions on such topics as transmission, risk reduction, prevention, testing, and treatment and partner communication.

Herpes Resource Center, founded in 1979, continues to provide information and support through its multiple web pages, message board and publications. The center also offers The Helper, a quarterly journal that discusses the latest in herpes information, research, treatment, testing and patient-advocacy.

HPV and Cervical Cancer Prevention Resource Center, established in 1991, offers information and referrals about the Human Papillomavirus to patients, health care providers, and policy makers. The HPV Resource Center focuses on issues including HPV vaccines, partner communication and cervical cancer screening. The Center also offers a bimonthly electronic journal, HPV News, that covers the latest in HPV research, treatment and testing options, and policy issues.

ASHA's Research division conducts numerous research projects among local, regional, and national constituents focusing on a variety of populations and an assortment of health topics including sexually transmitted infections. ASHA's Washington staff works to educate members of Congress and other important voices in health policy about the urgency of research and frontline programs in the STI field.

Advocacy: ASHA has maintained a policy office in Washington, DC and has worked in partnership with other organizations in the area of sexual and reproductive health to advocate for proper attention and funding to STD research and programs.

National Cervical Cancer Coalition: NCCC became an ASHA program in the fall of 2011. Founded as a grass-roots organization in 1996, NCCC supports cervical cancer patients/survivors, families, and caregivers. NCCC has chapters[2] across the U.S.

ASHA milestones

• 1914 American Social Hygiene Association was founded
• 1920s John D. Rockefeller, Jr. commits funds to support ASHA's mission
• 1927 ASHA establishes the Valentine's Day Committee to promote sexual responsibility
• 1931 Trains field and send them to uncover commercial houses of prostitution, ASHA's leader, Thomas Parran, Jr., MD, is appointed Surgeon General by FDR
• 1934 CBS cancels a radio address by Dr. Parran, New York Commissioner of Health, because the script includes the word "syphilis"
• 1937 ASHA established First National Social Hygiene Day
• 1938 Eleanor Roosevelt attends ASHA's annual luncheon in honor of the passage of Venereal Disease Control Act
• 1943 Perception shifts from moral to medical interventions to solve the VD problem
• 1945 Joe Louis joins ASHA for a major public awareness campaign
• 1954 ASHA begins to monitor rates of venereal disease by collecting data that was then analyzed by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention "Today's VD Control Problem" published by ASHA until 1970. ASHA testifies before Congress, as it continues to do today, to urge adequate federal appropriations for VD control.
• 1959 ASHA changes its name to the American Social Health Association
• 1970s Dramatic rise in sexually transmitted infection rates because of international travel, the sexual revolution, gay liberation and increasing drug use. Scientists recognizing more and more sexually transmitted pathogens. Genital herpes, human Papillomavirus (HPV), hepatitis B identified.
• 1979 ASHA creates the National Herpes Resource Center, which includes the National Herpes Hotline
• 1986 ASHA opens the National AIDS Hotline, the largest health-related hotline in the world
• 1999 ASHA opens the National HPV and Cervical Cancer Prevention Resource Center with hotline
• 2011 ASHA merges with the National Cervical Cancer Coalition (NCCC) in October. NCCC becomes a program of ASHA and expands ASHA's reach to include cervical cancer survivors.
• 2012 ASHA changes its name to the American Sexual Health Association

See also

• Maurice Bigelow
• Reproductive health
• Social hygiene movement

References

1. https://www.youtube.com/user/ashastd#p/u/2/SN9_J3_9wPc
2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-08-04. Retrieved 2014-08-01.

External links

• Official website
• Finding aid for the American Social Health Association records at the Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.

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Part 1 of 4

Journal of Social Hygiene, January, 1922 [Excerpts]
Vol. VIII
by The American Social Hygiene Association
370 Seventh Avenue, New York

Contents:

• Editorial Announcement
• Education in Sex and Heredity: A Practical Program, by Henry M. Grant
• A Study of Specialized Courts Dealing with Sex Delinquency, II. The Misdemeanants' Division of the Philadelphia Municipal Court, by George E. Worthington and Ruth Topping
• Book Reviews
• Abstracts of Periodical Literature
• Note and Comment
• Social Hygiene Bibliography
• Contributors to This Issue
• "Now It Can Be Told"
• Book Reviews:
o Reid. The Prevention of Venereal Disease
o Galloway. The Father and His Boy
• Abstracts of Periodical Literature:
o Stoops. The Will and the Instinct of Sex.
o Darwin. The Aims and Methods of Eugenical Societies.
o Robinson. Control of Venereally Diseased Persons in Interstate Commerce
• Note and Comment:
o Annual Report of Interdepartmental Board
o The Eastern European Red Cross Conference on Venereal Diseases
o The Western European Red Cross Conference on Venereal Diseases

The Will and the Instinct of Sex. By John Dashiell Stoops, International Journal of Ethics, Vol. xxxii, No. 1, October, 1921.

As volition, reason, and individuality have developed in man, there has been a tendency to conquer or at least to control the instincts. In plants and animals, where none of these qualities exists, the sole objective of sex is the perpetuation of life. To them, sex is entirely unconscious. In man, however, sex consciousness has resulted in a deep sense of shame. Man, through reason, directs the channels through which the sex instinct expresses itself, but the sex drive itself is independent of reason. Its suppression by will is only an illusion, for, submerged below the level of conscious motives, it becomes the subconscious nucleus of a separate disorganizing personality.

With the development of the inner life of man, the drive of the sex instinct came into open conflict with the will. This dissociation of the will from the drive of sex diabolized both the sex instinct and the institution of the family. By demoralizing the family it destroyed the normal objective of the sex drive. It disorganized the very process of the will itself, for will, to be effective, must have something of the power and immediacy of instinct and emotion.

The emotion of sex is the voice of a unit larger than the individual. It is the voice of the race. It should be recognized by the individual. The drives of sex and parenthood must be regarded as entering into the very basis of the will. The moralization of the drive of sex restores to the will one of its main sources of power and one of its chief social objectives, which it lost in medieval times. A recognition of the ideal of sex will result in a positive development in which our instincts and emotions and desires will be organized in a system of objective ends. The facts of experience, such as sensations, images, and ideas, are always organized, more or less completely, into wholes by the various instinctive drives. It is within such a drive or whole that every sustained process of volition must function, and sex is one of the dominant drives of the race in the individual mind. The drives, the creative patterns, of life are in the instincts, and the will must find its ends and its motive powers in the instincts. The sex instinct has its unity of pattern, and volition can find a durable end only within the instinctive pattern which nature provides.

***

The Aims and Methods of Eugenical Societies. By Leonard Darwin. Science, Vol. liv, No. 1397, October 7, 1921.

Eugenic societies should strive for three things: (1) to make the public realize more fully what a potent influence heredity has on the race; (2) to try to ascertain and make known the rules by which the individual ought to regulate his own conduct in regard to parenthood in accordance with the laws of heredity in so far as they are now surely known; and (3) to determine the action which the state should take to stimulate and enforce conduct productive of racial progress, and to advocate a line of advance.

To accomplish the first purpose, it is necessary to spread a general knowledge of the laws of heredity. In doing this, there is the difficulty of breaking through the barriers of ignorance. Men uninformed of the facts of eugenics are prejudiced against believing that all men are not equal by birth. Great care should be taken to indicate that, though experience in the stock-yard enables eugenists to understand the laws of natural inheritance, yet reliance on these laws carries with it no implication whatever that the methods of the animal breeder ought to be introduced into human society. Those who regard the efforts of eugenists with distrust, should be eager to advocate the teaching of biology, since it is through biology that eugenic errors will be detected.

The second of the main lines is concerned with the rules by which an individual can guide his conduct in all matters relating to racial progress. The question of birth control brings up a number of ethical, racial, and economic factors. Even when approached calmly and scientifically, it is difficult to arrive at precise conclusions. For instance, it is quite possible that two individuals whose families were characterized by some degree of ill health, would, because of strong will power and high moral sense, obey any self-denying ordinance in regard to marriage. That would mean that there is a danger of losing the characteristic of high moral caliber from the race. This aspect must indeed be regarded by the eugenist.

In regard to the part of the state in the eugenic plan, there is much to be considered. Legislative reforms can seldom be effectively promoted unless they are sanctioned by public opinion and likewise eugenical societies would be wise to avoid taking action in regard to legislation unless proposed nearly unanimously. Legislation of general application producing beneficial racial effects includes certain taxation reforms. Taxation should fall less heavily on those burdened with families. Practical steps should be taken to lessen the fertility of habitual criminals and of the grossly unfit generally.

Progress on eugenic lines will make mankind become continually nobler, happier, and healthier. Those who imagine it is the aim of eugenical societies to make man a stronger animal or a better beast of burden are utterly ignorant of the meaning of the eugenical ideal.

***

NOTE AND COMMENT

ANNUAL REPORT OF INTERDEPARTMENTAL BOARD.

The report submitted by Thomas A. Storey, retiring executive secretary of the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board, for the year of 1920–21, contains many items of more than casual interest. One of the most striking facts brought out is the cost of venereal diseases, directly and indirectly. They cost the nation, through wage losses alone, $54,000,000, annually. The cost of the diseases to the army was estimated at $15,000,000 in a single year. Army and navy commanders, quoted in the report, credit the Social Hygiene Board with a large influence in reducing the venereal rate in 1920. The venereal disease rate in the army is said to be the best on record.

The report indicates that the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board has cooperated in the several phases of venereal-disease control. With the help of the law, 75 red-light districts have been shut down completely. In an effort to establish a measure of venereal-disease control, the sum of $2,450,000 was apportioned among the 48 states. These funds of the last four years, matched by state appropriations, have been devoted to supplying free salvarsan, free treatment centers, informational publicity, and repressive measures.

Forty institutions are cooperating with the Board in training teachers in social hygiene, in order to educate coming generations accurately and adequately. The Board has also expended much effort in developing the medical phases of venereal-disease control. The leading scientific schools are lending their men and laboratories to the cause. Forty-three separate researches are occupied on the unsolved medical problems.

Active members of the Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board are Edward Clifford, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, J. M. Wainwright, Assistant Secretary of War, Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Surgeon General M. W. Ireland of the Army, Surgeon General E. R. Stitt of the Navy, and Surgeon General Hugh S. Cumming of the Public Health Service. Dr. T. A. Storey, of the College of the City of New York, formerly chief inspector of the New York State military training commission, was executive secretary over the period covered by the report. He has been succeeded lately in that position by Dr. Valeria H. Parker, an active figure in the social-hygiene work of the National League of Women Voters, the National Women's Christian Temperance Union, the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teachers Associations, and the American Social Hygiene Association.

***

THE EASTERN EUROPEAN RED CROSS CONFERENCE ON VENEREAL DISEASES.

Prague was the center to which all the eastern European countries sent delegates for the meeting beginning December 5, 1921. The countries participating were Austria, Bulgaria, Czecho-Slovakia, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Roumania, Serbia, and Yugo-Slavia.

***

THE WESTERN EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON VENEREAL DISEASES.

This Conference, also promoted by the League of Red Cross Societies, was held at the Faculty of Medicine, Paris, December 14, 1921. The countries sending delegates were: Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland.

***

OCTOBER, 1921, ISSUES WANTED

Owing to the widespread demand from scientific and other educational institutions for copies of Vol. VII, No. 4, SOCIAL HYGIENE (October, 1921), the entire issue is exhausted. The Association would be glad to have copies returned by those members and subscribers who feel that they can spare them, in order that this demand from reference sources may be supplied.

***

OFFICERS AND DIRECTORS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIAL HYGIENE ASSOCIATION

Honorary President

Charles W. Eliot

Honorary Vice-Presidents

Miss Jane Addams
Newton D. Baker
R. Fulton Cutting
James Cardinal Gibbons [Deceased]
O. Edward Janney, M.D.
David Starr Jordan
Julius Rosenwald
William H. Welch, M.D.
President: Hermann M. Biggs, M.D.

Vice-Presidents

John J. Eagan
William S. Keller
John H. Stokes, M.D.
Ray Lyman Wilbur, M.D.

Treasurer

Jerome D. Greene

Secretary

Donald R. Hooker, M.D.

Board of Directors

Thomas M. Balliet
Maurice A. Bigelow
Hugh Cabot, M.D.
John M. Cooper
Mrs. Henry D. Dakin
Williams A. Evans, M.D.
Livingston Farrand, M.D.
Raymond B. Fosdick
Henry James
Edward L. Keyes, Jr., M.D.
Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw
James Pedersen, M.D.
Rockwell H. Potter
Roscoe Pound
George D. Pratt
Frederick F. Russell, M.D.
William F. Snow, M.D.
Mrs. Anna Garlin Specer
Walter T. Sumner
C.E.A. Winslow
Hugh H. Young, M.D.

Executive Committee

Edward L. Keyes, Jr., M.D.
Maurice A. Bigelow
Mrs. Henry D. Dakin
Raymond B. Fosdick
Henry James
George D. Pratt
William F. Snow, M.D.
President and Secretary, ex officio

***

CONTENTS OF RECENT ISSUES

January, 1921

What Venereal Diseases Cost the Community, by Charles J. MacAlister
The Essential Sociological Equipment of Workers with Delinquents, by Arthur J. Todd
The Social Hygiene Program of the Army, by Percy M. Ashburn
The American Negro and Social Hygiene, by Charles W. Roman

The American Negro and Social Hygiene, by Charles W. Roman, Former President, National Medical Association

Health and longevity, within certain limitations, are purchasable commodities. All may buy who are willing and able to meet the terms. In a large measure this is also true of morals. Standards of health and moral ideals are mutually complementary and measurably determined by heredity and environment. Morbidity and mortality are deeply influenced by conduct, and yet the conduct of an individual or a group cannot always be inferred from the incidence of disease, nor can the status of morals be determined by a registered death-rate. The American negro has been so influenced by his heredity and so hampered by his environment that it is difficult to determine the measure of his responsibilities, especially in matters of morals and health.

This discussion is confined to social-hygiene problems as they find peculiar development among the colored people. In such a study it is difficult to establish indisputable facts, which, of course, increases the fallibility of any deductions or explanations that may be offered. I shall therefore stay within the limits of my personal experiences and professional observations.

About twenty-five years ago I was rudely shocked by the arrest and conviction of an old colored physician upon the charge of procuring an abortion. I had known the old man for many years and had regarded him as an exceptionally well-balanced and upright individual, with strong personal opinions and independent standards of conduct. He was seriously pious and earnestly altruistic. I had never thought of this man in connection with crime. The evidence brought out at the trial showed him to be a victim of circumstances rather than an intentional criminal, and he got off with a light sentence. Popular sympathy, in which I joined, favored him.

The old doctor returned from the penitentiary neither repentant nor humiliated. The arguments with which he justified his conduct in the face of my reproof shocked and astonished me, but aroused in me an interest in sex matters that has gathered momentum with years. This old black man, with the incitement and collusion of both the prospective parents and their friends, interrupted the course of gestation in a white woman, and felt no sense of guilt. All of the participants were equally free from compunctions of conscience. I was interested and puzzled. It took me a long time to find a satisfactory explanation of the conduct of these people.

My final conclusion was that human reason has not yet devised a code which harmonizes individual interests with social welfare. Here is the heart, not only of the sex problem, but of the social and economic troubles that have alternately caused and defeated revolutions since history began. Conduct and convention deviate to the breaking point, then mix up and start all over again in the same directions, to repeat indefinitely the vicious circle. The times are ripe for resetting the landmarks of convention and restating the standards of social morality. It is the duty of all good citizens not only to take a hand in this work but to study and inform themselves that they may intelligently help others. Thoughtful colored people are very much at sea just now both in religion and in morals. The spirit of intolerance and extremism so manifest in all phases of our socio-economic life today is particularly pernicious among colored people. There is danger of losing the landmarks in the attempt to reset them. The necessary inhibitions of civilization may be destroyed in the effort to establish freedom, and self-determination may end in anarchy instead of democracy.

The emotionality of the colored man's religion has often militated against its practicality; that is, his moral practices have not conformed to his spiritual professions. Judge Stevens, of Winston-Salem, told me that in investigating the life-history of Negro criminals, he was surprised to note that he seldom found an adult who was not or had not been a member of the church. The actual fact of this failure of the Negro church to influence the moral conduct of its members would probably explain many phases of the racial problem. It unfortunately conforms also to what the colored man believes of his white brother. I am quite sure that some religious missionaries of the white race would be surprised to know the opinions that illiterate colored people have of "white folks' religion." How clearly each sees the mote in the other's eye!

The mysteries thrown about religion often darken the counsels of practical wisdom. This undesirable condition becomes a social calamity when pathology is used to interpret the ways of Providence and disease is regarded as a moral agent for the protection of the innocent. Nature is inexorable and without sympathy, but she is also fair and without prejudice. She respects only obedience and intelligence, having no mercy on ignorance nor sympathy for innocence. Social hygiene is inextricably bound up with the sex relations, and the so-called "venereal diseases," by their frequency and destructiveness, make not only our most interesting and perplexing health problems but our most complicated and discouraging moral questions.

Available statistics indicate a higher venereal rate among colored Americans than among white. This statement is subject to many qualifications and reservations. The figures are undoubtedly tinged with prejudice. Comparisons to be just should be made with similar grades and classes, and the statistics should be gathered under like circumstances. This was seldom or never done, not even in the army. (The colored physicians within and without the army are unanimous in their testimony of unfairness to colored soldiers in health and administrative matters.1 [1. A striking illustration of this kind of reasoning is to be found in a recent number of a reputable medical journal (American Journal of Opthalmology, Vol. iv, No. 1) in which some comparative anatomical generalizations are made concerning the structure of the nasal canal. The conclusions are based upon the examination of 15 white individuals and 9 colored individuals. The youngest one of the whites was 23 years old, the youngest of the colored was 65. The oldest white was 67; the oldest colored, 90. The combined age of the nine Negroes was 652, while that of the fifteen whites was 629, making the average for the whites a little less than 42 years; for the colored a little more than 72 years. When we consider the well-known changes that time brings in the structure of the face, the unsoundness of any comparative data which ignore these changes must at once be apparent.]) But when all is said and done the higher incidence must be admitted. The colored people need to be convinced of the facts and their importance. This duty, of course, falls primarily upon the colored medical men, who see the facts and appreciate the situation. But they need both encouragement and help. There are some very essential facts of the race situation that seem to be ignored, suppressed, or unknown by one side or the other in practically all of the discussions of the color problem in this country. The venereal-disease incidence is not sufficiently understood by the colored people. Yet the prevalence of venereal diseases bears a demonstrable relationship to the average intelligence of a community. And the rate among colored people shows an unvarying relationship to that of the whites for the same community; highest where highest among whites and lowest where lowest among whites. The frequent co-existence of the tubercular bacillus and Spirochaeta pallida is another condition found among colored people to which the rank and file of the medical profession are not fully alive.

One of the purposes of social hygiene is to "advocate the highest standards of private and public morality." This is a phase of the work of which the colored people stand particularly in need. The home is not only the first and most important social unit, but it is the basis of civilization. Sexual promiscuity is in direct antagonism to the home. The heritages of slavery and the handicaps of race prejudice have played havoc with the home life of the colored people. This is the steepest grade on the long and weary road from serfdom to citizenship. Here is the race's weakest point. The slum life of the city and the poverty and illiteracy of the country are cunning and dangerous enemies to the personal purity and self-restraint of good homes. The abolition of the open saloon and the red-light district has been a Godsend to the Negro home. It has been truthfully said: "What can most be depended on to stand against the alluring circumstances of a tempting occasion are fixed principles and fixed habits of thought and character. These are the effects of rearing and of lifelong education rather than of sporadic efforts spent on adults." Next to the home the public school is the most available and effective teacher and guardian of individual and public morals. Here again the neglect of schools for colored children creates a distinct gap in the chain of defenses against a lower social morality.

Health problems begin with the souls and not with the bodies of men. Tried by the standards of aspiration and self-help, the colored people qualify as a deserving group for social reenforcement. The colored woman resents the promiscuity of the colored man and hopes for the dawn of a better day. Nor is the colored man completely unresponsive to the single-standard appeals. He usually recognizes the injustice of prostitution. Not only are the colored people deserving of help, but they are worth saving. Competent army medical authority, after an exhaustive investigation, concludes that "the Negro seems to have more stable nerves, has better eyes, and metabolizes better. Thus in many respects the uninfected colored troops show themselves to be constitutionally better physiological machines than the white men."

Reproduction is as important to society as nutrition is to the individual; for social continuity depends upon the succession of individual lives as individual bodies depend upon cell life and reproduction. Social health, therefore, requires not only the structural integrity and normal functioning of the individuals composing the group, but the ability and willingness upon the part of those individuals to produce offspring fit to succeed them.

The scarcity of children among educated colored people is one of the striking phases of the social-hygiene problem as it affects the race. The fact of this scarcity is too patent to need proof. What is the explanation? Is it physical, mental, moral or environmental? My opinion, based on personal observation, thought, and experience, is that all four factors enter into the problem, but that environment is the most important. The moral status of the colored people has been greatly influenced by the handicaps of racial prejudice. In private practice I have frequently heard intelligent and upright colored women say they would rather die than to bring children into the world to suffer what they had suffered. Infanticide and abortion, those gruesome American vices, are not unknown in the social life of colored America. On the other hand the doctrines of birth control are finding many devotees among intelligent colored people. I recall very vividly a case of mine where four successive full-term stillbirths were followed by a self-induced abortion that ended fatally. What advice should have been given this young and apparently healthy mother? Society has no right to unsex people, nor to force unwilling parenthood upon any one. Instruct such women intellectually and morally and leave them the freedom and responsibility of a decision.

Health not only comprehends the physical integrity of our bodies and the normal cooperative functioning of their organs, but our moral practices and our spiritual aims. Beliefs and hopes lie within the connotations of health. A man must be before he can be anything. The right to live may be conceded, but the ability to do so must be asserted, demonstrated, proved. When the returns are all in, moral purpose is quite as important in matters of health as physical stamina. All of this the Negro sees as through a glass darkly, and feels as a strange and not understood activating motive.

Inertia is more dangerous to reform that opposition. A voice crying in the wilderness is typical of a teacher of a new doctrine. Heedlessness precedes opposition as opposition presages interest. The bulk of our colored population forms a fertile field for social-hygiene work. Not only does the awakening racial consciousness of these people render propitious the present time for spreading the principles of social hygiene, but any common effort in a good cause will tend to lessen the acuteness of those growing angularities of racial differences that bode no good to the republic. The believers in human brotherhood have never been able to formulate a workable definition of their doctrine. The nearest approach to a workable formula is the ethical equivalent to the mathematical axiom, "things equal to the same thing are equal to each other." People who will work for the same ends will work for each other. If the social order is not to collapse, the whole of civilization must be infused with spiritual values and goals. It is not only a moral privilege but a patriotic duty to strengthen the ideals of social purity and widen the horizon of social justice among all elements of our population during this period of reconstruction and change.

The colored people are now at that stage of racial evolution where the blandishments of personal appeal outweigh the influence of rational argument. Reading is not general enough for effective missionary efforts by the printed word. But if the lines of policy are wisely laid, the race presents a peculiarly inviting field for the operation of the forces of social betterment -- a field at once accessible and responsive, where personality is at a premium and adaptability means success

Galahad, Knight Who Perished: A Poem to All Crusaders Against the International and Interstate Traffic in Young Girls

Galahad ... soldier that perished ... ages ago,
Our hearts are breaking with shame, our tears overflow.
Galahad ... knight who perished ... awaken again,
Teach us to fight for immaculate ways among men.
Soldiers fantastic, we pray to the star of the sea,
We pray to the mother of God that the bound may be free.
Rose-crowned lady from heaven, give us thy grace,
Help us the intricate, desperate battle to face
Till the leer of the trader is seen nevermore in the land,
Till we bring every maid of the age to one sheltering hand.
Ah, they are priceless, the pale and the ivory and red!
Breathless we gaze on the curls of each glorious head!
Arm them with strength mediaeval, thy marvelous dower,
Blast now their tempters, shelter their steps with thy power.
Leave not life's fairest to perish -- strangers to thee,
Let not the weakest be shipwrecked, oh, star of the sea!
[By permission of the Macmillan Company, from The Congo and Other Poems, by Vachel Lindsay.]

I well remember how the vision of the veritable existence of the World Mother first dawned upon me many years ago. I think I was privileged to see Her, however faintly, not only as an ideal, or even as One in the succession of Personifications of the Mother Aspect of Deity, but also as a wondrous living Being, the Exquisite Jewel in the Hierarchy of Earth's Adepts, the World Mother for this epoch, the Star of the Sea, as She is severally named....

