ID# 351:
"The right to be well-born," by Franklin Kirkbride
Date:
1912
Pages: (1|2)
Source:
American Philosophical Society, ERO, MSC77,Ser1,Box35: Trait Files

&quote;The right to be well-born,&quote; by Franklin Kirkbride

The Right to be Well-Born 1839 and the defective are but monuments to our own folly. Yet, until the source of the trouble is to be eliminated, we must continue to build them in order to make provision for all who ought to be within their walls. That it pays better to provide permanent care for a feeble-minded boy or girl during the entire reproductive period than to support their offspring admits of no argument. And each year's delay in their permanent segregation means added expense, added difficulties, added misery. The cost of caring for the bodily, the mentally, and the morally sick is trifling when considered as insurance, as protection, as prevention, but the cost of unchecked disease and crime is incalculable. The cretins, who formerly abounded in Aosta in northern Italy, were segregated in 1890, and by 1910 only a single cretin of sixty years and three demi-cretins remained in the community.[sup]1[end superior] In education we have potent forces for the uplift of the race. "The child that should never have been born" cannot be put out of existence, but can be developed and trained. His presence should be detected early, and he must be protected always, for, although many can be made self-supporting, few, as Dr. Fernald tells us, can become self-controlling. The years of greatest receptivity of the normal as well as of the defective child are the early years. And the mind of every child, whether sub-normal, normal, or super-normal, should be trained to the fullest extent possible, so that he may reach the higher development of which he is capable. The part the state and nation can take in conserving health and improving human strains is as yet hardly realized. The first step is to secure the facts, vital statistics being the necessary foundations. The reports and registration of births, communicable disease, and deaths are in many parts of the country more honored in the breach than in the observance. Yellow fever, plague, and small-pox rouse to instant effort, but the far more insidious ravages of less dreaded maladies go on unchecked. The prevention of disease is a duty which every community should discharge; the treatment of the malady may properly be a personal affair. Sanitation, pure food, pure drugs, and pure products of every kind can only be secured by the exercise of a police power delegated by the community to local, state, and national government. Uniform marriage laws, intelligently enforced, can be of great value. Here Indiana has led the way. It is axiomatic that, to be effective, law must follow public opinion, not precede it, And although radical changes in the social order might be prescribed with every indication of success, their practical applications would probably result in a revulsion of popular feeling and the defeat of the very ends sought to be accomplished. Thus common sense counsels constructive measures, easily understood, generally approved, and promptly productive of practical results. But there is a step beyond prevention. The work of Burbank with plants, of the American Breeders' Association with live stock, have shown what constructive effort can do. Fortunately we are also awakening to the need of perpetuating normal and healthy human strains. More than this, we are recognizing the possibility of further improving these strains. In an investigation of 2,000 children in the general population Goddard found 80 (4 per cent) super-normal. To neglect the development of these children and doom them to the training suited to a mediocre mind is as great a folly as to permit the laggard to retard the advancement of the normal child. There is a wide and hopeful field in the laboratory; for the study of eugenics, of heredity, of pathological conditions, and of biological chemistry is opening new vistas and enormous possibilities. The right to be well-born has been denied to many. Society can redeem this injustice only in part, and for that reason the very best that intelligence and science can give is imperative. To the large and more fortunate majority who have been well-born, education and a higher social conscience must teach race improvement. [sup]1[end superior] Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, Davenport, page 259. March 2, 1912.

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