The Eugenics Education Society, in its campaign for the breeding of better strains of men, has issued a special report on Poor Law reform, an incubus of England's for the last century. The difficulties of relieving poverty in the old country have baffled some of the best humanitarians and thinkers who have devoted themselves to the problem. The hardest of these is the almost inextricable intermixture of the two types of poor, the worthy, decent people who are prevented against their will from earning a living by circumstances over which they have no control, such as slackness, commercial depressions and the destruction of industries, and at the other extreme the unworthy, disreputable people who are paupers in spirit, and settle down without shame or compunction to eat as much of the bread of lazy idleness as is supplied to them. This last is the class that has given rise to that bitter saying that any country can raise as many paupers as it is willing to pay for. The policy advocated by the eugenists is to attack boldly this extreme type of the degraded pauper. They have begun by investigating the facts. They have traced the pedigrees of pauper families, showing that there is a tendency for pauper to marry with pauper and to beget paupers. There is a pauper type, just as there is a criminal. In the study of one of these beggar's pedigrees, it is shown that ten mendicants of this one stock have so far consumed £2229 out of the money provided, under the Poor Law. The scions of this prolific line of beggars seem likely to carry on the parasitic habits of the family. The case recalls the elaborate German investigation of the descendants of Ada Jurke, who was born in 1740 and lived well-known to the police on to a good old age. Out of 834 descendants 709 were traced as to their careers: — 106 born illegitimate, 142 beggars, 64 in charitable institutions, 161 prostitutes. 76 criminals, including 7 murderers. The bill paid by the public for the support of this family during 75 years in benevolent asylums and gaols was estimated at £250,000. The difference between the typical pauper and the criminal is this, that the pauper lays himself a limp burden upon society, whereas the criminal actively attacks the community on which he preys. But the pauper often carries in him the taint of crime. Thieving is the worst vice proved against the pauper in the eugenist report. Drunkenness is a common one, too. Enfeebling disease and weakness of intellect accompany a good deal of pauperism. But the trait running through them all is persistent laziness. The one keen thing about them is their scent for charitable relief. A strong case cited is that of a woman who had borne eight illegitimate children to four different men. At the public expense she was provided with comfortable lying-in wards, skilled medical attendance and good food; her children have been reared and educated. Certainly our social feeling prompts us to do much for the first child of such a mother once it has been called into existence. But why should such a woman be allowed to repeat her offence against society eight times ? Surely the second or third repetition of her unsocial act should be taken as evidence of an abnormality that is dangerous to the community. It would be much better in every way to keep such a woman detained after the birth of the third illegitimate child till she had reached an age when she could bear no more. As there is a tendency for illegitimate children when they grow up to become the parents of illegitimate children, the elaborate charitable support of this woman amounts to a deliberate encouragement of the perpetuation of bastardy.
Such being some of the facts relating to pauperism— that is, to deservedly disreputable poverty— the eugenist deduction is to prevent its continuance by detaining the confirmed pauper in the same way as a feeble-minded person and with the same refusal of the normal individual's right to reproduce his kind. No doubt society, will have to proceed cautiously in applying these drastic restrictions to undesirables of all sorts. But, just as it would be recognised to be a rank abuse of the conception of liberty to argue that plague, or smallpox patients should be allowed free entry into the country without quarantine, we are coming to the pass where it will be recognised to be a parody of the principle of individual rights to leave the proved criminal and pauper the right to pass on his taint into the next generation. Of course, even when the undesirables are prolific they are partly suppressed by natural causes; for instance, the death rate amongst illegitimate children is very heavy. The criminal is seldom a good father, and the kind of woman that mates with him rarely has the makings of a good mother in her. Perhaps motherhood brings out the best that she is capable of, but that is often far below the normal standard of character for a woman. In this way Nature does her part in the suppression of undesirables through their defective parental qualities. But modern charity steps in with its efforts to rear every child that is born. Its conception of the sanctity of human life has a very high value indeed. But it needs the support of a wisely directed effort to prevent the birth of undesirables who will absorb all this tender human affection of charity only to return it with the cynical lazy selfishness of the mendicant born with a broken spirit. There are still people who believe that the born criminal or pauper can be educated into a perfect man or woman. This is because fine types have emerged from the pauper ranks. H. M. Stanley, the African explorer, spent a good part of his childhood in a Welsh workhouse. But the fact that such a man emerged from the surroundings of dire poverty is really no excuse for our false policy of allowing those who instead of emerging have sunk into a more confirmed laziness to marry and beget their like, or to do this without marrying. By all means let us increase our efforts to sift out human worth from the entanglements of a cramping poverty, but at the same time let us take rational steps to prevent the accumulation of moral dross amongst the poor.
It is really the hardest part of the lot of the deserving poor that they find themselves compelled to herd with those who are failures physically and morally, and to be classed with them. A noble and ideal zeal actuates those charitable souls who devote themselves to rescue work among poor children. The hope that cheers them is that of releasing potential human worth from the clutch of a degrading squalor. Some cherish the delusion that even the squalor can be raised into splendor by the proper social effort. This is where the eugenist's contribution to the principles of charitable effort is of service. The correct policy to go with the rescue of worth from unworthy surroundings is to stop, where possible, the inflow of low grade human stuff from undesirable sources. The criminal, the lunatic, the idiot, the pauper and their like, in return for their comfortable support in circumstances where they can do themselves and the community no active harm, must all be called upon to abstain from passing on their defective strain to the next generation. The principle is freely admitted, though laxly administered, in the case of lunatics. It needs extension. At the present time we are hearing rather too much about the State's duty to the individual. The individual's duty to the State needs emphasising all round. That duty in the case of all incompetent dependents upon society is that they shall not use the charity they receive as a means to help them to breed their like to be a similar burden to the future.
Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), Friday 23 December 1910, page 6
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