Thus I have come to believe, even to know, that there is such a wondrous and glorious Being on our Earth as the World Mother... I have also learned that She ever seeks human agents and human helpers who will serve in Her name and endeavour to live in Her presence. Whilst women especially represent Her, She also needs men of honour to be her knights, ever ready to fight for the weak and the exploited and to guard with knightly loyalty all women and children, as true knights should. Unhappily, men tend to forget the ideals of chivalry, save those who are still knightly in their nature....

On one other memorable occasion an Angel Teacher opened my consciousness into some realisation of the present holder of the Office of World Mother, who is Mary, the mother of Jesus...

"She sends this message through the Brotherhood to men:-

"In the Name of Him whom long ago I bore, I come to your aid. I have taken every woman into my heart, to hold there a part of her that through it I may help her in her time of need.

"Uplift the women of your race till all are seen as queens, and to such queens let every man be as a king, that each may honour each, seeing the other's royalty. Let every home, however small, become a court, every son a knight, every child a page. Let all treat all with chivalry, honouring in each their royal parentage, their kingly birth; for there is royal blood in every man; all are the children of the KING."

-- The Spiritual Significance of Motherhood, by Geoffrey Hodson

Vachel Lindsay is what I would call a village genius, as naïve as a child. He came from Springfield, Illinois, and his mother was a kind of a theosophist. The boy was looked on, even from his earliest days, as the people around Springfield said, as being half-cracked, which he definitely was. He had a couple of early notions about poetry, three or four, which are kind of unique and kind of fun. One of them was that poetry is, or should be, like a circus act. It should be what he called the “higher vaudeville.” He himself read his poems for a period of ten or twelve years to the largest audiences that have ever been in this country for poetry. Everybody was absolutely wild about him. He used to insist that anybody who came to his poetry readings would show a book of his own collected poems at the door so that they would have the text, because, along side the text were written instructions to the audience who would join in certain passages. He was like a poetical revivalist. And he would turn his readings and his public performances into tent shows, carnivals, which combined about one-half religious fervor and the other half the enthusiasm of the carny baker, carnival barker. But they were supposed to be great fun.

The American public tired of them after a while. After he had made such a success doing this sort of thing he fell from favor, but he had committed his life to going around giving readings. He didn’t have any other means of livelihood. His audiences continued to dwindle. He’d been a fad for a while, and the audiences got smaller and smaller and smaller, and finally he didn’t have any livelihood from it at all. He was engaged in a tragic love affair with another American poet named Sara Teasdale. What happens to Vachel Lindsay, at the age of fifty-two, after his vogue passed, his vogue of the village genius and the revivalist carnival poet, what happened was that he went back to the house where he was born in Springfield and swallowed a bottle of Lysol and died this hideous, agonizing death by his own hand. It’s funny, isn’t it, how these ecstatic, ebullient types always end up as suicides or alcoholics or come to some kind of tragic end. I’ve heard Vachel Lindsay spoken of as a precursor of Dylan Thomas, and in some ways indeed he was. He had the same kind of naïve, enthusiastic sense of mission. He was a great public performer. At his height he got the highest prices for public readings of anybody up until the time of Dylan Thomas. He burned out quickly. He was demoralized by his personal life. He felt betrayed by his public. And in the end he had no personal resources to draw on.

But he is what I would characterize as a hell of a lot of fun as a poet. He wrote far too much. He was really completely uncritical of his own work. He didn’t know what was good or what was bad. He wrote easily. He wrote in very heavy rhythmical cadences. He wrote poems that are so odd and so crazy and so naïve that you wouldn’t believe them unless you saw them, but in a few they catch the accent of the American ballyhoo, the carnival, the circus atmosphere, where native types or folk legends are caught up and made, not only larger than life, but into something like a display by P.T. Barnum. But he was completely undiscriminating. For Vachel Lindsay, it didn’t make any difference to him whether he mythologized Abraham Lincoln or Johnny Appleseed or Mary Pickford. It was all the same to him. If he got going on one of these figures, they were all just part of his sideshow. So therefore there is an enormous lot of waste and enormous lot of undistinguished stuff, but the best of it is really inimitable.

He was an absolute child, all the way up until the age of fifty-two, when he died. This is his idea, for example, of a Negro minister giving sermons. And Lindsay has this marvelous capacity, which a poet really ought to have, of really throwing himself, in his own way, into the subject. This is Vachel Lindsay’s idea put into the mouth of a Negro preacher. This is called “When Peter Jackson Preached in the Old Church.” Here’s the circus-style Vachel Lindsay.

When Peter Jackson Preached in the Old Church
[To be sung to the tune of the old negro spiritual “Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I’ll pray.”]

Peter Jackson was a-preaching
And the house was still as snow.
He whispered of repentance
And the lights were dim and low
And were almost out
When he gave the first shout:
“Arise, arise,
Cry out your eyes.”
And we mourned all our terrible sins away.
Clean, clean away.
Then we marched around, around,
And sang with a wonderful sound: --
“Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I’ll pray.
Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I’ll pray.”
And we fell by the altar
And fell by the aisle,
And found our Savior
In just a little while,
We all found Jesus at the break of the day,
We all found Jesus at the break of the day.
Blessed Jesus,
Blessed Jesus.

-- Classes on Modern Poets and the Art of Poetry, by James Dickey

Is “Stigma” Removable?, by Ada E. Sheffield
Colony Care for Isolation and Dependent Cases, by Charles Bernstein
The Work of the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board, 1919–20, by Thomas A. Storey

April, 1921

The Responsibilities of Religious Leaders in Sex Education, by Thomas W. Galloway
A New Emphasis in Social Hygiene Education, by Harry A. Wembridge
The Status of Sex Education in Public Educational Institutions, by Vivian H. Harris
A Psychological Study of Motion Pictures in Relation to Venereal Disease Campaigns, by Karl S. Lashley and John B. Watson

July, 1921

The Distribution of Wealth as a Eugenist Sees It, by Roswell H. Johnson

The Distribution of Wealth as a Eugenist Sees It, by Roswell Hill Johnson, M.S.1 [The author desires to acknowledge the cooperation of Mr. Kenneth M. Gould in the preparation of this paper.], Professor of Geology, School of Mines, University of Pittsburgh

No issues are more significant for the future well-being of the human race or bulk larger in the public mind today than those which involve the continuance of our present modes of distribution of wealth. This is conceded by every thoughtful person wherever his sympathies or judgments may lie in regard to points of controversy. To the extent to which the existing method of distribution can be held to contain the salt of soundness in respect to the maximum development of personality, as far as scientific criteria can be applied thereto, the rationally minded must concede its desirability and formulate their social policies accordingly.

The two outstanding problems are:

1. To what extent is economic status correlated with desirable germinal qualities?

2. To what extent is racial contribution correlated with economic status?

The first of these, of course, assumes the essential validity of modern theories of the inheritance of moral and mental traits. The second resolves itself into three distinct problems, those respectively of (a) viability, (b) nuptiality, (c) fecundity, all of which are factors in determining the total contribution of a given stock to the social population.

The attack on these two most vital lines of investigation [is] greatly hampered and obscured by unscientific thinking and romanticizing. It is a fundamental psychological law that we prefer conclusions that are pleasurable, and unconsciously conceal from ourselves the disagreeable, especially where it involves defects in our own personalities. Hence arises the reluctance of mediocrity to admit the existence or importance of variable germinal qualities. This is a vice peculiarly characteristic of a political democracy like the United States, wherein a strong equalitarian prejudice has existed almost from the beginning of our national experiment and has become, in fact, a fixed tradition.

But let us analyze vigorously the biological aspects of the present economic system, and then examine the few instances where quantitative observations of the problem have been made and correlations of some sort measured.

The competitive economic world, in several important ways, is selective of superior ability. It will not do, of course, to press these suggestions too far, nor is it claimed that the same factors operate universally or with equal intensity or justice to all concerned. But they are certainly present in some degree and may even be called the rule in the industrial and business world today.

1. The search for employees is selective. In the civil service, federal, state, and municipal, and increasingly in the private commercial world the passage of competitive examinations is a requirement for employment. This is a highly desirable tendency worthy of extension and the examination content should be psychologically studied and improved. But even where the examination method is not in use, executives have almost universally recognized the necessity of some principles of selection in employment. Frequently the independent judgment of others is called for and compared. The possession of diplomas and honors of various kinds is a distinct factor in many professional and technological pursuits; and in almost every occupation the previous positions held and salaries received are inquired into. All of these factors act selectively to sift the wheat from the chaff.

2. Promotion is selective. Whether it be for the purpose of holding men, or to promote the morale of organizations, or to stimulate to greater or more consistent production, or simply as the reward of proved merit in the special qualities needed in a given industry or business, promotion recognizes superior ability. There is of course the element of "pull" which frequently enters in. Some will perhaps feel that the business world is so permeated with this that actual merit seldom gets its deserts. Making due allowances here, it is, however, often the case that even the so-called "pull" is based upon superiority of some sort -- family connections, possession of tact or other desirable social qualities, having won the admiration of judges whose opinion is highly respected, aggressiveness, etc. The defeated are naturally wont to attribute the success of the winner to favoritism. The star scholar is always "teacher's pet" in the minds of the laggards.

3. Regularity of employment is another element which attaches in some measure to superior germinal qualities. This is not to deny the possibility of temporary or even prolonged unemployment due to misfortune or economic depression. But the superior workman is ordinarily not the first to be dropped in such periods of stress. Neither is he subject to other types of interferences which are concomitant with physical, mental, or emotional deficiency. He is less liable to protracted illness, on account of better personal hygiene. He is less frequently in trouble with the law through arrest and imprisonment. He is not handicapped by habits of inebriety or drug addiction which render him temporarily inefficient or jobless. He is, of course, seldom constitutionally psychopathic, the victim of an instability which makes his relations with himself or his fellowmen difficult.

4. The process of choosing one's profession or occupation involves a considerable degree of judgment of one's fitness for the opportunities in a particular calling. This is no mean type of ability in those who have been especially successful in finding a congenial vocation which calls forth their best knowledge, energy, and satisfaction for the greatest return.

5. Superiority is likewise manifested by the avoidance of unwise investments and the choice of wise ones. This obviously plays a large part in the stability of accumulations of capital of any size. All persons who have cash are subject to the blandishments of salesmen efficient in the promotion of their own products or investments. To criticize them shrewdly and resist those that are unreliable is necessary where money is to be retained. This is a mark of calm and well-informed judgment.

A few compilations of data bearing on the subject of correlation between desirable germinal qualities and economic status have been made. As yet this is a but slightly cultivated field, but one that deserves the best efforts of sociological, psychological, and eugenic investigators. The following examples are illustrative:

1. Paterson1 [Donald G. Paterson, School and Society, vol. vii, No. 160, pp. 84-89, Jan. 19, 1918.] made a mental survey of the school population of a Kansas town of 2,500 inhabitants using Pintner's Mental Survey Scale. The town is a railroad center and is divided into an east and a west side by the railroad. East of the tracks are the homes of the laboring class, mostly railway trainmen and shop mechanics. West of the tracks live the business and professional classes. The results for the east side school and for the west side school were calculated and presented separately. Using the percentile method, the median indices for the six grades of the east side school ranged from 32 to 52.5 with the median index for all the children at 56, while those for the corresponding grades in the west side school ranged from 49 to 70, and the median for all children was 59. When the grades were distributed into five classes of ability (dull, backward, normal, bright, very bright), the distribution among children of the laboring classes was markedly skewed toward the left (lower grades of mentality), while the curve of the children of the business and professional classes was skewed to the right. The writer states that the tests involved in this study are not objective measures of "beliefs, customs, or political, religious, and educational traditions," but are rather measures of native endowment, relatively uninfluenced by social and economic forces. He contends, therefore, that the inferior mental ability of children found in poor social surroundings is not due to the social factors involved, but to the mental inferiority of the parent stocks.

2. Kornhauser2 [Arthur H. Kornhauser, Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 157-164, October, 1918.] made a comparative study of the financial standing of parents as indicated by possession of telephones (a significant index of economic status) and the intelligence of their children. One thousand school children chosen at random were distributed into three divisions: (a) Retarded -- those whose actual grade in school was one year or more under the theoretically normal grade, assuming regular promotion of one whole grade each year from the age of six on. (b) Normal -- those who were at grade, (c) Advanced -- those whose actual grade was one year or more above normal. The distribution was as follows: retarded, 29 per cent; normal, 52.5 per cent; advanced, 18.5 per cent. The families of the same thousand children were subscribers to telephone service in the following proportion: families of the retarded children, 56 telephones, or 19.3 per cent (of the total telephones); normal, 168, or 32 per cent; advanced, 92, or 49.7 per cent. By the simple association formula of Yule, the positive coefficient of correlation between this intelligence of school children and the possession of telephones by their families was found to be .61. Evidently a real association exists in this case between school standing and economic standing.

3. Scott3 [Walter Dill Scott, "The Scientific Selection of Salesmen," Advertising and Selling, Oct., Nov., Dec., 1915.] describes tests conducted by large tobacco and silk concerns upon the efficiency of their salesmen and employees. In the case of the silk firm, 26 employees, well-known to at least three of the bosses, were rated in numerical order by five bosses, following a personal interview of each employee by each boss. The men were then ranked according to their average output and corresponding value to the firm. The two rankings gave a positive correlation of .88, while the coefficients between the rankings of the various bosses ranged between .57 and .91, four of the five being over .8. This high correlation shows that ability as measured by impartial judges has its reflection in efficiency. That efficiency is appreciated and financially rewarded by the average industrial concern is generally true.

4. The Civic Club of Pittsburgh, an organization interested in all forms of social welfare, has for a number of years had a committee, of which I have had the privilege of being chairman, whose object is to secure scholarships for poor students of exceptional ability who would not otherwise be able to continue their education. This is a distinctly eugenic aim and it is highly desirable that no aspiring young man or woman of native talent should be deprived of the opportunity of proper training owing to adventitious financial circumstances or the humbleness of his origin. But the results so far have been meager because in fact it develops that the most promising students go to college, owing to the higher incidence of ability in families that are able to send their children. Interviews with teachers and pupils also reveal the fact that it is very infrequent that a brilliant student in grammar school fails to enter high school. It is well known that in high school and college those who graduate average greatly superior in record to those who drop out before graduation.

From these studies the conclusions may be drawn that there is some positive correlation between ability and income. That correlation is naturally most marked within a particular occupation group. It is less obvious between occupations. This is one of the many facts which makes a better and more scientific type of vocational guidance important, even imperative, in the near future.

In the past many factors of privilege or prejudice have existed which acted to interfere with the normal tendency of intellectual ability to find its proper level and secure its just reward. Many of these have already disappeared or are fast disappearing in our modern civilized nations, and I believe we may confidently expect that as time goes on there will be found fewer and fewer of such obstacles to the unhampered movement of talent and genius to positions of power and leadership in society.

For instance, the institutions of royalty, nobility, and caste are passing. The wars and revolutions of the past decade have probably set the seal of doom upon hereditary monarchy, and the privilege of the nobility has distinctly lost ground in the majority of Western constitutional governments.

The prejudice against the trades or commerce or against humble origins independent of ability, while still strong in some nations has, especially as the result of the war, shown a rapid decline.

Taxation is becoming increasingly graduated to the economic capacity of the individual. All varieties of income, estate, and inheritance taxes contribute to this general effect.

Unfair trade practices are being increasingly called in question, both by the arousal of public opinion against them and by governmental interference.

Unfair discrimination in the choice of advancement of personnel is still not rare, of course, but there are signs that public opinion is less indifferent to it than formerly, especially in the political field.

Finally, positive elements are helping to extend the incidence of opportunity and to graduate it more surely to negative capacities. Of these, the free public library is of first importance. Those who voluntarily profit by the public library system are obviously the most deserving from the standpoint of ability. Recent tendencies in education are also in the direction of greater adaptation to the distribution of intelligence in the general population. The growth of the mental testing movement in the schools is one phase of this, which, with the increase of competitive scholarships makes the inequitable holding back of talent less common.

Granted then that the evidence, meager as it is, at least favors the hypothesis that desirable germinal qualities are correlated to some extent with economic status, what are the implications of this assumption upon the problem of racial contribution?

In the first place, better economic status indubitably increases viability -- whether this is an environmental or hereditary fact is beside the point. The effect upon both the vitality and longevity is there and can be measured. Numerous studies of infant mortality have proved that a child's chances of survival beyond the fatal first year of life increase in almost direct proportion to family income within the lower income groups. The significance of this for the race stream is that a greater percentage of children in better economic status attain to maturity and become capable of reproduction.

As to the relation of financial condition to nuptiality, or the ratio of marriages per 1000 persons of all ages a given year, less can be predicated. Probably a higher financial status has little net effect upon the age of marriage. If anything, it tends to defer marriage, because the whole influence of education and the habits of forethought and calculated self-interest among the upper classes make for delay. Financial ability alone, of course, might be expected, other things being equal, to hasten and facilitate marriage, but unfortunately increasing standards more than counteract this possible effect.

There is likely, however, to be a helpful selective effect through the action of preferential mating. The young men and women of better financial status are sought for these reasons as well as for other qualities. Eligibility with those of a similar financial level is thus enhanced. This feature has been thought by some to be wholly an evil. It is only an evil when out of balance with other characteristics in the individual case.

When we come to a consideration of the birth-rate, the influence of economic status is a commonplace. Where, as in the United States, efficient means of birth control are known only to the well-informed and are prevented, because of legal interferences from widespread dissemination in the lower classes, birth-rate is almost inevitably correlated positively with ignorance, which is in turn a function of poverty. Where on the other hand, efficient means of birth control are widely known and no legal prohibitions exist, this correlation is reduced, because the naturally inhibiting effects of poverty on fecundity then have a chance to make themselves felt.

A third possibility which should appeal to those of a scientific mind who have in the past withheld their approval from the movement for birth control would be the setting up of moderate legal restrictions on birth control information, coupled with a eugenic birth control society which should concern itself with distributing information and approved devices to married couples of inferior germinal qualities. Of course, the basis of selection would have to be esoteric, the ostensible reasons being those advanced on a purely sentimental basis by the existing birth control societies. I believe the lower-class Negro and the illiterate white birth-rates could be greatly reduced by such a system. The result would not be, as some analyze the situation, the substitution of complete knowledge for complete ignorance. If we compare the facts of the present status with the proposed one, we find that with the exception of the fraction of the population among which religious prohibitions operate, the great majority of the population is now using some sort of birth deterrents, generally ineffective and often harmful, in lieu of the desired more efficient means. The present rigidity of control is based on the desire to keep the more efficient means under control.

What then are the specific recommendations that the eugenist might make looking toward a juster adaptation of economic conditions to native ability and the encouragement of a more eugenic distribution of racial contribution?

1. With respect to taxation, it should be recognized that there is a point above which incomes do not add to the desire nor the financial capacity for having children. Below that point, on the other hand, prudent parents will voluntarily have fewer children than they would be willing to have if their incomes warranted. The incidence of taxation, from the eugenic point of view, should be limited to those fortunes which rise above this point; in other words the biologically excessive wealth should be taxed. It is obvious that this dividing line is higher than the exemptions allowed by our present income tax law, which places the heaviest burden upon the salaried and professional classes which constitute in the large a very desirable portion of the population. To compensate for the loss in revenue here, a steeper gradation of inheritance taxes above the biologically excessive point would be possible. Exemption from taxation of all future bond issues should be abolished.

2. Proceeding on the principles outlined before, the removal of the present restrictions on the legality of sale and dissemination of literature, oral information, and means of efficient birth control are desirable. But safeguards are needed against the abuse of such freedom and should be provided by the continued restriction of commercial advertising or public exhibition of such means as previously suggested, coupled with an active propagation of such information and distribution of approved means to the eugenically inferior. It is of course true that not all eugenists are agreed upon the best racial policy to be followed in regard to birth control. Here, at least, is a suggested one..

3. Legislation to promote fair play in business, prohibition of fraudulent methods, and education to a higher level of business ethics.

4. Sound vocational guidance, involving systematic mental measurements of all school children, the extension of continuation schools, trade testing and individual analysis, and free facilities for such service to older persons. More discriminating personnel work in business and industry generally.

5. Special educational opportunities for those especially fitted to profit by them, as opposed to the mistaken attitude of equality in present school ideals.

6. Support and extension of the free public library system.

7. Support of scientific laboratories, (a) for the benefit of inventors with technical ability but limited capital; (b) for those discovered to be peculiarly apt as scientific investigators.

8. Opposition to all social factors interfering with or postponing the marriage of superiors. Among such factors are graduate fellowships with inadequate stipends; educational isolation of the sexes in men's and women's colleges; over-elaborate standards of living and invidious display in expenditure; and too prolonged education for admission to the learned professions.

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Part 2 of 4

Some Dysgenical Effects of the War in Italy, by Marcello Boldrini

Some Dysgenical Effects of the War in Italy, by Marcello Boldrini, Dottore in Science Echonomiche, Rome

The effects of the war on the hygiene of the races are so complicated and intricate as to make full exemplification thereof practically impossible. However, all results of the war, from the most direct, -- the death of vast numbers of the best of the young men on the battle-fields, -- to the most remote, have an aspect that is disgenical or, using the word in its broadest and most general sense, eugenical.

At first, the military authorities, attentive to the menace to the physical efficiency of the populations arising from the state of war and the necessity for present and future measures for prevention and reparation, and the civil authorities, concerned with taking over the war industries and convinced of the political interest in avoiding demographic decadence, which is the point of departure of social and economic decadence, directed their efforts toward relieving the extraordinary conditions in which the population was living and toward obtaining remedies for preventing, controlling, and limiting the disastrous consequences. But the remedies taken were, necessarily, extremely hasty rather than organized, systematic, and of a preventive and reparative nature; not so much from the difficulty of reconciling exigencies directly contrasting, nor from the impracticability of the measures suggested by those who comprehended the burden of the situation, if nothing more; as from the lack of an exact notion of the evils themselves which, always difficult to estimate, are exceptionally so in wartime because of their rapid appearance and increase and the irregularity of their sequence. For this reason, if much has been done, there is still a great deal left to be accomplished and, since a large part of the causes of the disgenical disturbance have now been removed or are on the point of being removed, the situation must be made clear and the disgenical consequences of the war defined with the greatest precision before determining the plan for post-war measures which must essentially be organic, systematic, and continuous. We are in the same position as the farmer who shuts himself in the house and watches the hailstorm through the windows after having brought in the few plants which he can protect and then, when the storm is over, goes out to estimate the damages before deciding what must be done. So must we consider the social cyclone which raged over Europe for six years, the havoc of which we are only now able to estimate. The program, then, is to draw up an inventory of the damages and means for reparation.

It is my intention to emphasize, first, the peculiar situation of Italy, a country which, perhaps more than any other, has suffered from the war because facing the same demands that confronted the other great nations, it had at its disposal less adequate means and instruments. I shall endeavor to put in evidence some of the disgenical effects of the war which, ordinarily, are given the least consideration but which, when brought to the attention, are seen to be of exceptional importance.

It i said, and not only as metaphor, that each population has its age. Age is not spoken of here in the historical sense (because such a concept would leave the empiric-scientific field to enter the philosophic); but in the sense of the average age, that is, the arithmetical average of the age of its components at a given time. Now it is clear that the high or low average age of a population depends upon its composition or whether the old or young have the greater preponderance. Hence, the average age of a population may be assumed to indicate its composition, according to age.

It is also said that a young population, whose average age is low, may look to the future while the past belongs to the old; that the one lives in memories while the other dreams of a future of power and success; that while the latter is content with the position attained and riches amassed, the former looks to developing and strengthening its power in the world and directing all its energies for the realization of a better tomorrow.

The Italian population, in 1914, was one of the youngest in western Europe. Estimating roughly, on the basis of broad divisions of age, we may consider that the average age of the populations of the three great powers of continental Europe, before the war, was practically the following: France, 28 years; Italy, 25 years; Germany, 24 years. The countries of the north are found to have the highest average age and Russia and the Balkans the lowest.

However, we may say that the war has increased the average age of the Italian population. Without conjecturing on the extent, as the data for the estimation would be insufficient and inexact, the reasons for the increase may be readily set forth.

For this, it is necessary to draw up a demographic balance sheet of the Italian war. The task is arduous and long and I do not intend to tire the readers with minute reference to the data and judgments on the basis of which I reached my results. I intend to give only a broad estimate but, in reaching this, I overlook nothing and feel confident of the value of the results.

Losses

Estimated number of births below normal for the five-year period, 1914-1918: 1,132,000
Estimated number of deaths above normal from 0-1 year in the same period: 144,000
Estimated number of deaths above normal from 1-5 years in the same period: 40,000
Presumable total infantile mortality: 1,316,000
Deaths in the army, all classifications (calculation of the Supreme Command): 428,000
Estimated number of civilian deaths above normal for the five-year period, 1914-1918: 172,000
Presumable total adult mortality: 600,000
Presumable total losses: 1,916,000

Gains

Estimated excess of emigrants over repatriates not occurring in the five-year period 1914-1918: 1,106,000
Estimated number of repatriates in excess of emigrants in this period: 450,000
Presumable total gains: 1,556,000
Presumable net losses: 360,000

Aside from the political and economic importance of the decrease in emigration and the intensified repatriation, with respect to the efficiency of the colonies without flags and the national commercial balance, it is probable that the immense demographic restoration of the Italian population could almost completely compensate for the losses caused by the war in the country.

