Is the Race Degenerating?
By Editor
DR. JACOB RIIS, of New York, told the "Race Betterment Conference" at Battle Creek, Michigan, a few days ago, that they were mistaken in affirming that "the race is degenerating." He says mankind is progressing and becoming stronger. Among other reasons, he states that fifty years ago the death-rate was thirty to the one thousand population, while to-day it is only thirteen. Then he spoke of the many free kindergartens, public playgrounds, and the social settlement workers, as evidences of the great moral and physical progress. We may become so enthusiastic in some of our social work that we fail to recognize all of the facts that enter into a problem. While the death-rate is being lowered, nevertheless vice, with its degrading effects, is greatly on the increase. So also is insanity, along with many of the crimes that darken the times in which we are living. The physician, by his improved skill, is able to prolong the lives of men. Diseases that fifty years ago were considered practically incurable, at the present time seldom result in a death if the patient is in the hands of a competent physician. In this way the feeble, the degenerate, and the imbecile have their lives prolonged to reproduce their kind, and the average death-rate, of course, is in consequence lowered, and apparently the race is becoming stronger. But the evidences of increasing insanity, vices, and revolting crimes should be placed in the other side of the balances, when we are considering the statistics on the average death-rate. If conditions were not intensely abnormal in the home and in society in general, there would not be the necessity for so many thousands of free kindergartens, social settlement workers, and other charities of that kind. The more necessity there is for increasing numbers of charitable organizations, the more it shows the aggravated conditions that exist, and the evidences that Mr. Riis presents prove the exact opposite of his conclusions.