But, if we analyze the various parts of the balance sheet, we readily observe that only the "deaths in war" and "estimated number of civilian deaths above normal for the 5 years" find actual compensation in the excess of repatriates over emigrants and, partially, in the limited emigration, since, in these classifications, the statistics are of adult males, the majority of whom are around the average age, while the other classifications in the statement of losses are of infants which find only partial compensation in the restricted emigration. Hence, the equilibrium of the ages of the Italian population has been destroyed by the war. The conclusion is, then, that the war has raised the average age of the Italian population.

At first, it would appear that in exchanging youths for adults, Italy had gained. The younger individuals displaced by the war, of whom perhaps 60 per cent had reached the twentieth year and who were capable of giving returns later only by an expenditure of capital, are certainly not as valuable as adults capable of producing and reproducing.

However, a population is a living organism and will always be such. Its future is formed from its present as the present has been formed from the past, and, in a certain sense, is the past. The reproductive classes are nourished by the continuous wave of young classes which surge forth as the leaves are nourished by the sap which mounts from the trunk and roots. The infants of today represent the reproducers, workers, and defenders of the country of tomorrow, and the present decrease of their numbers will have its effect on the future generations for an indeterminable time.

The sudden advancement of the age of the population, aside from reasons of an economic, social, and military character, must be considered one of the most serious evils of the war from a eugenical and social-hygienic point of view. And from this evil, Italy, a young nation, has suffered more than the older nations. A proportionally identical diminution of the young men in France has had, in fact, less effect on the average age of the nation in which the young men represented a lesser majority of the total population and, for this reason, the effect was less disastrous for our sister nation than for us.

In many instances, good quality compensates for loss in quantity. However, the quality of the present young generation, in spite of its eminent characteristics, does not make up for the limited numbers. The reasons are many, but only one of the most important will be set forth here. I cannot give statistics to prove what I would say for the entire kingdom of Italy, but must base my proof entirely on data which I have accumulated for the city of Rome.

From a study of 3005 families of married soldiers, belonging to the working classes, who were in service outside the city for a certain period of time, it appears that while the annual pre-war fecundity per thousand was 317, the fecundity for the period of military service, limited exclusively to soldiers who have returned to their families on leaves of absence or on special missions, decreased to 92 annually per thousand. Thus 100 annual births in the pre-war period were reduced to 29.

On the other hand, the annual fecundity of the married men of Rome, taken as a whole, from 15 to 50 years, decreased from 246 per thousand to 187 per thousand, that is, from 100 in the pre-war period to 76. Nevertheless, this decrease, although apparently less, was relatively greater than the decrease in the fecundity of the soldiers. This is explained by the facts that not all the married men from 15 to 50 years belonged to the working classes, not all of them were soldiers, and not all of those who were soldiers were in service outside of Rome. To this it must be added that the group of married soldiers in question during their service in the army, of course, grew older, while the group of married men from 15 to 50 years upon the basis of which the annual fecundity was calculated, received constant accessions, and therefore, renewed itself without growing old. In short, it may be said that if the annual fecundity of all the married men decreased, as did that of the soldiers belonging to the working classes, from 100 to 29, the number of births per thousand married men, would have decreased from 246 to 71, instead of to 187 as appears.

On this basis, and taking the absolute figures of the birth-rates, we can say that if all the married men had been soldiers and have been in service outside Rome, their fecundity would have been reduced to the level of the fecundity of the absent soldiers belonging to the working classes, and the average birth-rate per annum before the war would have been reduced from 15.312 to 4.428 instead of to 11.677 as actually happened. If, instead, there had been no war, the births would have remained at 15.312. The difference, 15.312-4.428=10.884 births, indicates the assumed loss, in case that all the married men had been in military service, while the difference, 15.312-11.677-3.635 births, indicates the actual loss. The difference between the assumed loss and the actual loss, equal to 7.249 births, indicates, approximately, the births attributable to the married men who were not soldiers and to those soldiers who were stationed in Rome. These 7.249 births represent 62 per cent of the total of 11.677 births, which indicates that at Rome, during the war, approximately 62 per cent of the births were attributable to men who were not soldiers and to soldiers who were in service in the city. We do not know what percentage of births may be attributed to them in normal times. It is certainly much less than 62 per cent, either because the number of births in families of soldiers at the front belonging to the working classes was very low during the war, or because, ordinarily, this class is more prolific than the other classes of married men.

In consideration of the selective method on which the conscription was based, the soldiers were, necessarily, the best individuals from a physical and, probably, psychical point of view, and, in all probability, capable of transmitting to their progeny the marks of their superiority. For this reason, during the war, a great proportion of the children born must have been of an inferior nature because fathered by men who had been rejected in the Army and were, hence, less perfect physically and mentally and by wives who, by virtue of the influence of sexual selection and, taken as a whole, were certainly not the best.

Practically as much may be said of those soldiers who, for the greater part of the time, were in service in the city. Those soldiers who were not at the front were, in part, employed in the war offices, but the great majority, in Rome at least, were those who were the oldest and the less perfect physically, while a large number were the timid who had succeeded in escaping the dangers and hardships of the camp, the "embusques," as they were called in Europe. Hence, they were individuals who were inferior to the actual soldiers whom duty kept from their families. There is no reason, therefore, to be optimistic about the inheritance given by them to their children. The conditions which we have set forth for Rome apply, generally speaking, to all the large cities but certainly not to the country districts where the evils from the state of war must have been greater in regard to the quality of the births.

In the country districts, the division between soldiers and civilians was more distinct. The "grey zone" of soldiers who were not in actual service was completely missing or very rare and there was a total lack of war office employees. And, for reasons easy to understand, the selection exercised by conscription was more rigorous in the country districts while, on the other hand, the temporary return of the soldiers was less frequent, occurring only when on leave or, in rare instances, on special missions. For this reason the percentage of the births attributable to the civilians was higher and the proportion of inferior births relatively greater.

We must admit, as we have already affirmed, that if the war births were few, their good quality cannot be depended upon to compensate for their numbers. We must also observe that this lamentable condition must have been intensified in those nations whose conscriptions were more rigorous and who had in service a greater number of drafted classes. It is probable then that the quality of the births in France, first, and then in Italy, has suffered more from the state of war than the quality of those of the other great allies.

In Italy, making due allowances, the war births do not in fact present such an element of inferiority as is generally thought and alluded to. It was said at one time that emigration had brought to our country "money and infidelity."1 [F. Coletti. Dell' Emigrazione Italiana, in Cinquanta Anni di Storia Italiana. Milan, 1912. p. 230.] (Note: The Italian word "corno" means horn or plenty; the plural has the meaning, among other things, of "infidelity" which is implied here, although in English it is impossible to indicate the double significance of the word.) In the case of the war, which in many respects resembles emigration, there might be substituted for the word "money" the word "misery," without substantially changing the form and significance of the aphorism. Let us state, however, that in the case of war likewise there is much exaggeration. The illegitimate birth-rate is not, in truth, perceptibly changed.

Let us make a calculation, comparing the legitimate births with the illegitimate, and the illegitimate births of the whole kingdom of Italy (exclusive of the provinces invaded by the enemy in 1917, for which there are no data) with the illegitimate births of any province of the war zone, i.e., that portion of the country in which soldiers were quartered at any time during the war.

Considering the legitimate and the illegitimate birth-rates of the kingdom of Italy in the period 1913-14 as normal, or 100, and making 100 also the illegitimate birth-rate in four provinces of the war zone in the same period, we obtain for the successive years the figures indicated in the following table. Knowing the actual rates, and the populations upon which they were calculated, we can then arrive at the presumable number of the illegitimate births to be attributed to the presence of the army. The diminution found in the legitimate births for the Kingdom at large agrees, substantially, with the diminution found in the illegitimate births which proves, in short, that a state of war has no special influence on the illegitimate birth-rate. However, in the four provinces of the war zone taken into consideration, the illegitimate births have maintained themselves somewhat higher than the illegitimate births of the whole Kingdom, and the difference is presumably due to the presence in them of the mobilized army. But it is easily demonstrated that this fact should not be given too great importance. On the basis of numbers indicated, we estimated in the last column of the table, the absolute numbers of illegitimate births to be attributed to the presence of the army in the four provinces considered; they are 689 births in three years as against a total of 6389 illegitimate births, that is, about 11 per cent. If also in 1918, for which we have no data, an increase was found in the presumable number of illegitimate births to be attributed to the army, this percentage would probably not be greatly increased.

Kingdom of Italy / Four provinces of the war zone

Year / Legitimate births / Illegitimate births (exclusive of 5 invaded provinces) / Illegitimate births / Presumable number of illegitimate births to be attributed to the presence of the army

1913-14 / 100 / 100 / 100 / --
1915 / 99.5 / 91.4 / 93.9 / 70
1916 / 70.2 / 69.1 / 79.4 / 248
1917 / 62.3 / 63.2 / 78.0 / 371

We shall next seek to ascertain the probability of adulterous births, due to the concentration of the army in some provinces. It may be thought that given a smaller ratio of adulterous births in the provinces of the interior of the Kingdom of Italy than in the provinces of the war zone, where the army assembled, the coefficients of legitimate births might also be diminished more in the former than in the latter, and that therefore an equal diminution should attest an influence of the presence of the army in some provinces on the adulterous births that was practically nil.

Acting on this assumption, let us make equal to 100 the legitimate birth-rate of 1913-14 taken as normal for the whole kingdom of Italy and for 4 provinces of the war zone. We shall obtain for the following years the figures indicated below. We shall therefore be led to admit that the influence of the army on adulterous births, at least in four provinces of the war zone, was practically negligible.

Year / Kingdom of Italy Legitimate births / Four provinces of the war zone Legitimate births

1913-14 / 100 / 100
1915 / 99.5 / 98.4
1916 / 79.2 / 79.5
1917 / 62.3 / 62.0

The mobilization of the army, the concentration in a small territory of so many young men on whom the popular sympathy was centered, the separation of the heads from their respective families, the deteriorated economic and housing conditions -- in short all the conditions created by a state of war -- would appear to have contributed very little to increasing the "children of nobody," the "sons of the good God," as they are picturesquely designated in many parts of Italy, and to introduce into the families of soldiers those elements of discord to which allusion is made with so much pessimism in the popular phrases which we quoted above. The facts are that wives in general, and especially wives of the border districts, remained true to their husbands, away for the immediate defense of their own families and homes; the girls did not go beyond the limit in the enthusiasm which led them to give all proper sympathy to the fighters; while the soldiers knew how to profit moderately by the opportunities which they had for being well received by the people and above all by the feminine element.

But like all medals this one also has its reverse side. The scarcity of illegitimate and adulterous births of course affirms little regarding the sexual good behavior of the soldiers.

During the first months of the war, a decree of General Cadorna, which indicates the nobility of mind of this leader, prohibited all soldiers of whatever grade, from associating with public women, calling to each one's attention his duty of preserving all his energies, both moral and physical, for the good of his country. The decree did not have, however, quite the effect desired; clandestine vice began to flourish and orders of all kinds to combat the evil appeared impotent. In order to restrain the menace, it was necessary to choose a new line of conduct; that is, it was necessary to regulate the evil in order to be better able to supervise it and in any case to safeguard the army from physical as well as from moral harm, which is implicit in the former. In such a way it came to be recognized, in a certain sense, that the soldier had a right to a sexual life, irregular but controlled; to divert his desire for the women left in the country, and also for those with whom he was in daily contact. This is probably one of the causes of the comparative scarcity of the illegitimate and adulterous births of the war zone, of which we have spoken. The good with which we are occupied is therefore a good obtained in part, at least, at the expense of evil, and is therefore evil in its turn. But social hygiene has profited by it to some extent, at least, and it is that with which we are concerned at this moment.

Up to now we have spoken of the influence of the war on the number and quality of births. Before concluding, the subject merits a sketch of the prospects which the conditions created by the war itself present in regard to the births of the future.

Among the many ways in which the war has dangerously influenced the quality of those whom the sons of peace have bred and will breed, there must be placed in the front rank, at least in Italy, the increase of tuberculosis, malaria, and mental diseases, that is to say, those affections which without being definitely inheritable certainly influence the physical and psychical constitution of the descendants.

The enormous increase found in mental disease and mortality through tuberculosis and malaria, making a singular contrast to the tendency toward diminution observed in the last period of peace, hinges directly on the conditions brought about as regards the country, the soldiers, and the civil population. The deteriorated sanitation system; the renewal of tubercular activity by the strenuous life of the army in carriers of the bacillus who had been erroneously adjudged inactive and declared fit for military service; the lessened power of resistance of the soldiers, weaker than in the past, and of the population, less carefully nourished; the repatriation of half a million prisoners who had largely been exposed to the contagion; these are to be mentioned among the more important reasons which caused the scourge of tuberculosis to appear again after a period of secure and promising regress. According to figures of the Direzione Generale della Sanita' Pubblica (Central Bureau of Public Health), the average death-rate for tuberculosis in 139 cities increased from 1914 to 1917 in the ratio of 100 to 123, and according to the statistics of the American Red Cross for 26 cities, making the death-rate of 1914 equal to 100, those of 1917 would range from 199 to 170, showing only two cases of regress. The year 1918, if we trust the figures of the Red Cross compiled for 16 cities, shows a new and perceptible ascent.

As for malaria, it is enough to remember the condition of the waters disturbed by the military works and by the thinning of forests; the lessened attention to tracts for cultivation, owing to the labor crisis; the formation of stagnant pools in the military excavations and in the hollows caused by the large grenades; the stationing of large contingents of troops in the malaria zones of the Kingdom and of the Balkans, with no other serious prophylactic precaution than a daily dose of quinine, little welcome, and for that reason I suppose, unused by the soldiers; the bad sanitary and alimentary conditions -- these are reasons for the rapid progress of the malady. According to statistics of the Direzione Generale della Sanita' Pubblica, the death-rate for malaria increased from 1914 to 1917 in the ratio of 100 to 128, while in the same period the death-rate in 139 cities increased 554 per cent. There are no statistics for 1918 which, it is believed, would indicate a new and intensive progress of malaria, while 1919, as appears, in virtue of the intensive anti-malaria campaign and of the adoption of new means of combating the mosquito after the studies of Senator Grassi, would indicate, at least in certain sections, the beginning of a noticeable improvement.

The increase in mental disorders caused by the war cannot of course be demonstrated by the figures at hand and it does not seem that the subject could be presented as having special characteristics in Italy. However, its importance seems of such significance as not to admit of its being passed over entirely; we must, therefore, consider it in a secondary way. When countries like the European countries have for years subjected the greater part of their own male youth and a quota of their civil population to the life of war and that of prison, it cannot be supposed that from this there have not ripened fruits dangerous for the mental hygiene of the race.

An American physician, Dr. Norman, who has devoted an interesting study to mental disorders caused by the war, says in substance, that the persons who are exposed to grave shocks, who have been struck by aerial shells, who have been exposed to violent explosions, without having been apparently wounded, who have lost a great part of their resistance through fatigue, anxiety, insufficient sleep, etc., during the war -- that these have to contend with serious morbid afflictions. Such persons frequently present mental disorders which may be considered as new forms, even if medical practice confuses them, as I suppose, with the customary hysterical manifestations; forms for which, if there is no need of creating a suitable nomenclature, there is at any rate an urgent need for accurate study and records to reveal the symptoms observed and to suggest the methods of cure. These deserve to be completed together with others related thereto which have been present for a long time in prison camps. The disease of the prisoners which is usually called "barbed-wire disease" ("malattia del reticolato," "psychose du fil de fer," "Stachel drahtfieber"), according to the studies of a Swiss doctor, Vischer, has points of contact with those special forms of neurasthenia which are manifested in barracks, in prisons, during exploration trips, and during long sailing voyages, and which are characterized by the intolerable compulsion of living with casual companions who never change.

We must not neglect to mention the influence of the war on the state of mind of the civil population, now a prey to patriotic exaltation at each success, now to despair which possesses their minds at the announcement of military reverses, always preoccupied and anxious as to the fate of their own relatives and friends at the front.

It is clear that the social-hygienic aspect of all the factors mentioned should not be overlooked; the populations affected by both mental and physical burdens in greater measure than in the past do not give assurance as to the fit constitutional qualities of the offspring produced by them, and which will come to light in the next few years. The effects of the mental state of the progenitors on their offspring, according to an English report, on the statements of German doctors, was already observed during the war.2 [Editor's Note: Such occurrences, if actually substantiated by experiment, would prove that there is such a thing as maternal prenatal influence, which is not generally accepted by biologists today.] There is mention made of scraggy new-born babies, with a peculiar coloring, wrinkled skins, continually grasping with their hands. As to those suffering from constitutional maladies, they have been the object of study for a long time and do not need to be especially considered here.

The war, therefore, in Italy as elsewhere and in certain respects more gravely, brought out two principal groups of harmful effects, striking both in number and quality those who are universally known as "war infants" ("figli di guerra," "Kriegsneugeborene") and threatening the physical and psychical constitution of a large number of adults who will be the parents of a generation of "peace infants."

We have endeavored to set forth these evils as clearly as possible, and this, it may be said, constitutes the first step toward remedy. At this point the task of students ends. The problem of eugenic reconstruction, which through the numerous interferences characterizing the social life, has strong points of comparison with economic reconstruction, is of such political significance that it cannot but fall in the sphere of governmental action and therefore claim, together with the second, the attention of those who are or will be in later years at the head of the state.

The Biological Bearing of Army Mental Tests, by Arthur H. Estabrook

THE BIOLOGICAL BEARING OF ARMY MENTAL TESTS
ARTHUR H. ESTABROOK, PH. D.
Eugenics Record Office, Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y.

The physical and mental examination of the men drafted for military service during the world war was the first complete national health survey of any large group carried on in this country. Although it comprised only the males between the ages of 21 and 31 inclusive, nevertheless it gave a cross-section of the make-up of the human family. These examinations showed the status of this section of the population as it existed in 1917-18. The results were in no way affected by war conditions.

All men within the drafted age were examined by the medical officers of the local draft boards in their home communities before being sent to the army camps. Thus the more pronounced cases of physical and mental defects were eliminated at once and never reached the various army cantonments. On the mental side these included the idiots, some of the imbeciles, the well-recognized cases of insanity, and the known epileptics. The other mental cases such as the higher grades of feeble-mindedness and various forms of nervous and mental unfitness, were not discovered in a great number of cases until an examination was given by the neuro-psychiatric and psychological boards at the cantonment.

The Surgeon General of the Army had early recognized the necessity for a mental survey of the prospective troops, and had created in his office at Washington two divisions, one of Neurology and Psychiatry, and the other of Psychology. It was the function of these two, by intercorrelation, to know and act on the problem of the mental hygiene of the army. The work of the Division of Neuro-psychiatry in brief showed the following results: that the army returned to the civil community about 70,000 men unfit for any military duty because of mental defects. These men are classified under eight headings and attention is again called to the fact that none had been wounded.

Defect / Number / Per Cent

1. Mental defect / 21,858 / 31.6
2. Neuroses or functional nervous disorders / 11,443 / 16.5
3. Psychoses or mental disease / 7,910 / 11.4
4. Organic nervous disease / 6,916 / 9.9
5. Epilepsy / 6.388 / 9.3
6. Constitutional psychopathic states / 6,196 / 8.9
7. Glandular disorders affecting growth / 4,805 / 6.9
8. Inebriety (alcohol or drugs) / 3,878 / 5.5
-- / 69,394 / 100.0

The Division of Psychology was responsible in great part for the discovery, examination, and certification of the group of mental defectives. It should be noted here that the actual discharge of these cases was effected by the neuro-psychiatrists, in many cases on recommendation of the psychological boards. The Division of Psychology also made other investigations and studies which have significance of eugenical nature.

But let us first consider in detail the work and organization of the psychological group. In each camp were several trained psychologists with a staff of workers whose particular function it was to carry out the specific purposes of this section, which were:

1. The discovery of men whose superior intelligence suggested their consideration for advancement.

2. The prompt selection of men mentally inferior and their assignment to special work-organizations suited to their various abilities.

3. To form organizations of uniform mental or superior mental strength where such particular mental strength was desired.

4. To select suitable men for training in various army duties or for special training in technical schools.

5. To recognize early the mentally slow as contrasted with the stubborn or disobedient.

6. To discover men whose low grade of intelligence rendered them a burden and a menace to the service, and to take steps for their discharge.

To facilitate the attainment of these objects three kinds of mental tests were used:

a. Alpha, a group test for men who could read and write English. This test material is arranged so that each question may be answered by an underlining, checking, or crossing out. This can be given to as many simultaneously as can be gathered in one place, and in less than an hour.

b. Beta, a group test for foreigners or illiterates. The instructions were given by pantomime and demonstration. The answers were made by marks on a printed form. The intelligence is measured by use of concrete or picture material instead of printed language.

c. Individual tests: The Yerkes-Bridge Point Scale, the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon tests, and a performance scale, the latter being adapted from the Pintner-Paterson set of performance tests.

Theoretically those who failed in Alpha were given Beta; then those who made a low grade in Beta were given individual tests. In many cases the literates were not given the intervening Beta examination but received individual attention at once. A letter rating was secured for each person. Thus the rating a man earned furnished a fairly reliable index of his ability to learn, to think quickly and accurately, to analyze a situation, to maintain a state of mental alertness, and to comprehend and follow instructions. However, these ratings alone are not entirely indicative of a man's value to the service. They do not measure emotional traits or his special capacities, such as courage, the power to command, mechanical ability, and the like. But the claim can fairly be made that they constitute the best single index of all-round superiority so far evolved. The score is little influenced by schooling. Some of the best records have been made by men who had not completed the grammar grades.

The letter ratings are:

A. Very superior intelligence, earned by 4 or 5 per cent of a draft quota.

B. Superior intelligence, less exceptional than that represented by A, and obtained by 8 to 10 per cent.

C +. High average intelligence, 15 to 18 per cent.

C. Average intelligence, 25 per cent.

C -. Low average intelligence, 20 per cent. Persons able to do satisfactory work of a routine nature.

D. Inferior intelligence, 15 per cent. Slow in learning, with little initiative, requiring more than average amount of supervision.

D - and E. Very inferior intelligence, about 10 per cent. D- men were those who were inferior in intelligence but capable of service in development and labor battalions, and E those mentally unfit for service and for whom discharge was recommended. The majority of D - and E men were below the mental age of ten years.

Perhaps the most important work accomplished by the psychologist was the immediate rejection of draft men who were so mentally inferior as to be unacceptable to the army. These were the middle- and high-grade feeble-minded and many constitutional psychopaths who could be found only through lengthy individual tests. These men were returned immediately to their families and to their home communities, and resumed their former places in society. The army could not afford to lower its efficiency by having such misfits in its ranks and so returned them to be a burden to society as before. Society is beginning to realize this burden.

The conscientious objectors formed another group of interest to the psychologist. These were men who objected to compulsory military service for many reasons, personal, religious, and otherwise. A few studies have been published concerning the mental make-up of these persons. The results of the complete mental tests given by the writer to the conscientious objectors in but one Southern camp showed in general that they were either abnormal or defective with the exception of a few who had clear-cut, well-defined scruples against service, and a few sects such as the Quakers. Several cases of dementia praecox were found in this group. Some, however, were found to be of an intellectually superior type. Lieutenant Lincoln at Fort Leavenworth and other examiners whose conclusions have been set forth report that the conscientious objector type was above the average of all drafted men mentally. The writer does not make a generalization for the entire group of conscientious objectors, as but one camp was under his observation. Many who claimed only religious reasons as a basis for release from army service were willing to perform non-combatant duties, such as could be found in the medical department in the care of the sick. One man was known to have accepted stretcher-bearer service at the front, a more hazardous duty than that of infantryman. It will be interesting and valuable to have family history studies of many of these conscientious objectors whose names are, of course, on file in the offices of the War Department in Washington.

Observation was also made of the malingerers, i.e., those who attempted to secure release by simulating either mental or physical disease or defects. Large numbers were found to be unstable mentally but not sufficiently defective to be unacceptable to the army for some useful and necessary occupation. The great majority were found acceptable for infantry training and work.

One may note particularly that men rated A, B, and C+, were found to be best suited for officer material, and were therefore the men picked first for training in officers' training camps. It was found through studies at these special camps, that men who had a mental rating below that of C+ were generally not sufficiently acute mentally to become officers and acquire the knowledge necessary in the short time allowed for such training. The statistical section of the General Staff of the War Department has stated that more officers were killed or wounded for every thousand who went to France than were killed or wounded for every thousand enlisted men who went overseas, and the etigenical significance of this statement is particularly poignant when we remember that the officers' average mental rating is found in the high mental group. This, coupled with the fact that it was the unfit who could not stand the pace of military service, who were sent home from the camps to perform their functions in society as best they could and to reproduce their kind, forms food for thought.

At many of the camps the psychologist examined the prostitutes who were arrested in company with soldiers. This was done at the request of the local representatives of the War Department Commission on Training Camp Activities. Here mental tests were given and individual family histories were secured as far as possible. The Commission on Training Camp Activities was doing its best to rid the camp areas of prostitutes and it welcomed the advice of the expert on mental conditions. Here again it was found that many of the prostitutes were either cases of dementia praecox or were high-grade mental defectives. After-care of these prostitutes was then made easy by commitment to some custodial institution or return to their homes when found advisable.

To the army the chief value of the psychological work lay in its ability to aid in the production of an efficient war organization. Its activities dealt largely with cacogenic persons, with less emphasis on the positive side of eugenics. However, the Division of Psychology at Washington has in its files a mental rating of one and a half million persons. It has lists of all the mentally defective and abnormal found, with more or less of their personal history attached. Thus, as a starting point, great eugenical studies could be made, and many valuable histories worked out. Finally, the cross-section of the mental and physical make-up of the population started in the great emergency by the army might be made the basis for a complete mental, physical, and social study of the entire population of the United States.

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Part 3 of 4

Eugenics in the Central Empires since 1914, by Geza von Hoffmann

EUGENICS IN THE CENTRAL EMPIRES SINCE 1914
GEZA VON HOFFMANN
Budapest

Professor Erwin Baur, the famous geneticist and former head of the Biological Institute in Potsdam, said in the second year of the war: "I always thought that the time has not yet come to make eugenics practical. Yet I changed my mind. We lose our best men in the war; the birth-rate falls rapidly; so we must do something." At the same time he accepted the presidency of the Berlin Society for Race-Hygiene.

Formerly German eugenists believed that first our theoretical knowledge must be deepened. Accordingly Germans before the war published excellent books on heredity and allied topics, but made little attempt to popularize these sciences or to put them into practice. During the war the opinion of Professor Baur quoted above dominated all elements concerned. "We must make good our losses!" This was the aim of a movement which soon spread all over the country.

In the minds of average people or of educated men who were not biologists, this meant quantity, nothing but quantity. Of course quality was aimed at, too, but only such quality as could be obtained through education, sanitation, and other social means, not hereditary quality in a biological sense. This movement made no distinction between men and men. Every man, every new-born being, meant a unit which swelled the numbers of the population. It was truly a democratic movement, the supporters of which not seldom refuted eugenic arguments as anti-democratic. Almost all discussion concentrated upon the question of how to make the birth-rate rise, or rather how to assist the family with many children, without regard to the quality of the family stock.

The old science of population which did not yet know the achievements of modern biology, was again taken up, societies were founded for the cultivation of this science, books and articles appeared in great numbers, and congresses were arranged. The largest society founded at that time is the "German Society for the Cultivation of the Sciences of Population" (Deutsche Gesell-schaft fur Bevolkerungspolitik) at Berlin, with a great number of members in all classes of society. It had committees at work in almost all fields of the social problems, always watching that the interests of large families be guarded when new laws or ordinances were issued. Official circles were inclined to accept the opinion of the society. It was in the line of the work of this society, when the Prussian Landtag, later also the German Reichstag, appointed parliamentary committees to study the population problem. These committees published several reports on the question of how to combat venereal diseases, laying much stress upon the foundation of free dispensaries. These were actually established all over the country. The parliamentary committees, however, did not finish their work, as far as I know.

Besides the society just mentioned, many others were founded with rather local significance. In Halle am Salle the Bund fur die Erhaltung und Mehrung der Deutschen Volkskraft worked under the leadership of Prof. Emil Abderhalden, publishing a number of pamphlets and actively assisting families with many children. Similar was the work of the Verein fur Familienwohl in Dusseldorf, and of the Rhein-Mainische Gesellschaft fur Bevolkerungs-politik in Frankfurt am Main, which later became a local of the large national society named above.

Besides this "population" movement we have in Germany the eugenic movement, or, as the Germans call it after the word coined by Wilhelm Schallmayer, race-hygiene. Eugenics and race-hygiene are not quite identical, the second being a broader conception, but the explanation of the theoretical differences would lead us too far. Be it sufficient now to point out one practical difference. The motto of eugenics we may define as "Quality, not quantity." Race-hygiene says: "Quality and quantity."

This may be a reflex to the same stimuli -- losses of the war and the falling birth-rate -- which made the adherents of the population movement demand more and more children. But race-hygiene is well founded also biologically and its students showed clearly that the quality of the progeny in a given society cannot be separated from its quantity. This is not the place to explain this statement and we mention it only in order to make clear the demands of race-hygiene.

The movement is organized in the German Society for Race-Hygiene, Munich, founded in 1905 by Dr. Alfred Ploetz, whose excellent articles in the first and third volume of his Archiv far Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie (G. Teubner, Leipzig, editor) outline the program of race-hygiene.

The International Society for Race-Hygiene, also founded by Dr. Ploetz, did not actually work during the war, although international relations were not entirely disrupted. The German Society, with local societies in Berlin (Prof. E. Baur, Prof. Max Christian); in Munich (Dr. A. Ploetz, Prof. Max von Gruber, Prof. Ernst Rudin, Prof. Fritz Lenz, J. F. Lehmann); in Freiburg, under the leadership of the famous anthropologist Prof. Eugen Fischer, author of the Rehobother Bastards, one of the best books on the question of illegitimacy; and in Stuttgart (Dr. Wilhelm Weinberg) did much to disseminate biological knowledge and to mitigate the one-sided "only-quantity" movement of the populationists. The aim of race-hygiene also is the raising of the birth-rate, but those of the best stocks only. Under the influence of its leading members, the Medical Society of Munich appointed a committee to study this question and published the fruits of nearly two years' work in a monograph which is the standard reference of German practical eugenics.1 [1. The books and most important articles mentioned in this review are enumerated in the bibliography at the end.]

In order to raise the interest in problems of quality, the Berlin Society, together with about twenty of the leading organizations in social work, discussed thoroughly the question of marriage certificates. A special scheme was advocated, which was first put forward in Germany: the exchange of physicians' certificates between prospective partners in marriage should be made obligatory by law, but it should be left to the discretion of the contracting parties to follow the advice of the physician or not. The majority of the experts found even this scheme too far-reaching, accepting only the plan that the idea of consulting a physician before marriage should be popularized. Accordingly leaflets were prepared and distributed in great numbers in several states of the Empire, even through official channels. The Berlin Society for Race-Hygiene published the minutes of the discussion and continued to demand the legal enactment of the exchange of physicians' certificates. As far as I am informed, authorities in Berlin now seem to be inclined to accept the proposition.

The effects of the work of the Society for Race-Hygiene showed itself in most of the actions initiated by different societies or individuals in the interest of future generations. Besides the one-sided "one-quantity movement" and the "quality-and-quantity movement," we find therefore in most cases efforts to obtain "quantity" and a little "quality" too. Biological knowledge was not general enough to follow all the theses of eugenics or race-hygiene, but more or less was accepted. So the congresses held on these topics always discussed race-hygiene too. The semi-official Zentralstelle fur Volkswohlfahrt organized a congress at Berlin in 1915, which was attended by more than a thousand persons, to discuss the question of how to strengthen the population in quantity and quality; the German Society for the Study of the Science of Population organized a similar congress in Darmstadt in 1916; the Ausschuss fur Volksvermehrung, under the leadership of Pastor D. Weber, united a number of chiefly religious societies representing several millions of members and held many conferences; the women's organizations, the teachers, the postal employees, and so on, had all taken up these topics at their annual meetings, and race-hygiene formed always a part of the discussions. In February, 1918, a large congress was arranged in Berlin by the Society to Promote Friendship between the Central Powers (Waffenbruderliche Vereinigung). The population question was fully discussed by the delegates of Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria, but the shadow of the great antagonism between conservative and radical thought which later led to the revolution, already disturbed the discussion.

Of course, during the war in Germany a large mass of literature was produced which contained many excellent and original propositions. We mention the plan of Zeiler, who wanted to levy very high taxes on families with few children and to give high benefits to large families. Zeiler worked out his plan in detail. A similar and more ingenious proposition was made by Hugo Froese. These and other plans tried to introduce some precautionary measures in order that the benefits granted might not become simple poor-law assistance, which would only induce the poorest classes of society to propagate at the expense of the tax-bearers, but this eugenical point of view was not always respected.

One of the propositions was actually adopted by the government of Bavaria. All the postal, railway, and telegraph employees of the state annually receive a certain amount for each child, in case at least three children are present in the family. The amount increases from 300 to 900 marks according to the salary of the employee. This is not much, but the difference is still felt, as the family with three children receives three times the amount, whereas to the family with fewer children no such assistance is granted.

Other government employees also receive some children benefit. The principle of assistance to large families is also adopted in the collection of taxes, i.e., bachelors have to pay higher taxes, although the benefits thus granted are very small. More effective were benefits of one mark a day paid to the wives of members of the army in case they nursed their children. This system may have contributed to the very low death-rate among infants during the war.

In Magdeburg a marriage office was opened to facilitate the remarriage of healthy war-widows and the plan was followed in other parts of the empire, also among the German population of Bohemia.

Of purely scientific work, we must mention the researches in family heredity started in Munich, the first work being that of Prof. Ernst Rudin. Dr. Wilhelm Schallmayer published the third edition of his famous Vererbung und Auslese in 1918. This pioneer of German race-hygiene died October 4, 1919. Race-hygiene and allied topics were and are taught in some of the universities, for instance by Prof. Alfred Grotjahn at the University of Berlin, Priv. Doz. Dr. Fritz Lenz at the University of Munich, and Priv. Doz. Dr. Max Christian at the Technical University of Berlin.

Since the end of the war almost nothing has been done in the field of eugenics. There are quite other thoughts now which agitate the minds of the best of the people. The adherents of the populationist movement are silent and negotiations have been taken up to unite the German Society for the Study of the Science of Population and the German Society for Race-Hygiene.

In Austria there never was much interest in eugenics. A certain group of savants, Dr. Rudolph Goldscheid, Prof. Paul Kamerer, and Prof. Julius Tandler, tried to introduce eugenics in Vienna, but they were above all party men, being fervent adherents of Social Democratic teachings. As in Austria and central Europe, almost all leaders of the socialist and communist movements are Jews, it is interesting to note that, as it is said, all members of the society founded by Dr. Goldscheid were Jews except one.

In 1917, the former minister Professor Mataja started a movement in Vienna the aim of which was identical with that of the German populationists, an Austrian Society for the Study of the Science of Population. Whereas in Germany there was a well-established eugenic movement which succeeded in giving to the populationist theories some biological foundation, in Austria there was no such parallel force working. Therefore the adherents of Mataja discussed the problem from the point of view of applied social science and statistics, but did not penetrate the field of biology or heredity. The society arranged a number of interesting lectures and a congress on the sanitary aspects of child welfare.

A congress was arranged at Vienna in 1916 by the Deutech-osterreichische Zentralstelle fur Volkswohlfakrt, which discussed the population problem. Political agitation troubled even these meetings, as the radicals attacked the speakers who did not follow their teachings, including Prof. Johann Ude, of Graz, who is the champion of race regeneration in Austria on purely Catholic lines. His Volksheilzentrale does much to popularize sanitary and other measures in the population.

In Bohemia researches were made in heredity in the Ernestinum in Prague, following the methods of Dr. H. H. Goddard, of America, and at the end of the war a Czech Society for Eugenics was founded.

The Hungarian people have always shown keen interest in measures which aimed at race regeneration or similar ends. Eugenics were early discussed in Hungary and at first the teachings of English and American eugenists were followed. Later the German conception of race-hygiene was accepted, and in 1914 a commission was appointed to organize the movement. From the beginning the government has shown an active interest in the work and was represented on the commission. The outbreak of the war delayed preparations and it was only in 1917 that the Hungarian Society for Race-Hygiene and for the Study of the Science of Population was founded. The presidency was accepted by Count Paul Teleki, later minister of foreign affairs and prime minister, and leading men of science and public life were prominent in the movement.

As the name of the society indicates, the double movement which divided the efforts of race regeneration in Germany was united in Hungary from the beginning. Students of social science and of biology worked together in the greatest harmony. As biological knowledge in the population was and is still very scarce, the popularization of information on heredity was the first task. Lectures were held, courses and public discussions on eugenics arranged, pamphlets issued in great numbers. Still deficiency in knowledge was the greatest impediment to the introduction of practical measures, as men having the best will to do something could not always find the right solution when the time came for action.

Hungary was the first country on the European continent which accepted eugenics as a government measure. Count Teleki, when in 1917 appointed head of the Welfare Office for War Sufferers, declared his intention of introducing practical eugenics. I was called from Berlin and had the honor of directing the necessary work. We thought the group of war sufferers mostly excellent stock from an hereditary point of view, best adapted for the first trial measures, which could later be extended to the population as a whole. Here also the chief aim was at the beginning to spread sound eugenical ideas. Lectures were held in all institutions where the mutilated and other victims of the war were treated or taught, pictures were posted everywhere, and leaflets distributed in great numbers. The army commandants also distributed these leaflets to the soldiers.

Later we tried some practical measures. The most important was the distribution of land to the mutilated in such a way that the best men in the hereditary sense of the word received land enough to support a family and that the stipulations of the contract encouraged the rearing of children.

Then we tried to direct the returning soldiers of good stock out of the large and overcrowded cities to the country, the latter being better adapted to a healthy family life. If we had two positions to fill, e.g., that of a janitor who probably could not rear more than two or three children, or would rather stay single, and that of a manager on a country farm, then we sent a man whose propagation seemed not advisable to fill the janitor's post, and sent the healthy and otherwise desirable man to the farm. Respective advices were given as to the duty of the healthy to rear many children and that of the defective to terminate his bad stock in his own interest. Of course, such steps were taken only after thorough investigation and medical examination.

Much interest was shown by the men as to the advisability of their marriage and propagation. Efforts were made to convince the sick and the mutilated that their defects were not hereditary, and we were pleased to see how the advice given enlightened these poor victims of the war. All local authorities and the different government offices were asked to assist these efforts of race regeneration, to spread sound eugenical ideas among the population, and to act accordingly when fulfilling their official duties.

Acquaintances were facilitated between men and women who wanted to marry and had no suitable partner. A questionary was filled out, and, accompanied by a picture of the person but without his name, it was shown to persons of the other sex, who applied for such information in the notary offices or in the state institutions where the wounded were treated, and soldiers taught. In case the wish was expressed to meet, the acquaintance was made possible and the outcome was left to the persons concerned. Precautionary measures were taken to exclude fraud.

To persons wishing to marry, medical advice was given. After some propaganda, this work was to be thoroughly organized, and later the exchange of medical certificates according to the German plan already mentioned in this article, was to be established by law. The medical offices to be used for this purpose were already selected in different clinics and other public institutions. In one of them even the animals needed for blood examinations were bought. The medical rules to be followed by the examiners were worked out in detail by the most competent physicians. Then the revolution broke out in October, 1919, and brought everything to a sudden end. The leading officials of the institutions had to leave their posts and to give them over to uneducated young men. The pictures and leaflets which before the revolution were used to spread eugenical ideas were destroyed. Later, during the period of communism, the remaining numbers of the eugenic periodical Nemzetvedelem were burned as immoral literature, and the eugenic movement was called one of the most dangerous and reactionary things existing. As one of the chief aims of Bolshevism in Hungary was to exterminate the upper-class families and to establish proletarian rule, the anger of the communists against eugenics can be understood.

Of other government measures, we may mention first of all the assistance given to public officials and state employees after the birth of their children. Hungary was the first country to give this assistance. All public officials and state employees received, according to a law of 1912, 200 kronen annually for each child. Since that time the amount given was several times raised; since 1918 the assistance amounts to 800 kronen for each child.2 [2. In the summer of 1920, the government promised to double these benefits.] I do not believe that any other country pays as much for family assistance, although the payment is far from being enough to cover all expenses of the rearing of children. The fact that the amount is the same in all grades and does not vary with income, is in a certain way contra-selective, as it means for the lowest paid grades of officials the proportionately highest benefit and induces them therefore to propagate more than it does the higher grades. On the whole the system is of eugenical significance, as the men forming the staff of government officials in Hungary are a selected body.

In a similar way the number of children is taken into consideration when state employees are permitted to purchase food, clothing, and merchandise at lower prices, a relief work which has been carried on since the latter part of the war.

In 1917 the income tax law was amended in such a way that persons with no children have to pay 15 per cent more, and persons with only one child 10 per cent more taxes than others.

Besides the purely eugenic movement there is a movement to fight venereal diseases, organized in the "Union to Protect the Nation" (Nemzetvedelmi Szovetseg] which arranged a congress in 1916 lasting over a month. The first authorities of the country gave lectures which later were published and presented to the government. The general thought was that to combat these diseases effectively, the whole field of race regeneration must be taken up. A similar congress was arranged in 1917 to discuss the problems of social hygiene3 [3. Social hygiene includes in Europe all measures in the interest of the health of the people, and not only the fight against venereal diseases, as in America.] and it was demanded that in order to make the movement effective, a special Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare should be created. Steps were taken in this direction, but the plan was realized only after the revolution, although the preparations had not yet been made.

Since Bolshevism was broken in August, 1920, the whole country needs "race regeneration," not so much in the sense of eugenics, but sound morals, order and law, healthy family life, and regard for future generations. Everybody's whole time and energy is devoted to the reorganization of the country and to avert the consequences of a so-called peace. Later, when conditions change, the time will come to continue the work of eugenics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SCHALLMAYER, WILHELM: Vererbung und Auslese. Jena: G. Fischer, Third edition, 1918.

The standard work of German race-hygiene which should be read by every student of eugenics.

ARCHIV FUR RASSEN- UND GESELLSCHAFTSBIOLOGIE. Leipzig: G. Teubner. (Periodical) The best review of eugenics in German.

POLITISCH-ANTHROPOLOGISCHE MONATSSCHRIFT. Berlin: Steglitz. (Periodical)

An interesting review of that branch of the movement which demands pure race and high breed, combating racial intermixture.

ERHALTUNG UND MEHRUNG DER VOLKSKRAFT. Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1917.

This first-class book contains the fruit of nearly two years' work of the Medical Society of Munich.

RUDIN, ERNST: Studien uber Vererbung und Entatehung Geistiger Sttirungen. Berlin, 1916.

An excellent study in heredity. The reader will see how conservative, thorough, and exact are the German methods in solving these problems.

SCHALLMAYER, WILHELM: Einfuhrung in die Rassenhygiene. Vol. II., Der Ergebnisse der Hygiene. Berlin: W. Weichardt, 1917.

One of the founders of German race hygiene gives here a synopsis of the question.

SIEMENS, H. W.: Die Biologischen Grundlagen der Rassenhygiene und der Bevolkerungs-politik. Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1917.

An excellent introduction to and short survey of race-hygiene.

ZEILER, A.: Gesetzliche Zulagen fur jeden Haushalt, Stuttgart, 1917.

One of the most discussed plans to raise the birth-rate.

Die Erhaltung und Mehrung der deutschen Volkskraft. No. 12, Der Schnften der Zentral-stellefurVolkswohlfahrt. (New series) Berlin: C. Heymann, 1916.

Contains the lectures and discussion of the congress of 1915.

Uber den gesetzlichen Austausch von Gesundheitszeugnissen vor der Eheschliessung und Rassenhygienische Eheverbote. Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1917.

Contains the interesting discussions of the representatives of about twenty leading societies on the question of marriage certificates.

CHRISTIAN, MAX: Die wirtschaftliche Begilnstigung des Kinderreichtums. Archiv fur Raasen- und Gesellschoftsbiologie, Vol. XI., No. 6, August, 1916.

The author gives a practical scheme for the solution of the problem.

FASSBENDER, M.: Des deutschen Volkes Wille zum Leben. Freiburg im Baden: 1917.

The "population question" from the catholic point of view.

VON HOFFMANN, G.: Krieg und Rassenhygiene. Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1916.

A short survey of race-hygiene in Germany and its demands.

Das neue Deutschland, Symposium on Krieg und Volksvermehrung. Berlin, 1916.

A number of first-class authors give their view on the population question.

LENZ, FRITZ; Uberblick uber die Rassenhygiene Jahreskurse fur arztliche Fortbildung, Munich: J. R Lehmann, October, 1917.

Dr. Lenz, one of the best students of eugenics, shows in this excellent and original study what the physician has to know about eugenics and heredity.

NEISSEB, ADOLF: Die Geschlechtskrankheiten und ihre Bekampfung. Berlin, 1916.

This book gives the actual program of the German movement to combat venereal diseases and explains the problem.

PAULL, H.: Die neue Familie. No. 70, Der deutsche Krieg. Stuttgart: von Jaeckh, 1916.

Dr. Paul, who founded the Bund fur deutsche Familie und Volkskraft in Karlsruhe, explains the problem of race regeneration and proposes practical measures. He is one of the leaders of that branch of the movement which lays much stress upon the moral side of the question.

Kunstliche Fehlgeburt und kunstliche Unfruchtbarkeit, ihre Indikationen, Technik und Rechtslage. Leipzig: G. Thieme, 1918.

An exhaustive handbook on sterilization and abortion for physicians and students of eugenics. The book is written by a number of leading authorities. The American laws on sterilization are treated in detail.

Nemzetvedelem (Protection of the Race). Hungarian review of eugenics. Budapest, since 1918.

Minutes of the Congress on Venereal Diseases, Budapest, 1916. Published by the Nemzetvedelmi Szovetseg, Budapest.

Society Becoming Self-Conscious, by Benjamin C. Gruenberg

SOCIETY BECOMING SELF-CONSCIOUS
BENJAMIN C. GRUENBERG, PH. D.
Assistant Educational Director, United States Public Health Service

In the autumn before the outbreak of the European war, the British National Birth-Rate Commission began its investigations; and in June of 1916 it completed its report. This report was described by Sidney Webb as "the most candid, the most outspoken and the most important statement that this country has yet had, as to the extent, nature and the ethical character of the voluntary regulation of the married state which now prevails over the greater part of the civilized world."

But the Commission did not consider the task assigned to it as by any means completed, and recommended the continuation of its investigations. The Commission was reconstituted under the presidency of the Lord Bishop of Birmingham and the directorship of Dr. C. W. Saleeby in 1918, with about forty members. The second report,1 [1. Problems of Population and Parenthood. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1920. 423 p.] that of the reconstituted Commission, is before us. Under the resolutions establishing the Commission, its task was to inquire into:

1. The fall of the general birth-rate with the increase in the illegitimate birth-rate.

2. The causes of infant deaths and of stillbirths.

3. The movements of population and the ratio of the sexes in the Empire.

4. Economic problems of parenthood and their possible solution.

5. The relation of the housing problem to parenthood.

6. The spread of venereal diseases, their relation to sterility, degeneracy, and their probable increase during demobilization.

7. The increased industrial employment of women of child-bearing age.

8. The differential or qualitative aspects of the present birthrate.

9. The relation of the new Ministry of Health to racial reconstruction.

10. The need for a census immediately after the war and for an anthropometric department under the Ministry of Health.

The volume consists of a brief historical introduction, lists of members and of witnesses, and an outline table of contents (pages v to xxix); the report, prepared in five sections (pages xxi to clxi); notes of reservation from the majority opinion on the voluntary restriction of birth, on marriage certificates, on venereal diseases, on divorce, and on alcohol, signed by minority groups, varying in size from one to twelve of the commissioners (pages clxii to clxvi); and Part II, minutes of the evidence of forty-six witnesses (pages 1 to 423).

The statistical study of birth-rates is confined to supplementing the findings in the first report with the figures for more recent years (1913-1918), which show a steady continuance in the decline of the birth-rate, with a steady advance in the percentage of illegitimate births. The decline of births during the war was, however, accompanied by a marked decline in the infant death-rate. This was a continuation of the tendency already observed for several years before the war, and was due, in part, to an increase and improvement of child-welfare work by the local authorities, the probable increase of breast-feeding as well as of the use of dry and condensed milks (because of the high price of "fresh" cow's milk) and the decline of the birth-rate itself.

More important than the decline of the birth-rate, in the estimation of the Commission, is the fact that the birth-rate has been declining in such a way as to be more pronounced among the classes "which have demonstrated superior capacity for the struggle of life in the past by rising in the social scale." Mr. Sidney Webb, however, while agreeing with the Commission in considering the reckless multiplication of the irresponsible and least valuable members of the community in every class an alarming fact, points out that the portion of the community (about 150,000 families) having an income of over one thousand pounds a year is statistically insignificant, although absorbing economically a quarter of the national income. Although no consideration seems to have been given to the question of differential survival of the "superior classes," the Commission recommends a permanent anthropometric department under the Ministry of Health and the establishment of a general register, and urges the making of a census in various parts of the Empire simultaneously in order to make possible comparisons throughout. It urges especially an inquiry on the relation of religion to the birth-rate.

The most important factor in the decline of the birth-rate is the voluntary restriction which is taking place on a large and increasing scale and with an incidence that is far from eugenic, no matter what one's theories of the social and economic distribution of human qualities may be. And the most important factor in the determination of voluntary restriction is economic. The Commission, as a whole, was apparently working on the assumption that an increase is per se desirable and that somehow a large population is of value to the "Empire" as distinct from the people who make up the Empire. Although the voluntary control of births began with the educated and professional classes for reasons described by some of the witnesses as "selfish," it has steadily spread to other parts of the population because of the strain and anxiety incident to childbearing, nursing, and rearing, and because of the costs of education and the desire to provide for the future of girls -- in short, because potential parents demand more from life for themselves, and actual parents demand more from it for their children.

There is general agreement in the Commission (1) that abortion is ethically indefensible, except under medical direction with a view to removing serious risk to the mother; (2) that persons who are likely to transmit any serious physical or mental taint should not have children; (3) that no means of preventing conception can be tolerated that may injure the health of potential parents or of children; (4) that no person should refuse the duties of parenthood for purely selfish reasons; (5) that while parents cannot be relieved of their responsibility, it is, nevertheless, the duty of society to remove disabilities that may be imposed on worthy parents without any fault of theirs; and (6) that instruction should be given especially to young persons in the laws of sex hygiene, the prevalence and dangers of venereal disease, the right and healthy use of the state of marriage, the immorality of inducing abortion with criminal intent at any period of pregnancy, the duties, responsibilities, and privileges of parenthood, the importance of healthy offspring, and the value of family life to the nation and the human race.

The Commission further agrees that no moral issue is raised in regard to the limitation of the family when there is good reason for such a course; but moral issues are raised by the means used for the purpose. The Commission then presents six "arguments for the use of contraceptives" and six "arguments against the use of contraceptives." But twelve members of the Commission signed a note of reservation disapproving the former and approving the latter; and of the twelve dissenters, seven are theologians.

The proposed remedies range all the way from the neo-Malthusian recommendations of the universal practice of birth control for the elimination of poverty, as a solution of the population problem, to the inculcation of various kinds of "holiness" as a panacea for all problems. Thus the president of the Mother's Union, who presented some very interesting summaries of investigations into the reasons for voluntary restriction of families, on being asked by Rider Haggard whether she could imagine people in crowded rooms and with no comforts understanding the "dignity and holiness of parenthood and of the duty to the country in the passing on of life," replied: "That is all the more reason why they should be taught." In short, the emptiness and hardships of life are to be replaced by magic words. There is considerable material on various schemes for the endowment of motherhood, on the causes of illegitimacy, the need for legislation on the protection of children, and on the relation between the industrialization of the female population to the problems of childbirth and child nurture.

The chapter on "The Causes of the Loss of Infants both Before and After Birth" is perhaps the most important constructive portion of the report, since it deals with the human elements and the concrete factors through which their welfare may be controlled, although many of the members of the Commission did not apparently see the far-reaching implications of their demands for suitable milk supply, adequate housing, and leisure, comfort, and peace of mind for the mother before and after childbirth.

The role of the venereal diseases in causing loss of population leads to an exhaustive discussion of the ethics of prophylactic packets as against stations for the early treatment of infections; of compulsory treatment; of the problem of prostitution; of confidential death certificates; and of marriage laws with respect to venereal diseases.

The relation of alcoholism to the birth-rate elicits the endorsement of Lord D'Abernon's program for regulating drink, which consists of the discouragement of the use of beverages of excessive alcoholic strength; the avoidance of drinking alcohol on an empty stomach, and the avoidance of continuous or frequently repeated drinking of alcoholic beverages. But Dr. R. J. Drummond, representing the Morals Committee of the United Free Church of Scotland, makes the reservation that nothing short of absolute prohibition would meet the needs of the case.

On marriage and divorce, there is a greater variety of opinion, but the Commission agrees that there is need for reform in the marriage laws in its discrimination against women; that the distinction between the religious rite and the legal contract of marriage should be recognized; but that the legal contract should be considered a moral obligation on the part of all citizens who live together as husbands and wives, whatever their views on the religious rite; that the courts should give special consideration to the interest of children in cases of divorce; and that subsequent marriage of parents should make their children legitimate.

At every point the problems considered by the Commission and the suggestions and facts presented by the witnesses lead to fundamental biological and economic factors. Social hygiene as a body of thought may perhaps carry on in total disregard of the surrounding conditions; but the health of society is impossible when the mass of people lives in ignorance, privation, and squalor. The theorizing of the experts, the exhortation of the moralists, and the orations of statesmen will remain the ineffective manifestations of the fact that these good people are agitated; they will not increase birth-rates, diminish morbidity or mortality, nor do anything to lessen the misery and anguish of those who suffer, so long as the concern remains with empire or nation or trade balance rather than with the kind of organisms that make up nations and empires.

The contradiction between the ostensible advancement of the national welfare through elimination of child labor and through the prolongation of the period of compulsory education on the one hand, and the actual fact that all these requirements oppress the mass of workers most mercilessly during the transient period, on the other, is but one aspect of the habitual failure of statesmanship based upon a quantitative theory of society to face what is really important in human affairs.

Our civilization is based upon attitudes and traditions which assume legitimacy of exploiting people by those who can for private purposes. This acceptance of "prostitution" as a prominent principle of human dealing pervades all of our relationships. A study of this report leaves one with the conviction that we cannot eliminate one special phase of prostitution or one side of the consequences unless we are willing to throw the whole scheme of exploitation overboard.

The Sins of Industry against the Race, by Herman Lundborg

THE SINS OF INDUSTRY AGAINST THE RACE
HERMAN LUNDBORG
Docent, University of Upsala, Sweden

It is a melancholy fact that there has been a bitter race between certain civilized peoples of our times in the production and selling of all sorts of manufactures, useful and necessary things as well as articles of luxury, in enormous quantities. Rivalry for the markets of the world has then sprung up, and had to spring up some time or other, between the principal trading nations. This has perhaps been the deepest-lying cause of the great war. It surely was no chance happening that Germany and England, the two foremost trading empires of Europe, got to fighting a struggle for life or death.

Industry has in the course of decades made these and other countries richer by milliards. Universal prosperity has increased enormously, very considerable improvements of environment have been brought about, and nevertheless, our modern civilization is at present practically in ruins. Thus these riches have been of no use to us, but have instead brought with them great harm. From many parts of England, and from other places, there is shown by reports that industry is the greatest devitalizer of races and peoples. An English military medical report, in which an account is given of the physical examinations during the war of 2,500,000 of young Englishmen from all parts of the country, states that only 36 per cent were unreservedly fit for military service. More than 10 per cent were so deficient that they had to be considered unfit for every sort of work, military as well as civil, and on this account, became parasites upon society.

The Galton Laboratory in London has published very comprehensive statistics concerning the number of children per couple in different social strata of England: within the intellectual population, on an average, 1.6; among the poorly endowed 6.6; and among criminals 7. Thus the socially deficient give birth without any sense of responsibility to masses of children, who show not only a high death-rate, but also deficiency like their parents. It will be the lot of the fitter to take care of these children that have been forced upon them by people who, as a rule, do not trouble themselves about their own offspring. Our civilization cannot stand higher, as long as such things are allowed to take place unchallenged almost anywhere in the world. Those are indeed sad figures. It is easy to understand that great anxiety is prevailing in England on account of the signs of general debility and degeneration, which are at present beginning to be conspicuous.

As a rule people have no clear conception of how dangerous the effects of industry are upon individuals and society. This is a very complicated subject, but let us critically examine these questions from a race-biological point of view, and not content ourselves with merely pointing out its most obvious mischief in regard to the surroundings. Sociologists and also physicians, as a rule, look at these things too superficially. They generally reason as follows: The riches which pour into the country, thanks to an ever-developing industry, are welcome and advantageous to us. Consequently, laissez faire! At the same time we must, it is true, work for good surroundings and improved universal hygiene, in order to hold our own with the injuries. Such reasoning is false, for many of the perils that go under the name of industrialism are not to be removed so easily.

To begin with, one might seriously discuss the question, whether wealth pouring into a country really is of use to a people. One has a right to doubt this, for experience shows that rapidly increased prosperity, in olden times as well as in ours, breeds an infinitude of needs, the desire for luxury increases, effeminacy begins to show, love for work decreases, and so on. Luxurious living calls forth too much love for ease, for which the children will soon enough have to suffer. The women begin more and more commonly to shun maternity, and all round about us we witness how the 0-1-2-children system flourishes, beginning within the wealthier classes of society. Gradually this process goes deeper and removes by and by every trace of peoples before vigorous. This is what is called race suicide.

We inhabitants of the north ought not to look for our ideals, for instance, to France, which is agriculturally one of the most fertile countries of Europe; but where, however, the people nowadays have neither the desire nor the strength to bear and bring up a sufficient number of children. Instead, the French people are slowly wasting away, and are dying out or mingling with other, perhaps inferior races, such as Africans and the like.

The Swedish people has until of late lived in poverty, but children have never been lacking in the Swedish homes. Most of these have had to fight their way in the world. Nevertheless, as a people, the Swedes have generally up to the present day been conceded to rank among the most superior stocks of Europe, physically as well as intellectually. Is this to continue? Hardly; at least not if we walk on such dangerous ways as we have now turned into. High living and decreasing nativity within the wealthier classes of society are bad omens. Add to this that a spreading industrialism is entirely corroding us.

A people that does not naturally increase, degenerates. There is, so far as I know, no historical example proving that a people showing a lower number of births than of deaths yearly is able to recover itself. It is on the high road to ruin.

Had our mothers and grandmothers put the neo-Malthusian system into practice to such an extent as is done in France at the present day, or in many upper-class Swedish families, most of the professional and intellectual classes of our country would never have been born. They would have been stifled unborn. This appears most clearly if we go through some big genealogical work. The present writer, as the fourth of a family of seven, would not have been born. It is no wonder that such a doctrine, which for many makes a virtue of indolence and egotism, is in our day so widely and enthusiastically adopted.

To avoid being mistaken I will lay stress upon the fact that, of course, I do not in the least consider an indiscriminate "rabbit-reproduction" in the human world as something desirable, but I venture to hold that healthy and able parents in fairly good circumstances commit a crime against nature and against their own race, if they content themselves with one or two children, while the less endowed classes of the people are multiplying several times over.

The state has indeed a heavy responsibility for the conditions remarked upon just now. It does not sufficiently encourage the elements of the people that are of first-rate value in their wish to marry and keep their families properly. Our individualistic time pays more regard, to the "right" of the individual and cares little what becomes of the families and the whole race. One might say that nowadays a war of extermination is being carried on against families and children, and the authorities very often set a bad example. Wage policy, lack of housing, hard times, and other circumstances combine to undermine the existence of the families. Is it possible, then, to expect that the race will in the long run be able to keep fit for competition or even fit for life? We must awake to the perils of this system. The future of the family and the race has above all to be secured.

It is undoubtedly harmful to let young people in industry, who have not yet families of their own, handle a disproportionally large income, which they often live up in waste and frivolity. At the same time their elder fellow workers are almost starving, because they have wives and children to maintain.

That the women have been thrown, together with the men, into the jaws of the industrial Moloch is decidedly an evil, both for themselves and for society. A great many of these women are no doubt worth a far better fate than their lot. Within factory walls all sorts of elements come together, bad as well as good. Many of them go to the dogs on account of bad surroundings. It is difficult for them to manage by themselves: they take to dangerous pleasures, immorality, even prostitution. Soon enough they form amorous relations indiscriminately -- as a rule not from necessity, but in consequence of temptations and love of pleasure. There are, unfortunately, too many men who, if relations of that kind come easily within reach, prefer this irregular sort of life with women, liquors, and conviviality, to the road of self-denial in economic matters which leads to a home and family of one's own. This brings with it many a misspent life. No small number of them die prematurely. Gradually there ensues corruption of society, frivolity, vulgarity, which is noticeable everywhere. Who is to blame? And with whom rests the responsibility?

It is no easy matter to do justice to all, but this much is certain, that industry is very much to blame. It breeds a proletariat of both men and women, that often, sooner or later, are heaped up in poorhouses, hospitals, workhouses and prisons.

Industry's list of sins is, however, far from complete. Race-destroying tendencies of the greatest moment still remain to be mentioned. Thoroughgoing research and statistics show that the farming population, especially the peasantry, is in all countries superior to the industrial population as regards health and racial capacity. This does not, as many people believe, solely depend upon the healthier nature of the life that is lived in the country, but the whole constitution, which, in its turn, depends upon good and well-adapted hereditary tendencies, is in et per se better. The peasantry possess from ancient times an inherent rich fund of good tendencies, a strong racial power. The surroundings become, it is true, worse and worse the lower one penetrates into the layers of urban society, but that is not the real reason for the fact that the individuals dwelling there have inferior constitutions. Everywhere among a people where no irrational despotism or anarchism prevails, there ensues a natural stratification. The individuals who have more favorable hereditary combinations to thank for their existence, tend to rise, and those, on the contrary, who have less favorable ones, sink lower down. The lowest of the proletarians show an inferior and very ill-adapted constitution. Persons who content themselves with, or have to content themselves with bad surroundings, are, as a rule, not race-fit.

Factories, springing up from the ground like mushrooms, absorb the young sons and daughters of the country. Shorter working day, higher wages, varying manner of living, possess a wonderful attractive power. The population of the rural districts decreases. The towns and industrial communities are growing rapidly. The conditions of environment are worse here than in the country. Tuberculosis, alcoholism, venereal diseases, and other evils begin to ravage and play havoc among a population of this kind. Industry swallows up a great part of the peasantry; another part, which does not want to go under the industrial yoke, emigrates to foreign countries, and there lays the foundation of new, perhaps in course of time, flourishing peoples and communities. The result of it all is, that the peasantry gradually disappears from the old countries, where people do not seem to appreciate their worth but look upon all human values as wares that can be bought for money. A human stuff which is fully satisfactory material for a great people is, however, not to be bought in any market. It takes hundreds and thousands of years to build up again a race-fit peasant class, if the old one has been annihilated. [/b]

Thus there is no doubt that a people which undermines and exterminates its peasantry, marches toward hard times. The history of many peoples bears witness to this fact. A sign of the times is the circumstance that in industrial countries agriculture is not able to keep up the competition sufficiently with an industry that is allowed to grow wild without any limitation whatever. In order to illustrate, more clearly than by words, the changes and displacements that take place in the structure of a people which degenerates through industrialism or in any other way (several causes usually cooperate), I have devised the diagram shown below.

A sound and healthy race-fit people has, as is shown by stage 1, a strong middle class. This is represented by the white field. I count in this class also landed peasants. The small dotted field at the top represents the upper classes, or rather, the intellectual leaders and the higher officials of the country. These layers have, in spite of their fitness for civilization, a lower race-biological value than the middle class, on account of the fact that they, as a rule, die out quickly, and have to be recruited little by little from the lower layers. The striped field is the large body of manual laborers, and lowest down at the bottom some more or less unfit human material, such as tramps, habitual criminals, and other asocial elements.

DIAGRAM
showing changes in the social structure of a people in the process of industrialization.

The light fields represent the middle class (including the farmers).
The dotted fields represent the upper classes.
The striped fields represent the working classes.
The black fields represent the socially unfit (the degenerates) in the upper and lower classes.

During the process of degeneration, changes set in within the body of the people, as is shown by stages 2, 3, 4, and 5. First of all, the whole population is very considerably increased, for industrial work is able to give food to many people; but at the same time there appears a strongly noticeable inversion of the social structure. The old middle class decreases and disappears almost entirely; a new middle class is formed, it is true, but that is another and inferior kind than the earlier was. Together with this both the upper and the lower classes increase, but chiefly the latter. The degenerating process appears in the upper classes, too. The most numerous layer will by and by be the factory hands, together with an increasing deposit at the bottom, the human dross.

The great increase of the bottom layers is the most serious factor in the whole situation, for bodily and mental deficiency is the distinguishing characteristic of those individuals comprising this numerous bottom layer. The higher grades of laborers do not, of course, meet with this judgment. But a good deal of unskilled industrial work claims such a small amount of intelligence and efficiency in other respects, that all sorts of borderline individuals who cannot in any other way earn their livings, thus secure the possibility of a livelihood not only for themselves, but also for a family. Many of these, men as well as women, do not want to marry, but they have, nevertheless, sexual instincts, and therefore beget a progeny, whose support, frequently becomes a burden upon the state. As at the same time the middle class shrinks, the upper classes, of which the greater part live in the towns, has an inadequate progeny, it is clear that the people is increasingly proletarized, and that it becomes, as a whole, inferior in racial capacity to its status before it was industrialized. In other words, a whole army of more or less poorly endowed individuals comes into existence, and these individuals very soon manage to work their will consciously, or unconsciously. If they do not succeed by competitive means, they resort to revolutionary and anarchistic methods, and, deal summarily with all who stand against them. That is to say, the upper classes are those to suffer. There may come a reign of terror. Everything falls into a state of confusion. Civilization sinks. The people now degenerates rapidly, and destruction is near. Other peoples invade the country. The result may be something better, but also something worse, depending upon the qualities of the invading people.

All this process may go on more or less rapidly. The degeneration, however, Is not long in coming, if one thinks In social and racial terms. The great mass of the people, as well as a great many politicians, are not able to survey this process, which takes a period of several generations. They do not see the real, deepest-lying causes, but only the surface. Hence their aims, and endeavors for amelioration will only be a symptomatic and not a radical cure.

From what has been said above it appears obvious that modern nations are moving in the wrong direction. We disregard the simplest demands of nature. An unlimited industry always preys on human material, and this it does to such an extent that one may be justified in venturing a paradox: we can indeed not afford to let industry grow unchecked, although it brings us billions, for all our vital power and our future as independent peoples are at stake.

There is, it is true, in every country an absolutely necessary minimum of industry, that we cannot, and must not evade, but that measure is, I think, already exceeded. The development of a people in a sound direction necessarily demands that industry be kept within reasonable bounds. It must and ought to be proportionate to the other trades and professions. The shareholders and the industrial managers have no right, I take it, to throw all the rest of humanity into peril. The dance round the golden calf must be stopped before it is too late. To this there will probably come from the political economists the reply: How is that possible? The finances of the state require increased industry, or we shall, sooner or later, reach national bankruptcy. I will answer with a counter-question: Can we permit the sacrifice of our last reserve fund, the national power and the racial capacity, in order to obtain an occasional mitigation of the misery? Does this not remind one rather strongly of an incurable gambler, who takes his very last belongings, perhaps some old family jewels, rich in memories of the past, in order with these to try once more his luck at the gaming tables, with the risk of losing these too, and be left there an impoverished beggar, and perhaps be driven to suicide?

Of what avail are whole heaps of gold, nay, the wealth of all the world, if we through wars are marching toward times of trouble and degeneration? It is no easy thing for a private man to resist all the temptations of wealth. It is perhaps still more difficult for a people to take the road of self-denial and, instead of living in pleasures and enjoyments, lead the lives of hard-working, saving men, which make for amelioration. The time will certainly come when people will clearly see that the industrializing tendency of our time has far more dangerous effects than the old mercantile system, condemned in its day. It will be the task of the civilized peoples together to settle these momentous questions in a satisfactory way.

Nature is a severe teacher who forces us, unruly and ignorant children of men, into obedience, sooner or later. It would be a good thing for us if we proved more docile, and less intractable.

[admin]

Part 4 of 4

Progress, 1920–1921, by Kenneth M. Gould

PROGRESS, 1920-21
KENNETH M. GOULD

In a year that has been notable for many outstanding events in the field of social hygiene, the selection of items for inclusion in a panoramic chronicle of progress is a difficult task. In this period, the anti-venereal campaign throughout the world has come nearer to self-analysis and self-realization in the definition of its basic problems and in the expansion of its aims to meet the needs of great civilian populations, than ever before. The passing of the emergency of the war has left on both sides of the Atlantic an acute sense of the necessity of a broader conception of social hygiene than the mere maintenance of military or physical efficiency against the ravages of syphilis and gonococcus infections. If any one emphasis has marked the work of the year, it has been an educational one. Great conferences and assemblages organized for study have addressed themselves to two principal objectives: 1. The recognition of the principles and data which could be universally accepted by thoughtful persons as the least common denominators of this highly complex and controversial field. 2. The discovery of methods for the better conveyance of such principles and data to the consuming public, both adolescent and adult.

Of such gatherings, the following, at least, should be mentioned:

1. The summer social-hygiene course held under the auspices of the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board, the United States Bureau of Education, the United States Public Health Service, and the American Social Hygiene Association, at Teachers College, Columbia University, July 6 to August 13, 1920. This was designed primarily to prepare teachers of standard subjects, social workers, and parents to play their appropriate parts in the needed sex instruction of all young people. It was expressly agreed that social-hygiene education in the schools and colleges should not be given prominence as a course or courses of sex instruction per se by special teachers; and that, on the contrary it should be merged unobtrusively into regular subjects of instruction.

Some 75 special students were registered for the course and did work in it of academic grade, while the large number of special visitors from allied social agencies and from other summer school courses brought the daily attendance at the lecture courses to about 200. The work was organized in a daily lecture series on the biological groundwork of social hygiene; a daily lecture series by various experts on different practical aspects of the social-hygiene campaign; tri-weekly conferences with specialists; an advanced seminar in social-hygiene education; and frequent showings of moving pictures and other illustrative and exhibit materials.

The value of this first experimental summer course was generally recognized, and the continuation of the program in the future is assured.

2. The Institute on Venereal Disease Control conducted by the United States Public Health Service at the New National Museum, Washington, November 22 to December 3, 1920. This was a shorter and more intensive effort designed particularly for the benefit of health officers, physicians, and nurses, nearly 600 of whom registered for the Institute. To this end, the Public Health Service organized a faculty of 54 of the ablest men and women who are authorities in the various phases of venereal-disease control. Although limited by the nature of its functions to public-health work, the Service proved definitely that its policies are formed on the broadest educational principles. Nine out of the fourteen courses offered by the Institute dealt with ideals, and but five with treatment.

3. The crowning event of the year in social-hygiene work was the All-America Conference on Venereal Diseases held in Washington immediately following the Institute, December 6-11, 1920. Four national organizations, two governmental and two voluntary, cooperated in the planning and administration of this Conference: The United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board, the United States Public Health Service, the American Red Cross, and the American Social Hygiene Association. Including the general conference committee and its section secretaries, upwards of 400 delegates registered for the Conference, representing practically every state in the union, and in addition special representatives were present from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Porto Rico, and Santo Domingo.

The plan of organization was unique, and an enormous amount of work was done and many agreements reached with a minimum of friction and delay. The General Conference Committee, consisting of authorities in their respective fields, was chosen by the president, Dr. William H. Welch, on recommendation of the Administrative Committee, Dr. Livingston Farrand, of the Red Cross, Dr. Thomas A. Storey, of the Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board, Dr. Claude C. Pierce, of the United States Public Health Service, and Dr. William F. Snow, chairman, of the American Social Hygiene Association. The Conference Committee, divided into sections on the basis of the special experience and training of its members, met each morning to consider the special problems raised in their respective fields and the question submitted by the delegates from the general sessions of the Conference. The daily reports of these sectional committees were then discussed and revised in committee of the whole at afternoon sessions. The results were then presented to the evening sessions of the entire conference for discussion and action. The subjects dealt with by the several sections were these:

1. Medical Research and Laboratory Questions.

2. Diagnosis and Treatment of Syphilis.

3 and 4. Gonorrhea in the Male and Female.

5. Public Health and Administrative Problems.

6. Clinic and Hospital Questions.

7. Statistics.

8. Public Information and Education.

9. Law Enforcement Measures.

10. Protective Social Measures.

11. Psychological Aspects of the Venereal-Disease Problem.

12. Social Service.

The product of this sifting process was a series of resolutions which express probably the best consensus of expert opinion available at the present time upon the points, both technical and controversial, which demand authoritative knowledge. A preliminary report of these has been published, and a final report will soon be issued.

Of the findings and attitudes of the Conference it is impossible to speak in detail. All schools of thought on social-hygiene problems were represented and none was repressed. Yet the general temper of the delegates and committee members was conservative, holding fast to methods and measures of proved efficiency. The Conference condemned the use of civilian so-called medical prophylaxis on the basis of such data as exist at present, and went on record in favor of strict extra-marital continence as the foundation stone of a correct program of sexual ethics, although recognizing the impossibility of final solutions for all circumstances.

One of the most encouraging results of the Conference was the participation of the representatives from most of the Latin-American countries. While few in number and with a limited experience in social-hygiene campaigns in their own nations such as have been carried on by many of the older nations, they were active and helpful participants and doubtless took back with them also a wealth of practical information and measures adaptable to their local conditions.

4. The All-America Conference was the first of a series of regional conferences on venereal diseases recommended by the Medical Advisory Board of the League of Red Cross Societies in its conference at Cannes in the Spring of 1919. The second of these was the North European Conference, held at Copenhagen, May 20 to 25, 1921. The participating nations here were Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Representatives of the German Red Cross Society were also present. The questions of adequate provision by these important maritime nations of diagnostic and treatment facilities for seamen of their merchant marines, and notification, a measure now generally accepted in the Western hemisphere, were subjects of live discussion. In general, advanced and fearless methods of dealing with the venereal-disease question were advocated, the Scandinavian nations having been notable for the radical way in which they have dealt with certain vexing questions.

Other regional conferences of a similar nature are planned for the near future. Among these will be one for the southeastern European nations to be held at Prague in the fall of this year, and one for the southwestern nations at Paris.

In the United States, the year has been one of varying fortunes for the federal and state programs of venereal-disease control. The major parties in the presidential campaign both made platform declarations which might be interpreted favorably to social hygiene, the Democratic demanding the continuance of the government campaign of sex education; the Republican approving the principle of federal aid to the states in health and welfare activities. In addition, President Harding, as candidate, president-elect, and president has several times expressed his purpose to establish a federal department of public welfare of cabinet rank, comprising all activities of public health, education, social service, and veteran relief, now scattered through many uncoordinated bureaus and departments. Just how the work of venereal-disease control may be organized under such a new plan of administration is not yet clear. The Sixty-sixth Congress, at its last short session, deleted from the Sundry Civil Bill appropriations for the maintenance of the work of the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board including apportionments to state boards of health for venereal-disease control. This was not, however, because of lack of interest in this work, and it did not repeal the Chamberlain-Kahn Act of 1918, under which the Board operated for the protection of the military and naval forces of the United States from venereal diseases. The expressed intention of the sponsors of this Act, and of Congress at the time of its passage, was that the work should be continued into peace-time and expanded on a civilian basis. The surgeons general of the Army, Navy, and the Public Health Service, representing respectively the Secretaries of War, Navy, and the Treasury in the composition of the Board, therefore appealed to the Sixty-seventh Congress for deficiency appropriations totalling $925,000 for this work during 1921-22, $500,000 of which is to be allotted to states on the basis of a minimum apportionment of $5,000 each, the remainder to be allotted in proportion to population. The balance was requested for the continuance of the educational, laboratory, and protective work initiated by the Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board. Congress again reviewed the situation and appropriated $225,000 with the restriction that it be used for the protective measures program, the position taken being that the several states ought now to support fully the medical and educational phases of the work. Many state boards of health and at least twenty-seven legislatures, alive to the imperative need of continuing the program, have provided funds for diagnostic and treatment facilities within these states, and to a large extent the economies of the federal government have been compensated by local appropriations and volunteer funds.

A government measure of more than passing interest to social hygienists is the Sheppard-Towner bill for the protection of maternity and infancy, which passed the Senate during the last Congress, and which has been reintroduced in the present one with fair chances of success. While opponents of this bill have claimed that it is paternalistic and dangerous legislation and is not sound administratively, no one disputes the need for improved hygiene in the fields of birth and care of children, the mortality rate of American mothers and children from causes connected with childbirth being among the highest of civilized nations. As an educational influence indirectly in the field of social hygiene the discussions of this bill have been of great importance.

Voluntary organizations of public health and social hygiene have shown marked advance during the past year in the direction of better coordination and prevention of duplication. The formation of the National Health Council and the National Child Health Council, composed of the leading organizations in their respective fields, have been the most outstanding events here. The National Health Council, though but a few months old, has already demonstrated that the possibilities of cooperation between its corporate members are almost limitless. These include a bureau of information, a legislative bureau, cooperative conferences and planning meetings. Experiments are being tried out providing common services of bookkeeping, stock-room and shipping, library, and other services. It is significant, however, that in all of these plans complete autonomy in their respective fields is retained by the participating organizations. In the social-hygiene field, the American Social Hygiene Association and the Bureau of Social Hygiene have been active in this new movement.

In Great Britain, two important bodies which are at work in venereal-disease control, the National Council for Combating Venereal Diseases and the Society for the Prevention of Venereal Diseases, have been hitherto largely in opposition to each other in their envisagement of the problem and their convictions as to the methods by which it is to be attacked. The National Council, the older organization, has held steadily to the educational type of work, supplemented by strong emphasis on multiplication and improvement of treatment centers, believing that no permanent gain can be effected in the reduction of venereal diseases unless at the same time the general standard of sex ethics in the population is raised, and the number of promiscuous sex contacts lessened. The Society for the Prevention of Venereal Diseases, on the other hand, assuming that a large proportion of human beings will tend permanently to remain incontinent, feels that the only practical course is to consider disease entirely apart from morality and to provide inexpensive and easily obtainable drugs for self-disinfection after exposure. By thus placing the onus of responsibility upon every individual who indulges in illicit sexual intercourse, to prevent his own infection, the Society hopes to reduce perceptibly and eventually to eradicate the venereal diseases in the population of Great Britain.

There are signs that a rapprochment between these two conflicting organizations may be effected. The best public sentiment of England realizes that it is not desirable for those sincerely thoughtful in these all-important questions to be hostile and divided. The National Council, in a recent memorandum which is understood to have received the approval of the Minister of Health, makes the following statement:

Whilst it cannot be too clearly or publicly stated that the way to avoid contracting these diseases is to avoid infection, and the way to avoid infection is to refrain from all forms of promiscuous sexual intercourse, it must nevertheless be recognized that there exists a large number of individuals, men and women, who do not respond either to the moral or to the social appeal, ....

Where such individuals, acting on their own initiative, desire to purchase from chemists disinfectants as a protection against these diseases, no legal difficulty exists to prevent them from so doing. . . . The recommending to the public by advertisement or other similar means, of disinfectants in connection with these diseases, however, must result in giving increased notoriety to quack remedies, and is to be deprecated. . . . Further, the public should be officially warned against any attempt at self-treatment of these diseases, if and when any signs or symptoms are experienced. . . .

If an individual has incurred or has reason to think that he or she has incurred risk of infection, it is his or her bounden duty to cleanse himself or herself thoroughly and immediately. . . .1 [1. National Health, Vol. xiii, No. 140, p. 255, May, 1921.]

There thus seems to be a real basis of common ground between the two British organizations, from which some form of cooperation may well evolve.

No survey of international activities would be complete without mention of the important part played by the League of Red Cross Societies in stimulating effective action against the venereal diseases throughout the world and particularly in Europe. Its Division for Combating Venereal Diseases, in addition to calling and supervising the regional conferences above-mentioned, has conducted venereal-disease surveys of certain countries, and has been a constant and active center of propaganda by literature, motion-picture films, and other educational matter. The League's headquarters at Geneva is in peculiarly close contact with American social-hygiene activities and derives much of its inspiration and materials therefrom. The International Journal of Public Health, established last year by the League, is a notable example of medical journalism.

Out of many interesting and effective experiments in different types of educational work which have been carried on in the United States during the past year, only a few of special significance can be mentioned. Perhaps one of the most important was the demonstration trips made by the "social-hygiene field car" in North Carolina, Florida, and New York State. This truck was completely equipped for showing motion pictures outdoors or under all kinds of conditions indoors, so that the most modern educational films on social hygiene could be shown to selected audiences in entire communities in isolated and inaccessible rural districts as well as towns. An advance officer, two lecturers (one white and one Negro), and an operator have been the principal staff, although a woman physician and other temporary appointees have been used. In North Carolina alone five counties were completely covered in the demonstration and more than 40,000 persons of both sexes saw motion pictures and heard lectures. In each state arrangements for follow-up work have been made. The United States Public Health Service and the American Red Cross have cooperated with the American Social Hygiene Association in these demonstrations carried out with the state and local health authorities.

Particular attention has been directed to hygiene campaigns among the Negroes, both in the South and the North by federal and private organizations. The special aim has been in every case to train leadership among the Negroes themselves and to evoke constructive effort for themselves by members of their own race. An experimental campaign was carried on by the Public Health Service in Tennessee. Hygiene courses have been established in numerous Negro colleges and schools. A lecture series for Negro social workers of New York City was held under the auspices of the New York Urban League.

In Cleveland a public-health survey was executed under the auspices of the Cleveland Hospital Council and the general direction of Dr. Haven Emerson, which will probably remain a model of technique for many years. Venereal diseases formed one of the nine main divisions upon which a staff contributed by the American Social Hygiene Association investigated the city's record and made valuable recommendations. Cleveland has set a mark for other cities to emulate in the willingness with which it submits itself to diagnosis in all fields of social welfare, and the sincerity with which it seeks to remedy the deficiencies discovered.

A review of the legislative accomplishments of the year is indicative of much progress. In the United States forty-two state legislatures met this winter between January and June, and a campaign on a national scale to introduce social-hygiene bills in those whose laws were inadequate, was undertaken by the American Social Hygiene Association, in conjunction with the National League of Women Voters and other organizations. Of 177 bills on social-hygiene subjects introduced in the forty-odd legislatures, 87 had become laws by May 1. Seven states adopted measures to prohibit the advertising of venereal-disease nostrums. Six states passed laws to prevent ophthalmia neonatorum. Many adopted or strengthened the vice repressive act, the injunction and abatement act, and others of the "standard forms" of laws recommended by the federal authorities. The New York legislature passed a drastic act for the state censorship of moving pictures. But perhaps the most interesting pieces of new legislation are those dealing with the regulation of the marriage relation. These are usually spontaneous expressions of a need felt by citizens of certain states for more protection of partners in marriage and for posterity from those who are unfit for marriage. Eight states out of thirteen in which such bills were introduced passed laws requiring certificates of freedom from venereal diseases in one or both partners in order to obtain a marriage license. Certain of these marriage regulation bills attracted wide attention for their innovations. Such is the North Carolina law, by which the candidates are required to present physicians' certificates that they are free from venereal disease or tuberculosis in an infectious state, and have never been adjudged idiots, imbeciles, or of unsound mind. The result has been to reduce considerably the numbers of persons applying for licenses in North Carolina, and to drive many seeking marriage into Virginia and South Carolina. Physicians are naturally unwilling to give certificates requiring a life-long knowledge of the candidate concerned, rather than of merely giving his immediate physical and mental condition.

Another law which attracts interest was the amendment of the existing law in Oregon, requiring a certificate of freedom from venereal disease from the male only. The amendment includes females as well. The Oregon legislature also referred to the people for referendum the Owens-Adair bill, requiring mental and physical examinations for both applicants for marriage license, providing that if either party fails to pass the examination, he shall not be permitted to marry unless both are sterilized. Whether the temper of the populace will approve so radical a bill, is a question of keen interest to social hygienists and eugenists.

Abroad, important legislation on the marriage state has been adopted or is pending in the national legislatures of several countries. Great Britain is in the throes of a campaign for a more liberal divorce law, the present one allowing divorce on the ground of adultery only, and discriminating against women. A bill sponsored by Lord Buckmaster, which places both sexes on the same footing and allows divorce on the grounds of adultery, desertion for three years and upward, cruelty, incurable insanity after five years' confinement, habitual drunkenness, and imprisonment under commuted death sentence. The debates have been unusually acrimonious, the chief opposition to the bill coming from the clergy. Whether the present bill emerges victorious or not, it is plain that England's inflexible law on this subject cannot long remain unaltered.

In Sweden new legislation of this character has not only been advocated but passed. Divorce may now be obtained upon application after one year of marriage if the partners mutually request it. Illegitimate children have equal rights of every kind with their legitimate brothers. These and other laws constitute a code governing family life and the marriage relation which will be observed with very keen interest during the next few years.

October, 1921

A Study of Specialized Courts Dealing with Sex Delinquency. I. The Morals Court of Chicago, by George F. Worthington and Ruth Topping
A Program for the Statistics of the Venereal Diseases, by Louis I. Dublin and Mary Augusta Clark
International Venereal-Disease Statistics, by Knud Stouman
The Present Prevalence of Venereal Diseases, by Lawrence Marcus
Age, Sex, and Marriage in Relation to Incidence, by Raymond S. Patterson

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The Social Hygiene Movement
by American Journal of Public Health
November, 1913



American Journal of Public Health
Official Organ of the American Public Health Association
Published Monthly by the American Public Health Association.
VOLUME III.-Old Series Vol. IX. NOVEMBER, 1913. Number 11
$2.00 a year. 20 cents a copy.
LIVINGSTON FARRAND, M. D., Editor. SELSKAR M. GUNN, B. S., Managing Editor.
PHILIP P. JACOBS, Ph.D., Business Manager.
All expressions of opinions and all statements of supposed facts are published on the authority of the
writer over whose signature they appear and are not to be regarded as expressing the
views of the American Public Health Association. unless such statements
or opinions have been adopted by vote of the Association.
American Public Health Association
The United States of America
The Dominion of Canada The Republic of Mexico The Republic of Cuba
Officers 1913-1914
President, Dr. William C. Woodward, Third Vice-President, Dr. C. J. Hastings,
Washington, D. C. Toronto, Canada.
First Vice-President, Dr. John F. Anderson, Secretary, Professor S. AM. Gunn,
Washington, D. C. Boston, Mass.
Second Vice-President, Dr. M. Lebredo, Treasurer, Dr. Livingston Farrand,
Havana, Cuba. New York City
Section Officers
Laboratory Vital Statistics Public Health Officials
Chairman, Prof. Edward Bartow, Chairman, Prof. W F. Wilcox, Chairman, Dr. C. V. Chapin,
Urbana, Ill. Ithaca, N. Y. Providence, R. I.
Vice-Chairman, C. E. A. Winslow, Vice-Chairman, Dr. E. Liceaga, Vice-Chairman, Dr. C. J. Hasting.
New York City. Mexico City. Toronto, Canada.
Secretary, Dr. D. L. Harris, Secretary, Dr. Louis I. Dublin, Secretary, Dr. E. C. Levy,
St. Louis, Mo. New York City. Richmond, Va.
Recorder, Dr. A. Freeman, Recorder, Dr. A. S. Fell,
Richmond, Va. Trenton, N. J.
Sanitary Engineering Sociological
Chairman, Mr. R. S. Weston, Chairman, Mr. Lawrence Veiller,
Boston, Mass. New York City.
Vice-Chairman, Mr. George W. Fuller, Vice-Chairman, Dr. H. E. Dearholt,
New York City. Milwaukee, Wis.
Secretary, Dr. H. D. Pease, Secretary, Mr. S. Poulterer Morris,
New York City. Denver, Col.

THE SOCIAL HYGIENE MOVEMENT.

There was recently held in Buffalo, the Fourth International Congress on School Hygiene, concerning which a prominent life insurance expert made the comment-"They called it a congress on school hygiene, but it was in reality a conference on sex education; there wasn't a section of the congress that at some point in its program did not jump the track to discuss certain phases of the sex problem." This was literally true. One of the largest audiences of the entire congress, numbering several thousand persons, assembled to hear President Eliot and the other speakers on the program of the annual meeting of the American Federation for Sex Hygiene.

That the public is now thoroughly interested in the sex problem in all its various phases is certain. The many lectures and social hygiene meetings being held in every section of the United States are evidences of this; the columns of newspaper space devoted to the white slave traffic indicate it; the good, indifferent and vicious plays upon the subject that are bidding for public attention, prove that this interest extends to all classes; the increasing volume of literature, also good, indifferent, and vicious, shows that the people generally are taking time to read; the fight for legislation relating to marriage, prostitution, minimum wage, protection of girls, is proof that the best elements of society recognize the importance of the problem, and are combining to work out a solution. It behooves the various organizations and individuals interested in the progress of this movement to study it intensively and to plan for the crystalization of public sentiment in sound laws and wise administration.

During the sessions of the International Congress referred to, there occurred another meeting which promises to have a far reaching influence on the situation. This was a joint conference between representatives of the American Federation for Sex Hygiene and the American Vigilance Association. As a result, formal action was taken ratifying a merger and reorganization of the work of these two associations under a single board of directors. A new name is to be chosen later, but the purpose of the union is to build up the strong, practical and representative organization for promoting investigation and progress along all lines of work related to the proper understanding and utilization of sex as an influence in the development of the human race, and for combating venereal disease, commercialized vice and other harmful influences which have developed about the sex functions. There seems to be money enough available to insure the carrying out of any plans adopted. The announcement of the directorate and executives which may be chosen will be awaited with the greatest interest and it is devoutly to be hoped that the personnel will be such as to give assurance of sane guidance in this new agency for human conservation.

The leaders of the new federation have a most difficult task before them. It will be necessary to weld together a large number of diversified and, even, antagonistic elements.

For example, there are those who believe that the teaching of sex hygiene is the only method of practical value; but within the ranks of this group, a difference of opinion exists as to what shall be taught, at what ages the teaching shall be undertaken, and by whom it shall be done.

There are others who believe that moral education of young people constitutes the only safe method of attacking this problem; of these some advocate the influence of the church in developing religious experience, and would suppress all information concerning sex; some would teach the simple facts of sex, and advocate a single standard of morals, encourage early marriage and the promotion of temperance, as the important things to do.

Still others believe the transmission of venereal diseases to be the only important phase of the problem, and advocate strict administrative control of these diseases as the key to the situation. But even the supporters of this view are sharply divided as to the proper methods to be adopted -- Shall we segregate or not segregate the prostitutes? Shall we subject all prostitutes so far as possible to medical examination? Shall we provide isolation Wards for venereal cases? Shall we establish venereal disease clinics, as tuberculosis clinics have been established? Shall we approve the prophylactic methods adopted by armies and navies?

Some are interested in this movement as a factor in the great vague field of eugenics.

There are also many equally sincere persons who regard all these efforts as futile. They hold that sex education only arouses in young men and women a morbid curiosity which had better be left dormant, or they say that prostitution has always existed and always will exist, and that the parents of each child can alone deal properly with the matter. To bring together these earnest persons holding divergent views, and sometimes fanatical in their convictions, in support of a scientific, and effective campaign is the most difficult task any public welfare organization has yet set itself.

The spirit of sarcasm evidenced in the article in the July number of this Journal and the bitterness of the reply published in September have been exhibited in a lesser degree many times during the recent history of the social hygiene movement, but there are signs that the future promises better things. One of the sanest, most encouraging pieces of actual constructive work that has been done in sex education is outlined in the second annual report of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society. The establishment of the Bureau of Social Hygiene for scientific laboratory, clinical and field research upon the underlying causes of prostitution and commercialized vice, marks another advance. The inauguration in New York City of a chain of diagnostic stations by the health department, and the making of syphilis and gonococcus infections reportable, is a most important event in the progress of the medical attack. The decision of this same city to add a "venereal" building to its infectious disease hospital group is a still further advance in the right direction.

When we consider a simple list of the serious and carefully planned efforts which are now being made by the various agencies to grapple with the large questions covered by the term social hygiene, it is manifest that the battle is on. The need of the hour is for a strong national organization equipped and manned to direct the fight. The work of the pioneer societies has prepared the way. Their foundation should now be built upon rapidly. There is need for standardizing the pamphlets and other literature which are being distributed. The material for popular lectures should be most carefully reviewed and censored. Exhibits and, particularly, statistics on this subject require to be worked over so thoroughly that their accuracy and import cannot be challenged. It is to be hoped that the association may become an authoritative but conservative bureau of information upon every subject related to the problems of sex.

Active members of the Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board are Edward Clifford, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, J. M. Wainwright, Assistant Secretary of War, Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Surgeon General M. W. Ireland of the Army, Surgeon General E. R. Stitt of the Navy, and Surgeon General Hugh S. Cumming of the Public Health Service. Dr. T. A. Storey, of the College of the City of New York, formerly chief inspector of the New York State military training commission, was executive secretary over the period covered by the report. He has been succeeded lately in that position by Dr. Valeria H. Parker, an active figure in the social-hygiene work of the National League of Women Voters, the National Women's Christian Temperance Union, the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teachers Associations, and the American Social Hygiene Association.

-- Journal of Social Hygiene, Vol. VIII, January, 1922, by The American Social Hygiene Association

At the present moment there are two important issues connected with the social hygiene movement, upon which the general American public is seeking advice and guidance. (1) Shall we teach sex hygiene in the public schools? (2) Shall we actively try to suppress prostitution?

There are strong arguments against school instruction as it ordinarily would be given, but they are opposed on the ground that there is practically no such thing as ignorance of sex even among children. The question of sex-education of children is not one of innocence vs. sex knowledge, but of pick-up street tradition vs. the truth about sex. A number of careful educational experiments on this question are now being conducted in various parts of the world, and there seems to be reason for believing that it will be answered in due time. Meanwhile there is no discouragement in the fact that progress is slow in this direction, provided only it be progress. It is vitally important that education on this subject be sound, scientific, and wise. The new association should follow these experiments closely and make its observations available to the interested public.

Similarly it should watch the experiments in the suppression of prostitution and the control of venereal diseases. In theory this is a simpler problem than the selection of what shall be taught about sex, but in practice it is found to possess so many moral, medical, and other angles that the situation seems hopeless to all except the most courageous and persistent workers. Vice Commissions have repeatedly reported the failure of segregation as an effective measure for reducing either the prevalence of prostitution or of diseases associated with it, yet there continues in every city a large body of people who believe that an "unofficial" segregation is the necessary price of freedom from most undesirable scattering of prostitutes throughout residence districts. The experience of other cities is drawn upon for alleged facts and figures to support this position. The new association should be in possession of accurate and complete data about each city or community wherein any activity along these lines has been shown.

In short, the first function of the new society would seem to be the securing of trust-worthy information upon which a constructive program can be based. With the facts in hand a simple and effective educational campaign can be inaugurated, to be followed by the furthering of well considered legislation and the establishment of sound administrative methods. If, in pursuit of such experimental work as may be necessary to provide the desired facts, the hysteria and lack of balance which has too often characterized earlier interest in this problem can be suppressed, the new society will not only have justified its existence but will have earned the gratitude of all those to whom the public welfare is of deep concern. May it prove equal to its task!

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Bureau of Social Hygiene
by The Rockefeller Foundation Digital History
Accessed: 3/5/20

Bureau of Social Hygiene

From 1911 to 1934, the Bureau of Social Hygiene (BSH) funded research and sought to influence public policy on a number of issues related to sex, crime and delinquency. Although the BSH received contributions from a number of organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), the Bureau was largely dependent upon the patronage of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (JDR Jr.), who created the organization to address many of his own personal concerns and interests.

Research and Reform

The idea for the BSH originated in 1910, following JDR Jr.’s participation in a grand jury investigation of white slavery in New York City. Motivated by frustration with temporary public commissions that could only recommend governmental action, JDR Jr. established a permanent and private body to deal directly with a variety of social ills, including prostitution, corruption, drug use and juvenile delinquency.


Pamphlet produced by the Bureau of Social Hygiene: "Commercialized Prostitution in New York City" 1916

The goals and projects of the BSH evolved over time. Its earliest efforts concentrated on surveying the scope of prostitution in New York City and the reform of young women involved in the trade. The BSH commissioned George Kneeland to study various aspects of prostitution in New York City and offered Katherine Bement Davis of the Bedford Hills Women’s Reformatory the resources to study the impact of prostitution on young women and the possible paths to reform. The BSH also devoted significant efforts to sex education, sponsoring the publication of materials related to sexual health and working with state departments of health to disseminate these materials among the general public.

The Root of the Problem

In 1917 [Katherine Bement] Davis was named general secretary of the BSH, and her appointment transformed the organization. She believed that prostitution could not be fully addressed without a deeper understanding of human sexuality. To promote this understanding, Davis spent years advocating for more scientific research into human sexuality. This advocacy helped to create a partnership between the BSH and the National Research Council (NRC) and to form the NRC’s Committee for Research in the Problems of Sex.

The Committee for Research in Problems of Sex was established in 1921 following a proposal by Davis and Earl F. Zinn “[t]o undertake systematic comprehensive research in sex in its individual and social manifestations, the prime purpose being to evaluate conclusions now held and to increase our body of scientifically derived data.”[1] The proposed fields of research included the psychological and physiological aspects of the “sex instinct,” abstinence, masturbation, contraception, venereal disease and sexual relationships. Importantly, these fields of research were to be explored not only from medical and biological perspectives but also from a sociological perspective.


Yale University - endocrinology continuous extractor, 1940

Yet to the dismay of both Zinn and Davis, throughout the 1920s the Committee remained a relatively conservative organization controlled primarily by men trained in the medical sciences rather than the social sciences. The Committee repeatedly funded studies that focused on topics of animal biology and sexuality while ignoring proposed studies on human sexuality. In addition to being uncomfortable with topics of human sexuality and fearing a public backlash, committee members also expressed a general distrust of the social sciences. Davis encountered significant obstacles from BSH trustees who sought to distance the BSH from its work in sex research and direct it towards topics deemed less controversial. Bowing to internal pressures, Davis retired in 1928, and with her retirement the BSH became more deeply involved in the field of criminology.

Beginning in 1931 the BSH planned its own demise by allowing all of its outstanding grants expire. By 1933 all BSH grants had concluded, and the organization effectively ceased operations, although it was not formally dissolved until 1940. Research into sex, including grants to fund the study of endocrinology and the work of Alfred Kinsey, was subsequently taken up by the RF [Rockefeller Foundation].

Notes:

[1]Outline Presented by Mr. Zinn, Earl F. Zinn, undated, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), Rockefeller Family Boards, RG III 2 O, Box 7, Folder 50.

***********************

Bureau of Social Hygiene
by Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC)
Accessed: 3/5/20

Bureau of Social Hygiene

The Bureau of Social Hygiene resulted from the appointment of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to a Special Grand Jury to investigate white slavery in New York City in 1910. In conferences taken in the course of this investigation, Mr. Rockefeller, Jr. became convinced that for a lasting improvement of conditions a permanent organization was needed. On March 22, 1911, The Committee of Three, including Mr. Rockefeller, Paul Warburg and Starr J. Murphy [counsel for the Rockefeller Foundation and personal legal adviser of John D. Rockefeller for 17 years] met. The name "Bureau of Social Hygiene" was first used in October of that year, but was not used consistently until 1913.

In 1913 the Bureau was incorporated and its purpose was stated as " ... the study, amelioration, and prevention of those social conditions, crimes, and diseases which adversely affect the well being of society, with special reference to prostitution and the evils associated therewith." The Bureau would engage in research and education, publish reports, and employ and/or cooperate with other public or private agencies to obtain these goals. The emphasis in the years from 1911 until the reorganization of 1928 was mainly on prostitution, the control of vice, and their relationships to police organization. Narcotics was also an early interest.

The General Secretary during the early years was Katharine Bement Davis. She resigned in 1928 and Lawrence B. Dunham was appointed Director. In 1929 the certificate of incorporation was amended and the emphasis on prostitution was dropped. From 1929-1934 the Bureau developed an interest in criminology. Studies and projects were still conducted in narcotics and social hygiene during this time.

The Bureau functioned through grants. It was not a foundation and had no set endowment. In the early years, financial backing came from several sources including Paul Warburg, the New York Foundation, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Mr. Rockefeller was always the main contributor. Grants were occasionally channeled through the Bureau from the Spelman Fund of New York and the Rockefeller Foundation. Grants were most often long range, covering periods of from three to five years. The Bureau did not interfere in the conduct of a project once the money had been granted, but it was careful in its selection of projects and kept in close touch for the duration of the grant.

The Bureau ceased making new appropriations in 1934 and by mid 1937 all the previous commitments had been brought to a close. Annual meetings were held until 1940 when the Bureau was dissolved on November 13th.

Associated With:
• American Birth Control League.
• American Social Hygiene Association.
• British Social Hygiene Council.
• Bureau of Social Hygiene (New York, N.Y.)
• Flexner, Abraham, 1866-1959.
• Fosdick, Raymond B., 1883-1972.
• Frankfurter, Felix, 1882-1965.
• Glueck, Sheldon, 1896-
• Harrison, Leonard Vance, b. 1891.
• Hoover, J. Edgar 1895-1972.

Subjects:
• Birth control
• Correctional institution
• Crime and criminals
• Criminal behavior, prediction of
• Criminal investigation--Scientific
• Criminal law
• Criminal psychology
• Criminal statistics
• Drug control
• Eugenics

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Alfred Ploetz
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/6/20


Alfred Ploetz

Alfred Ploetz (August 22, 1860 – March 20, 1940) was a German physician, biologist and eugenicist known for coining the term racial hygiene (Rassenhygiene)[1] and promoting the concept in Germany. Rassenhygiene is a form of eugenics.

Life and career

Alfred Ploetz was born in Swinemünde, Germany (now Świnoujście, Poland) and he grew up and attended school in Breslau (now Wrocław). At this time he began his friendship with Carl Hauptmann, brother of the famous author Gerhart Hauptmann. In 1879 he founded a secret racist youth society. In Gerhart Hauptmann's Drama "Vor Sonnenaufgang" (Before Sunrise) which was first performed on October 20, 1889, in Berlin, the key figure of the journalist Loth is based on Ploetz.

After school Ploetz at first studied political economy in Breslau. There he joined the "Freie wissenschaftliche Vereinigung" (free scientific union). Among his friends were – besides his brother – his former school friend Ferdinand Simon (later son-in-law of August Bebel), the brothers Carl and Gerhart Hauptmann, Heinrich Laux, and Charles Proteus Steinmetz.

This circle enthusiastically read the works of Ernst Haeckel and Charles Darwin. Carl Hauptmann was a student of Ernst Haeckel, and Gerhart Hauptmann and Ploetz attended some of his lectures. The group expanded and developed a plan of founding a colony in one of the pacific states and established itself as the "Pacific association". They planned a "community on friendly, socialist and maybe also pan-Germanic basis". In consequence of the prosecution of socialistically minded persons in application of Otto von Bismarck's anti-socialist laws (1878–1890), in 1883 Ploetz fled to Zurich, where he continued to study political economy with Julius Platter (1844–1923). In his memoirs Ploetz states as an important reason for his choice of Zurich that in his studies in Breslau socialist theories were only incidentally mentioned.

After living for a half a year in the United States, Ploetz returned to Zurich and began to study medicine. In 1886, he fell in love with a fellow student Agnes Bluhm despite being involved with Pauline Rüdin. They decided to get married early in 1887. Ploetz was also seeing an American named Mary Sherwood who was studying hypnotism. In 1890 Ploetz became medical doctor and married his former girlfriend Pauline, though the two never had children. Bluhm however kept Ploetz as a close friend throughout her life and they both shared similar views on racial purity and the benefits of eugenics.[2] Ploetz and his wife lived in the US for four years, and divorced in 1898. Ploetz later married Anita Nordenholz. This marriage produced three children: Ulrich (called Uli), Cordelia (called Deda) and Wilfrid (called Fridl, 1912–2013).[3]

Ploetz first proposed the theory of racial hygiene (race-based eugenics) in his "Racial Hygiene Basics" (Grundlinien einer Rassenhygiene) in 1895. In 1904 Ploetz founded the periodical "Archiv für Rassen-und Gesellschaftsbiologie" with Fritz Lenz as chief editor, and in 1905 the German Society for Racial Hygiene (De Berliner Gesellschaft fur Rassenhygiene) [4] with 31 members. page [5] In 1907 the society became the "International Society for Racial Hygiene".[6] In 1930 he became an honorary doctor of the University of Munich.

Ploetz was a supporter of the Nazi Party, which took power in 1933. Ploetz wrote in April 1933 that he believed Hitler would bring racial hygiene from its previous marginality into the mainstream.

In 1933 Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick established an "expert advisory committee for population and racial policy," which included Ploetz, Fritz Lenz, Ernst Rüdin and Hans F.K. Günther. This expert advisory committee had the task of advising the Nazis on the implementation and enforcement of legislation regarding racial and eugenic issues.[7] In 1936, Hitler appointed Ploetz to a professorship.

In 1937 he joined the Nazi party.[8]

He died at the age of 79 and is buried at his home in Herrsching on the Ammersee in Bavaria. After his death, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer praised his "inner sympathy and enthusiasm [with] the National Socialist Movement".[9] Ernst Rüdin, also a committed National Socialist, praised Ploetz two years before as a man "by his meritorious services has helped to set up our Nazi ideology."[10]

Theories

In his book The efficiency of our race and the protection of the weak (1895) he described a society in which eugenic ideas were applied. Society would examine the moral and intellectual capacity of citizens to decide on marriage and the permitted number of children. It may also include a prohibition on reproduction. Disabled children are aborted, the sick and weak, twins and children whose parents Ploetz considers too old or young, are "eliminated".

Along with many other eugenicists in Europe and America, Ploetz believed in the superiority of the Nordic race. His writings were a major influence on Nazi ideology. His opinion of the Jewish Question changed during the course of his life, but his view and the doctrine of the NSDAP were in accord by the time the party came to power in 1933.

In his early writings Ploetz credited Jews as the second highest cultural race after Europeans.[11] He identified no substantial difference in "racial character" between Aryans and Jews, arguing that the mental abilities of Jews and their role in the development of human culture made them indispensable to the "process of racial mix" which would enhance humanity.

The high aptitude of the Jews and their outstanding role in the progress of mankind considering men like Jesus, Spinoza, Marx has to be kindly acknowledged without hesitation... All this Antisemitism is a flop which will vanish slowly in the light of scientific knowledge and a humane democracy".[12]

Later he revised this view. He stressed that the distinctiveness of Jews indicated that their mental characteristics would adversely affect Aryans by introducing individualism and lack of love for the military and the nation. He favored the global dominance of the Aryan race.[13]

Bibliography

• (Alfred Hoche, Alfred Ploetz, Alfred Vierkandt, Carl Hans Heinze Sennhenn) German Eugenicists: ISBN 9781230541914 [14]
• (Alfred J Ploetz) Die Tüchtigkeit unsrer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen ISBN 1103490796 [15]
• (Alfred J Ploetz) Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie, einschliesslich Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Hygiene 1908, Fuenfter Jahrgang ISBN 117441166X [16]

See also

• Ernst Rudin
• Eugen Fischer
• Eugenics
• Karl Binding
• Racial hygiene
• Wilhelm Schallmayer

References

1. Bashford, Alison; Levine, Phillipa, eds. (2010). "Eugenics and the Modern World". The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics. Oxford University Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0199945054. Retrieved 6 August 2015.
2. Weindling, Paul (1993). Health, race, and German politics between national unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 (1st pbk. ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 74. ISBN 052142397X.
3. "Anzeige von Wilfrid Ploetz". merkur-online.de.
4. "Mystiek Antisemitisme Waar Sprookjes En Wetenschap Elkaar Ontmoeten". Internet Archive.
5. Schafft, Gretchen Engle: "From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich". University of Illinois Press. 2004. Pg. 42.
6. Atkins, Stephen E. (2009). Holocaust Denial as an International Movement. Greenwood Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-0313345388.
7. Anahid S. Rickman: "Rassenpflege im völkischen Staat", Vom Verhältnis der Rassenhygiene zur nationalsozialistischen Politik. Dissertation Bonn 2002, Online einsehbar unter [3], p. 331
8. Federal Archives Act Party Zehlendorf.
9. Otmar von Verschuer, "Alfred Ploetz," in The Erbarzt, Bd 8 p.69-72, 1940, p.71
10. Ernst Rudin: "Honor of Prof. Dr. Alfred Ploetz," in ARGB, Bd 32 / S.473–474, 1938, p.474
11. "Wir haben frueher die Juden neben den Westariern als hoechstentwickelte Culturrasse angefuehrt." Ploetz, 137
12. "Die Tüchtigkeit unserer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen", 1893, p. 141, 142. cited by Massimo Ferari Zumbini: The roots of evil. Gründerjahre des Antisemitismus: Von der Bismarckzeit zu Hitler , Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 2003, ISBN 3-465-03222-5, p.406
13. Julia Schäfer: "Vermessen – gezeichnet – verlacht Judenbilder in populären Zeitschriften 1918–1933." Campus Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-593-37745-4, p. 182
14. "German Eugenicists".
15. "Die Tüchtigkeit unsrer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen: Alfred J. Ploetz: 9781103490790: Amazon.com: Books".
16. "Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie, einschliesslich Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Hygiene 1908, Fuenfter Jahrgang (German Edition): Alfred J. Ploetz, Ludwig Plate, A Nordenholz: 9781174411663: Amazon.com: Books".

External links

• Works by or about Alfred Ploetz at Internet Archive

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International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/6/20

-- Long After Sandy, Red Cross Post-Storm Spending Still a Black Box, by Justin Elliott and Jessie Eisinger
-- Red Cross Probes Post-Katrina Fraud, by CBS News
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-- The Red Cross's Secret Disaster, by Justin Elliott and Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica, and Laura Sullivan, NPR

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
Abbreviation IFRC
Formation 1919
Type Humanitarian aid organization
Purpose To carry out relief operations to assist victims of disasters, and combine this with development work to strengthen the capacities of its member National Societies
Headquarters Geneva, Switzerland
Secretary General
Jagan Chapagain
President
Francesco Rocca
Main organ
Governing board[1]
Parent organization
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
Budget
495,444,000 CHF[2]
Website http://www.ifrc.org


Henry Pomeroy Davison, founding father of the League of Red Cross Societies.[3]

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is a worldwide humanitarian aid organization that reaches 160 million people each year through its 192 member National Societies.[4][5] It acts before, during and after disasters and health emergencies to meet the needs and improve the lives of vulnerable people. It does so with impartiality as to nationality, race, gender, religious beliefs, class and political opinions.

Guided by Strategy 2020[6] – the IFRC's collective plan of action to tackle the major humanitarian and development challenges of this decade – the IFRC is committed to saving lives and changing minds.

The IFRC is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement along with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and 192 National Societies.[7] The IFRC's strength lies in its volunteer network, community-based expertise and independence and neutrality. It works to improve humanitarian standards, as partners in development and in response to disasters. It persuades decision makers to act in the interests of vulnerable people. It works to enable healthy and safe communities, reduce vulnerabilities, strengthen resilience and foster a culture of peace around the world.

The seven Fundamental Principles that guide the work of the IFRC and its members are: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and universality.

History

Founding

On 5 May 1919, following the First World War, representatives from the National Red Cross Societies of the Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the US) came together in Paris to establish the League of Red Cross Societies (LORCS) whose stated goal was "to strengthen and unite, for health activities, already-existing Red Cross Societies and to promote the creation of new Societies".[8] The initiative was taken by Henry P. Davison, then chairman of the American Red Cross' “War Committee”,[9] with the support of Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States of America. Davison was assisted by the British general Sir David Henderson who became the first Director-General. This newly created federation of National Societies expanded the international mandate of the Red Cross Movement beyond the strict mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to include relief assistance in response to emergencies which were not caused by armed conflict. In addition to the coordination of relief operations caused by natural disasters and health emergencies, the league's mission was to assist National Societies in their founding and development, especially in peacetime.

In addition to providing assistance to victims of epidemics, natural disasters (earthquakes, floods and hurricanes) and famines, two other activities were developed during the first years of the league. One main activity was to promote health by preventing illnesses and developing the training of nurses and volunteers. The other activity was to create the Junior Red Cross within the National Societies, which introduced children and students to the Red Cross with various educational courses and involved them in practical relief activities.

The formation of the league, as an additional international Red Cross organization alongside the ICRC, was not without controversy. The ICRC had, to some extent, valid concerns about a possible rivalry between the two organizations. The foundation of the league was seen as an attempt to undermine the leadership position of the ICRC within the Movement and to gradually transfer tasks and competencies to a multilateral institution. As well, Davison did not want to include National Societies of the defeated powers, namely Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, which was contrary to the ICRC's principle of universality. Moreover, the league's beginnings were expeditious as it took 154 days between the approval of President Wilson and its incorporation. This hasty formation forced Davison to cut corners and leave unresolved issues such as a clear framework of the league's mandate, duties and funding.

The coexistence concerns between the league and the ICRC were discussed during three consecutive International Conferences of the Red Cross (1921, 1923, 1926). The statutes adopted in 1928 at the XIIIth International Conference of the Red Cross in The Hague clarified and confirmed the roles of each entity.[10] In that same year, the "International Council" was founded to coordinate cooperation between the ICRC and the league, a task which was later taken over by the Standing Commission of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

In 1920, the league's “General Council, originally composed of representatives of the victorious Allies”,[11] welcomed additional National Societies; 27 out of the 31 member societies were represented in 1920. In the following decade, the league admitted over 25 National Societies, including the Egyptian Red Crescent and the Red Lion and Sun of Iran.[12] Following the adoption of the Statutes of the International Red Cross in 1928 (revised in 1952 and 1986, amended in 1995 and 2006), the National Societies of the Nordic Red Cross (Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway) returned to the league after resigning three years earlier because of the discords within the Red Cross movement.[13] The Alliance of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies of the Soviet Union joined the league during the XVth International Conference in 1934. By the mid-1930s, the league became truly universal, with 58 registered National Societies.[14]

Secretariat on the move

The league's headquarters, named the secretariat, was originally based in Geneva. The league moved its secretariat from Geneva to Paris in 1922 with a restrained budget and reduced staff. The need to move away from the ICRC to further develop the league's own identity was part of the decision-making. On September 5, 1939, days following the German troops invasion of Poland, the league personnel in Paris were moved to Geneva. The league believed it could ensure the continuity of its work from a neutral country such as Switzerland. To this day, the secretariat's offices have remained in Geneva, but it was only in 1959 that the secretariat moved into its current headquarters in Petit-Saconnex.[15]

Missions begin

During the first years of the league, the work was essentially reactive and consisted mostly of recording information and statistics to be shared with the National Societies.[16] The league's first operational mission was to perform onsite observations of the conditions of the victims of a typhus epidemic in Poland,[17] and to develop and circulate information material to the surrounding countries to prevent the spread of similar epidemics diseases. The first large-scale relief action of the league came after the 1923 earthquake in Japan which killed about 200,000 people and left countless more injured and without shelter. For the first time, 35 National Red Cross Societies participated in a joint action of the ICRC and the league, for which the record sum of 277 million Swiss francs was donated.[18]

The league began issuing appeals in 1925 but appeals were not consistently issued for all disasters. During the 1920s and 1930s disaster relief remained a minor activity, behind public health, nursing and youth activities. The National Societies, with the league's assistance in the 1920s, were better prepared to deal with disaster relief and consequently less in need of external assistance.[19] Additionally, the Great Depression caused economic insecurity worldwide, urging the league to dedicate more coverage to poverty programs.


A stamp from Turkey to support the Red Crescent, 1938.

The 1930s saw the growing use of the automobile, the development of road infrastructure and consequently the increase of traffic and casualties. The league became a leader in first aid prevention for road accidents, by establishing in 1932 a Permanent Committee on First Aid on Roads, with the collaboration of various motoring associations.[20]

As the world headed closer to another war, the activities of the league reduced considerably. Nonetheless, the collaboration between the league and the ICRC continued to grow. The league provided support to the ICRC in the late 1930s, notably during the Spanish Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese war, by issuing appeals and establishing distribution points of food and medical supplies for the civilians. The Joint Relief Commission, initiated by the ICRC in 1941, established the mandates of the league and the ICRC, ensuring their continuous support to the National Societies amid the intensifying war. This agreement also increased the National Societies' independence and allowed them to pursue their civilian relief activities without causing friction with the belligerent, occupied and neutral states.


The Federation is honored at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in 1963. From left to right: King Olav of Norway, ICRC President Léopold Boissier [de], and League Chairman John MacAulay.

After World War II

After a six-year hiatus, the board of governors held its first meeting in October 1945. The post-war period provided a new driving force to the league as it resumed its relations with the National Societies and provided relief to war-affected regions.

Following disastrous weather conditions that afflicted parts the world between 1951 and 1954,[21] the league's relief activities became more operational and were no longer entirely informational. During those years, the league issued numerous appeals and showed great efficiency in disaster relief operations. In the late 1950s, there was a marked increase in the number of recognized Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies due to decolonisation.[22] By the end of the 1960s, there were more than 100 societies around the world.[23] On December 10, 1963, the league and the ICRC jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize.[24]

In 1983, the League of Red Cross Societies was renamed to the "League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies" to reflect the growing number of National Societies operating under the Red Crescent symbol. Three years later, the seven fundamental principles of the Movement, as adopted at the XXth International Conference of the Red Cross in 1965, were incorporated into the league's statutes. The name of the league was changed again during the General Assembly of 1991 to its current official designation the "International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies" (IFRC). In 1997, the ICRC and the IFRC signed the Seville Agreement which further defined the responsibilities of both organisations within the Movement.[25]

Until the beginning of the 1990s all disaster relief operations were responded as one Federation in a multilateral form. Donor red cross national societies were used to provide support through the Federation Secretariat, with money and human resources to support the Federation in the response to disasters under the coordination and leadership of the Federation Secretariat. The focus at that time was of one team, with a common mission, common goals in support of a sister red cross or red crescent society affected by a disaster.

Hurricane Mitch affected few countries in Central America in 1998. The disaster relief efforts could be considered one of the disaster response operations that change the course of multilateralism within the membership of the International Federation. Since then, bilateralism become the new norm, and the reduce number of red cross from wealthy countries responding to disasters and expanding to development work continuously grow during the 2000s, including the growing number of red crescent societies operating internationally.

In 2004, the IFRC began its largest mission to date after the tsunami disaster in South Asia. More than 40 National Societies worked with more than 22,000 volunteers to bring relief to the countless victims left without food and shelter and endangered by the risk of epidemics.[26]

Activities and responsibilities

The IFRC coordinates between National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies throughout the world. The IFRC along with ICRC supports the foundation of new National Societies in countries where no official society exists. A National Society is admitted as a member to the IFRC only after it is recognized by the ICRC. The IFRC cooperates with the National Societies of the affected countries – called the Host National Society (HNS) – as well as the National Societies of other countries willing to offer assistance – called Partner National Societies (PNS). Among the 190 National Societies admitted to the General Assembly of the IFRC as full members or observers, about 25–30 regularly work as PNS in other countries. The most active are the American Red Cross, the British Red Cross, the German Red Cross, and the Red Cross Societies of Sweden and Norway. Another major mission of the IFRC which has gained attention in recent years is its commitment to work towards a codified, worldwide ban on the use of land mines and to bring medical, psychological, and social support for people injured by land mines.

The stated tasks of the IFRC can be summarized as follows:

• to promote humanitarian principles and values
• to support National Societies
• to support projects where funds are available

The Red Cross Red Crescent is the world's largest humanitarian network with:[27]

• Nearly 11.6 million volunteers
• More than 473,000 paid staff
• More than 165,000 local Red Cross and Red Crescent units/ branches
• 19.4 million people having donated blood to National Society blood services worldwide
• More than 11 million people trained in First Aid by National Societies
• More than 106.5 million people reached by Long Term Services and Programme Development
• More than 49.5 million reached in 2016 by disaster response and early recovering programming
• A total income of more than 23.4 billion Swiss francs in 2016, with total expenditures being just over 23.1 billion Swiss francs

Organization

The IFRC has its secretariat in Geneva. It also has five regional offices and numerous country and multi-country cluster offices around the world. The secretary general is Jagan Chapagain (Nepal).[28] The IFRC is governed by a governing board consisting of a president, four vice-presidents, the chairman of the finance commission and 20 National Society representatives.[29] The highest body of the IFRC is the General Assembly which convenes every two years with delegates from all National Societies. Among other tasks, the General Assembly elects the president. The current president of the IFRC is Francesco Rocca, who also fulfills the role of president of the Italian Red Cross.

Presidents of the Federation

As of 2017,[30] the president of the IFRC is Francesco Rocca (Italian Red Cross). The vice presidents are Annemarie Huber-Hotz (Swiss Red Cross), Miguel Villarroel (Venezuela Red Cross), Abdoul Azize Diallo (Senegalese Red Cross Society), Kerem Kinik (Turkish Red Crescent), Chen Zhu (Red Cross Society of China).

Former presidents (until 1977 titled "Chairman") have been:

• 1919–1922: Henry Davison (American Red Cross)
• 1922–1935: John Barton Payne (American Red Cross)
• 1935–1938: Cary Travers Grayson (American Red Cross)
• 1938–1944: Norman Davis (American Red Cross)
• 1944–1945: Jean de Muralt (Swiss Red Cross)
• 1945–1950: Basil O'Connor (American Red Cross)
• 1950–1959: Emil Sandström (Swedish Red Cross)
• 1959–1965: John MacAulay (Canadian Red Cross)
• 1965–1977: José Barroso Chávez (Mexican Red Cross)
• 1977–1981: Adetunji Adefarasin (Nigerian Red Cross Society)
• 1981–1987: Enrique de la Mata (Spanish Red Cross)
• 1987–1997: Mario Enrique Villarroel Lander (Venezuela Red Cross)
• 1997–2001: Astrid Nøklebye Heiberg (Norwegian Red Cross)
• 2001–2009: Don Juan Manuel Suárez Del Toro Rivero (Spanish Red Cross)
• 2009–2017: Tadateru Konoe (Japanese Red Cross Society)
• 2017–present: Francesco Rocca (Italian Red Cross)

Funding and financial matters

The IFRC is funded by statutory contributions from National Societies, the delivery of field services to programme partners, and voluntary contributions from donors such as governments, corporations and individuals. The criteria for the statutory contributions of each National Society are established by the Finance Commission and approved by the General Assembly. Additional funding, especially for unforeseen relief assistance missions, is raised by emergency appeals. From 2005 to 2015, the Chairman of the Finance Commission was Mr. Chrystold Chetty (Seychelles) and the Vice- Chair was Ms Kathryn Forbes (United States). From 2016, the Chairman is Mr. Abdulkader Husrieh. Ms Kathryn Forbes has been nominated the Chairperson of the Audit and Risk Committee whilst Mr. Chrystold Chetty has been elected as a member of the Standing Commission of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

Emblem, mottos, and mission statement

The emblem of the IFRC is the combination of a red cross and a red crescent on a white background, surrounded by a red rectangular frame without any additional text. The red cross, the original symbol of the Movement, is on the left while the red crescent appears to the right. Per Humanitatem ad Pacem is the primary motto of the IFRC (Article 1 of the Constitution of the Federation). The mission statement of the IFRC, as formulated in its "Strategy 2010" document is to improve the lives of vulnerable people by mobilizing the power of humanity. From 1999 to 2004, the common slogan for all activities of the International Movement was The Power of Humanity. In December 2003, the 28th International Conference in Geneva adopted the conference motto Protecting Human Dignity as the new slogan for the entire Movement.

The official logo for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement published in April 2016 was described as the red cross and red crescent emblems placed together side by side, encircled by the words "INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT" in one or other of their official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian or Spanish). It was described as for use when the ICRC, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies operate together for the purposes of a humanitarian emergency, or a theme or campaign of global concern.[31]

Relationships within the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement


The International Red Cross Memorial in Solferino, Italy

The IFRC has come into conflict with the ICRC at various times, first and foremost when the American Red Cross threatened to supplant the ICRC with its creation of the league as "a real international Red Cross" after the First World War.[32] Several agreements about the respective roles of the organizations helped to smooth relations, beginning with the agreement of 1928, the 1997 Seville Agreement and most recently the Supplementary Measures of 2005. The Seville Agreement gives the IFRC the lead in any emergency which does not take place as part of armed conflict (in which case the ICRC takes charge). Organizational discord has now largely subsided.[33]

References

1. "The Governing Board – IFRC". http://www.ifrc.org.
2. https://media.ifrc.org/ifrc/wp-content/ ... t-2017.pdf
3. "Home - http://www.redcross.int". http://www.redcross.int.
4. https://media.ifrc.org/ifrc/press-relea ... societies/
5. "The International Red Cross Red Crescent Movement on the Internet". Who we are. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
6. "Strategy 2020". Who we are. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
7. "IFRC: Everyone Counts Report 2018" (PDF).
8. "History – IFRC". http://www.ifrc.org. Retrieved 2019-06-07.
9. "History – IFRC". http://www.ifrc.org. Retrieved 2019-06-07.
10. Haug, Hans (1993). Humanity for all: The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. p. 57. ISBN 3-258-04719-7
11. Reid, Daphne & Gilbo, Patrick (1997). Beyond Conflict: The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 1919–1994. p. 53. ISBN 92-9139-041-0
12. Haug, op. cit., pp. 633–644
13. Reid & Gilbo, op. cit., p.86
14. Reid & Gilbo, op. cit., pp. 83–92
15. Reid & Gilbo, op. cit., p. 194
16. Reid & Gilbo, op. cit., p.66
17. Haug, op. cit., p.353
18. Haug, op. cit., p. 353
19. Reid & Gilbo, op. cit., p. 92
20. Reid & Gilbo, op. cit., p. 102
21. Reid & Gilbo, op. cit., pp. 140, 166–167
22. Reid & Gilbo, op. cit., p.179
23. Haug, op. cit., p.633-645
24. "The Nobel Peace Prize 1963". http://www.nobelprize.org. Retrieved 2017-12-13.
25. "Reinforcing Red Cross / Red Crescent cooperation in emergencies: the Seville Agreement – ICRC". http://www.icrc.org. 2003-02-07. Retrieved 2019-06-07.
26. http://www.ifrc.org/PageFiles/113863/FWR10.pdf
27. "IFRC: Everyone Counts Report 2018. p. 22" (PDF).
28. IFRC: Who We Are: The Secretary General.
29. http://www.ifrc.org/Global/Governance/O ... gva_EN.pdf
30. "The Governing Board – IFRC". http://www.ifrc.org.
31. "A logo for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement". 13 April 2016.
32. Andre Durand, History of the International Committee of the Red Cross: From Sarajevo to Hiroshima, Geneva: ICRC, 1984, p. 147.
33. David P. Forsythe: The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2005, p. 37. ISBN 0-521-61281-0

External links

• International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies – official site
• International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement – official site
• International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement Logo

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The National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations
by Mrs. Frederic Schoff
President National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teachers
Director Home Education Division, Bureau of Education, Washington
American Academy of Political and Social Science
Source: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 67, New Possibilities in Education (Sep., 1916), pp. 139-147

[Founded in 1897 as the National Congress of Mothers by Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst]

Active members of the Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board are Edward Clifford, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, J. M. Wainwright, Assistant Secretary of War, Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Surgeon General M. W. Ireland of the Army, Surgeon General E. R. Stitt of the Navy, and Surgeon General Hugh S. Cumming of the Public Health Service. Dr. T. A. Storey, of the College of the City of New York, formerly chief inspector of the New York State military training commission, was executive secretary over the period covered by the report. He has been succeeded lately in that position by Dr. Valeria H. Parker, an active figure in the social-hygiene work of the National League of Women Voters, the National Women's Christian Temperance Union, the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teachers Associations, and the American Social Hygiene Association.

-- Journal of Social Hygiene, Vol. VIII, January, 1922, by The American Social Hygiene Association

The National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations was the pioneer organization in studying and promoting every phase of child welfare, and it must ever stand at the very heart of all child welfare movements, because without cooperation no real betterment can be secured for children. It was the first national movement to widen and deepen the influence of fathers and mothers through the demand for educated parenthood and a wider vision of childhood's needs and parental duty. To help the home to do its best work, a practical plan for reaching every home must be found. The Parent-Teacher Association and the Mothers' Circle were selected as the mediums best adapted to reach all homes. Through the well organized school system a way was open to provide opportunities for home education for parents, and at the same time establish sympathetic, intelligent cooperation with the great body of teachers who were sharing with parents the education and guidance of the children.

The National Congress of Mothers’ Clubs lent strong support to both G.F.W.C. [General Federation of Women’s Clubs] and W.C.T.U. [Women’s Christian Temperance Union] pure food, drink, and drug campaigns. Its members were concerned with all aspects of homemaking, child health and development, and children’s education. The quality of food and medication they gave their children was of utmost importance to them. Often they assisted public health officials, took part in food fairs, and agitated for food and drug regulation. Many state and local Mothers’ Clubs joined state and national federations of women’s clubs and were active pure food, drink, and drug advocates. Mothers’ clubs also functioned in temperance unions, particularly before 1890, and assisted in projects involving the well-being of children, such as introducing and monitoring scientific instruction in schools.

The Montgomery, Alabama, Mothers’ Circle was one of the earliest proponents of pure food and drug legislation in the South. Organizing on March 10, 1900, under the name of Montgomery Mothers’ Union (later changed to Circle) for the purpose of training for motherhood and solving problems of mothers, the Mothers’ Circle joined the National Congress of Mothers’ Clubs in February 1901 and affiliated with the Alabama State Federation of Women’s Clubs in April of the same year. The Circle established a household economics committee shortly after it organized and in April 1902, this committee divided into two subcommittees, one to investigate food values and another to promote pure food regulation. To kick off her organization’s crusade in 1902, Mrs. Moritz of the Domestic Science committee presented an extensive and detailed paper on the “Chemistry of Foods.” In 1903 she reported that through her correspondence with a Mr. A.A. Wiley in reference to the “Pure Food” bill, that he had promised to push the bill through the Alabama legislature. From 1903 through 1906 the Circle’s minute books frequently refer to attempts to influence state pure food and drug legislation. Following animated discussion in the February 1, 1906, meeting, the members petitioned national legislators for federal regulation.

-- The Pure Food, Drink, and Drug Crusaders, 1879-1914, by Lorine Swainston Goodwin

At a meeting of the Mothers’ Circle of P.S. 52, The Bronx, held March 21, 1917, the following resolutions were unanimously adopted:

Inasmuch as the members of this Circle have learned that the City authorities are trying to introduce the duplicate school plan into P.S. 52, The Bronx; and

Inasmuch as the members of the Circle, the introduction of said plan would not be for the best interests of the children attention P.S. 52, be it

Resolved, By the Mothers’ Circle of P.S. 52, The Bronx, that said Circle is opposed to the introduction of the Duplicate School Plan into P.S. 52, The Bronx, and respectfully requests those in authority to reconsider any plans for including P.S. 52, The Bronx, among the Schools in which said Duplicate School Plan is to be introduced; and be it further

Resolved, That copies of this resolution be transmitted to the President of the Board of Education, the President of the Board of Aldermen, the President of the Borough of The Bronx, the Acting City Superintendent of Schools, the District Superintendent of the 23rd and 24th Districts and such other persons as may be designated.

March 22, 1917
Mrs. Salinger, President.

-- Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen, by New York (N.Y.). Board of Aldermen

Greene County:...The Mt. Gilead Household Science and Mothers' Circle has held meetings the first Thursday in each month at the homes of the members. Meetings are well attended, interest good. Enough members are in a position to entertain to make each one's time come once in two years, which is not hard on anyone. Endeavor to have a roll call at each meeting which will bring helpful thoughts from each one present. Then we have a paper on some domestic science topic followed by discussion, and select one of the topics for Mothers' Circle work as outlined by David C. Cook, and follow that paper by discussion of questions in the quarterlies furnished by him. We all take the "Mothers' Magazine" to aid in answering the questions. The women on a farm are so busy that without some such an organization as this they would never take time to brush up on many of the things so essential for mothers to think about.

-- Year Book 1916, by Illinois Farmers' Institute. Department of Household Science, compiled and edited by Mrs. H.A. McKeene, Secretary

Organizations Promoting Education in Child Nurture

At the present time educational work in child nurture and home making for the parents of the United States is in its infancy. The National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, which covers the various phases of parental education, was incorporated om 1897. The Home Education Division of the Bureau of Education was established in 1913. The State boards of health in some of the larger cities are giving education in health and hygiene. The settlements are reaching the people in congested districts. A few of the universities and colleges are doing extension work covering phases of home education. Some churches are giving attention to the necessity for education in child nurture. Kindergartners have always recognized the necessity for it by establishment of mothers clubs in connection with the kindergarten. The United States Public Health Service and various bureaus in the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Labor publish educational bulletins dealing with this subject. School superintendents and principals cooperate in establishing parent-teacher associations. The Young Women's Christian Associations have worked for better homes, while visiting nurse associations and various local organizations have extended help to parents. The National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations devised the plan of a mothers' circle or parent-teacher association in every church and every school, reaching mothers and fathers of children before school age as well as during and after school age. Upwards of 500,000 parents have been brought together for study by the work of the congress, while teachers everywhere testify to the increased efficiency of the school resulting from intelligent cooperation with the home. With national offices in Washington, and branches in nearly all States, with a definite plan of education and organization, with cooperation with educational specialists, Government departments, universities, colleges, schools, boards of health, and other organizations, a machine valuable for transmission of education to the remotest districts has been formed. The cooperation of the Home Education Division of the Bureau of Education and the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations has brought many thousand letters from parents and teachers asking advice and help.

-- Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year ended June 30, 1914, The U.S. Bureau of Education, Created as a Department March 2, 1867, Made an Office of the Interior Department July 1, 1869

Neither parents nor teachers were in touch with each other, and children suffered by lack of this mutual understanding -- while the work of the teachers was greatly increased by lack of it. The Congress assumed the task of organizing Parent-Teacher Associations in every school. It also assumed the educational direction of these associations, in order to make them of real value to parents, to ensure their continuance, and to keep them true to their fundamental, far-reaching purpose. There had been parent associations of various kinds, but the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations originated the movement to make them universal, and to widen the scope of the educational system by making the schools serve a double purpose in education, by making it possible for parents to learn through them all that would enable them to be better fathers and mothers. The plan included the wider use of school buildings, opening them for reading rooms and recreation centres wherever the need existed, and placing the responsibility for all this in the hands of those most concerned -- the parents and teachers of the children in the schools.

A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY FOR PARENTS

The Congress, in its comprehensive plan for a nation-wide system of providing educational help for parents, assumed the functions of a National University for Parents with headquarters in Washington, but radiating its educational guidance to all who could be reached.

It was soon found necessary to establish state branches, through which extension work could be done, carrying the message to mothers just where they were. The interest and cooperation of state superintendents of schools were enlisted. Every officer gave her time and financed her work. For information a pamphlet on "How to Organize Parent-Teacher Associations with Suggestions for Programs " is published by the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, 910 Loan & Trust Bldg., Washington, D. C. The Child Welfare Magazine, Box 4022, West Philadelphia, gives each month a program and publishes reports of work of Parent-Teacher Associations all over the United States.

SCOPE OF PARENT-TEACHER ASSOCIATIONS

In the organization of Parent-Teacher Associations, the following reasons for their formation are given. Parent-Teacher Associations have three main reasons for existence:

First: To give fathers and mothers the opportunity to better educate themselves for intelligent home-making and child-nurture.

Second: To enable parents to learn what the schools are doing in order that the home may offer effective cooperation and that the schools may also cooperate with the home.

Third: To study community conditions affecting the welfare of the young with the purpose of arousing a sentiment of community responsibility.

The Parent-Teacher Association, needing for its full success the membership of parents and teachers of all political parties, all religious beliefs and of many different opinions as to the right and wrong of various movements, cannot afford to risk antagonisms needlessly. There are other well established agencies available for discussion and action along these lines. Let the Parent-Teacher Association confine itself to its own single high purpose, that of bettering conditions for "citizens in the making."

The world has no greater need than that of a wiser, better trained parenthood; this need is not yet recognized in school and college courses; the Parent-Teacher Association, therefore, serves as almost the only study class open to parents who wish to learn more of the duties of their calling. It raises the standard of home life through the education of parents; and through organization gives power for united and effective service.

COOPERATION OF SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENTS

The Parent-Teacher Association has long passed its experimental stage; from leaders in education everywhere letters come asking the help of the Congress in organizing and providing educational programs. State superintendents of public instruction in the states of Delaware and Washington have made it a part of their work to request all principals to organize parent-teacher associations as members of the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations. Valuable pamphlets on this subject have been published by these superintendents. Hundreds of other state and county superintendents have given invaluable cooperation. Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, of Chicago, in a letter dated January, 1916, says:

Since the organization of the Congress of Mothers and of the Parent-Teacher Associations, I have known the leaders in Chicago and many of the workers in Illinois outside of Chicago. These auxiliary associations have endeavored to work in the spirit of the National Association. They have been invaluable in bringing the parents into close relations with the schools. They have had a marked influence on the administration of the schools. The barrier which had been quite generally erected between parents and teachers has been removed. They have helped revive the feeling that the public schools are the people's schools; are to be strengthened by the people.

MOTHERS STUDY CONDITIONS OF CHILDREN

Ever since 1897 conditions of childhood outside the home have been a subject of exhaustive study by the Congress. When it began its work, children were in prisons and jails in every state, associated with confirmed criminals in all court procedure and before and after trial. No state except Michigan had assumed the responsibility of providing adequately for its dependent or orphan children. No state had, from the mother's viewpoint, provided for the all around protection of the welfare of the children.

The first juvenile court and probation system was established Chicago in 1899, the bill for it being drafted by Hon. Harvey B. Hurd. The Congress appreciated fully the advantages offered by this new system and worked unceasingly to promote its establishment in every state and in other lands, by conducting a systematic propaganda which was successful in many states.

Detention houses instead of jails were promoted. Recognizing that successful probation work is an educational function, and can only be successful when done with sympathetic insight into life, the Congress has never ceased its efforts to place probation work under educational direction. Judge Lindsey1 [1. Pamphlets on "Next Steps Forward in Juvenile Court and Probation Work" --Report of Ben B. Lindsey and Mrs. Frederic Schoff, Chairman and Vice- Chairman Juvenile Court and Probation Dept. National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Association. "Small Town and Rural Probation Work, Applicable to any County." Send to 910 Loan & Trust Bldg., Washington, D, C.] says: "There is no one factor or influence among the many good influences working for human betterment in this country that has done more to advance Juvenile Court and Probation work than the Mothers' Congress."

PROTECTION AGAINST CHILD LABOR

The Congress in 1902 inaugurated its child labor committee, and used its efforts to prevent the employment of little children in mines and factories, and to insure better factory inspection, and has ever since given its influence to promoting protection of children in industry. It has opposed all employment of children in occupations injurious to life, health or character, and the committee has given exhaustive study to the entire subject of work for children, earnestly working against abuses. An investigation is being made by the committee on the effects of child labor laws on child-life in different states, with a view to present and future welfare of children. Superintendents of schools and parents have called the attention of the committee to the necessity for such investigation.

MOTHERS' PENSIONS

In a study of children coming into juvenile courts, children who were truants and little children who were working, the children in orphanages and institutions, the Congress saw the necessity of keeping the mother with her children, and in 1911 inaugurated a nation-wide movement to secure mothers' pensions to prevent the breaking up of the home when through poverty or death of the father, the mother is unable to keep it.

There is an aspect to this question which has wielded its influence in the evolution of a plan that would enable the mother to keep a home for her children. The struggle for existence has driven many children of tender years into the ranks of wage-earners before they were physically able to do the tasks required of them. Deprived thereby of any chance for the fundamental education which would enable them to fill places where there would be opportunity for advancement, these children have become a source of anxiety to all who are interested in the future of society. Some plan must be devised that would make it possible for the home to be sustained without the work of little children. Thus the nation-wide movement to secure mothers' pensions has a meaning and purpose the scope of which is not fully realized even by some of its warmest advocates.

A working mother with the best qualifications for being a good mother to her children, cannot exercise her powers when she is absent most of the daylight hours and must work far into the night to keep the roof over their heads. The state has decided that her service to the children is more important than her service as a wage-earner. It is safe to predict that truancy will decrease 50 per cent when the mother's pension becomes operative. Thirty-five states have adopted this preserver of the home, and a mother's care for the children, and in every state the Congress has been an active factor in securing this legislation, and in placing its administration outside of charity. Pennsylvania and New York methods are recommended.2 [2. "The Evolution of the Mother's Pension -- Its Scope and Object." The pamphlet used successfully in legislative campaigns in a number of states can be supplied by application to National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, 910 Loan & Trust Bldg., Washington, D. C.]

SAVING THE BABIES

By careful tests the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations has proved that 70 per cent of babies who die before they are a year old, can be saved by education of mothers in infant hygiene. All the knowledge possessed by physicians and health boards counts for nothing unless the mothers, who have the actual care of the babies, can themselves possess the knowledge of the proper care and feeding of babies.

The National Congress of Mothers has for years conducted constant campaign to awaken mothers and make them realize that more than instinct is required to have healthy babies, and to give them a chance to live. It has a method of learning of mothers of babies, and sends a bulletin on The Care of the Baby. It has sent appeals to all state and local Boards of Health to establish and maintain Departments of Child Hygiene, to see that every new mother is informed of all that will help her to give proper care to her baby and furnish protection to the milk supply; to have a Parents' Educational Bureau as a part of the equipment of every Board of Health, and to see that every mother is given the opportunity to visit it. In Portland, Oregon, the city cooperates with the local branch of the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations in maintenance of a most successful Parents' Educational Bureau. Through the Child Hygiene Department, National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, vast amount of work for baby-saving has been done in many states.

STATE CHILD WELFARE COMMISSIONS

The Congress urged the appointment of an unsalaried state child welfare commission in every state to study every phase of child welfare, to consider existing conditions and to recommend needed improvements. Oregon has complied with the request. Its commission, appointed by Governor West, has done fine work -- Chairman, Mrs. Robert H. Tate, 1811 E. Morrison St., Portland, Oregon. Every state requires the work of a child welfare commission, made up of broad-minded, unsalaried citizens, with the governor as ex officio member and with reports to the legislature that the members may have in mind the development of a system of state protection for the physical, mental and moral development of all its children. The Congress has done, and is doing, valuable work in many states in the extension of kindergartens as part of the school system in cooperation with the Kindergarten Division, United States Bureau of Education and National Kindergarten Association.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT COOPERATION

Federal cooperation has been given the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations from the beginning, for the relation of its work to the youth of the nation was fully appreciated. Three international child welfare conferences have been held in Washington, the invitations for all nations to participate being sent by the Department of State. At the first of these the President of the United States delivered the main address. Federal cooperation with several divisions of the Department of Agriculture has been mutually advantageous during many years.

HOME EDUCATION DIVISION ESTABLISHED

The National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations most earnestly desired that the United States Bureau of Education should recognize that parents are educators, and in as great need of suggestion as teachers in schools, or as farmers in agriculture. When recognition was given by the Commissioner of Education to the fact that the larger part of children's education is conducted by parents -- and that possibilities for preparation and study must be provided for them, an important step for child welfare was taken, and an unlimited field of service to parents was opened. The Home Education Division of the Bureau of Education was established in September, 1913, in cooperation with the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations. The official announcement is here given:

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Bureau of Education
Washington

The Home Education Division, which has just been established, will do whatever it can to help parents:

1. To further their own education by recommending to them interesting and valuable reading matter.

2. In regard to the care and home education of their children, with reference to: (a) physical care and health, sleep, food, etc.; (b) games and plays; (c) their early mental development; (d) the formation of moral habits.

We hope to interest the boys and girls who have left school and are still at home, and by directing their home reading and study we may be able to further their education.

It is our intention to issue bulletins and literature, practical in their character, which will be available to every home. The National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations has agreed to assist the Bureau of Education in this work and can supply much literature not available through this office.

If the parents of your school district could be brought together at the school house or any other good place, perhaps once a month, to discuss their common problems, it would be mutually helpful. Will you let us know if you are willing to take up this matter in your school district and make a beginning by inviting some of the parents who are interested in such matters, and by enlisting, if possible, the cooperation of the teacher or teachers. The Bureau will send a brief form for simple organization of a Parents' Association, if you desire it. We expect to have a great deal of valuable matter for use of parents and teachers and for older boys and girls.

Rightly used, the home is the most important factor in the education of children. Through its Home Education Division, the Bureau of Education is trying to help the home to do its best work. Your cooperation will be invaluable. Kindly let me know if we may expect it.

Yours sincerely,

P. P. CLAXTON,
Commissioner.

WORK OF THE HOME EDUCATION DIVISION

The extension of Parent-Teacher Associations, the cooperation of 40,000 women recommended by superintendents of schools, the distribution of educational bulletins to mothers, the preparation of reading courses for parents, for boys and girls who have left school, for men and women wishing to pursue home study, the provision of certificates for all who complete the courses, the replies to many questions from individual mothers, have brought much appreciation and have given a keen perception of the great need for the work of home education. Thirteen million children under school age in the United States are under the exclusive care of parents. Education in physical care means life to thousands. Education in the development of moral habits will prevent the blighting of many lives at their beginning. The greatest educational work is done in the first six years, and no after care can make up for neglect then. Eighteen million children of school age spend one tenth of their time in school, while nine tenths of their time is under parental direction and guidance, showing the relative educational responsibility of parents and teachers.

Twenty million boys and girls who have left school need encouragement in the continuance of education during the most critical years of youth, when insight and sympathy can lead upward, but when lack of it has driven many away from home influence. The federal government now considers the education of children from infancy instead of from the age of six, and it considers their education for twenty-four hours a day, instead of five hours, and for twelve months of the year instead of ten months, as heretofore.

During 1915, 95,000 reading courses were sent out by request, and over 25,000 letters were sent. Thousands of bulletins on The Care of the Baby have been sent to mothers, while two editions of 1,000 Good Books for Children have been published. This was prepared by the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations.

Two joint tours of representatives of the Bureau of Education, and officers of the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, and National Kindergarten Association, have been arranged during 1915-16, covering the western and southern states in the promotion of home education.

FOREIGN INTEREST

Extension of national organizations similar to the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations is assured. The Chinese government requested the Congress to send its president to China to aid the government in forming a National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations. Japan through private sources has also asked this help. The Marchioness of Aberdeen has accepted the duty of organizer for Great Britain. Cuba has already organized. Argentina has taken steps toward national organization.

The ideals of a nation are created and inspired by the homes. To help all homes to give true high ideals of life, of citizenship and of duty to God and man is to lay sure and strong the foundations for a great nation. The work of the Congress is civic work in its highest sense, and it welcomes the cooperation and membership of all who would give a happy childhood to every child.