Facts and Fictions of Life

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!3oQh0 hp !^den ^, ^BatHenet

Qoth Paper
Men, WoMBN, AND Gods (Essays) $i.oo .50

Pin^piT, Pbw, AND Cradle (Essays) .10

Is This Your Son, My Lord? (Novel) i.oo .50

Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter? (Novel) z.oo .50

An Unofficial Patriot (Novel) 1.25 .50

A Thoughtless Yes (Short Stories) x.oo .50

Pushed by Unseen Hands (Short Stories) x.oo .50

The broad philosophical spirit which pervades her work is very marked. One feels
that the author is a deep student of sociology and psychology ; that she is a true phi-
losopher as well as a true historian. _ Indeeo, the reader wul look in vain, from cover
to cover, for evidence of a partisan bias. She is great enough to be humane and just.
— B. O. Flower in TAe Arena,

Few writers handle in a lifetime so many grave topics as Helen Gardener has
already taken up in her comparatively brief career. No writer has ever been more
thorough and more clear than she has been in every subject she has studied. For
instance, the forces of heredity had constituted an occult science up to the time that
she gave the subject a practical application in her lecture on Woman's Duty to the
Unborn.

When she delivered that lecture before the woman's congress at Chicago last year I
went to hear her, but the crowd was so large about the door that I could not get
within xoo feet of it. Of all the works she has written not one has failed of more than
ordinary success. She is doing more than any other writer of this day to demolish
the narrow theory that the novel is a mere sensual affair and must not be designed to
do more than entertain. This theory, good enough from the aspect that a novel is
nothing unless entertaining, becomes senseless when applied to novels that are in-
tensely entertaining and at the same time instructive and elevating. The giving of
wholesome fact and thought, physical, sociological, and ethical, in such a way as to be
not only widely read but deeply impressed, is a high art, and few are capable of it.
Helen Gardener can do that, and in doing it is playing havoc with the fond theory
which novelists who cannot be instructive without bemg dull, nor deal in morals with-
out becoming maudlin, have set up in their own defence.

She is a doctor in ethics who sugar-coats her pills with fiction, and while taking
nothing from their power makes them irresistibly palatable. Many a young man —
and old one, too— morally ill without realizing it, is unconsciously cured by this treat-
ment while under the delusion that he is getting only amusement out of his reading. —
Charles Grant Miller, Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Helen Gardener is one of the most thoughtful of modern vrnltrs.— Chicago Herald,

A literary light in the person of a southern woman is attracting the attention of the
thinkers of the world. . . . She has entered a path almost untrodden, and gives evi-
dence that she is one of the greatest students of sociological and psychological prob-
lems. She wields the strong pen of a true philosopher and an impartial historian.
. . . Her last is a war story, but told on sociological grounds and entirely above all
partisan bias. . . . Generous and just enough to deal with a great topic greatly . . . .
One of the most instructive and fascinating writers of our time. — Louisville Courier-
yournaL

Helen Gardener has made for herself within a few years an enviable fame for the
strength and sincerity of her writing on some of the most important phases of modem
socialquestions.— CAsVd;^ Times,

THIRD EDITION

f

FACTS AND FICTIONS OF LIFE

BY

HELEN H. GARDENER

" But something may be done, that we will not :
And sometimes we are devils to ourselves,
When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,
Presuming on their changeful potency."

— Shakespiart,

BOSTON

Arena Publishing Cobifany

Copley Square

1895

Copyright 1893

By Helen H. Gardener

All Rights Reserved

G- 2. 1

3r

ContmtB

Preface 9

The Fictions of Fiction 19

A Day in Court 43

Thrown in with the City's Dead 65

An Irresponsible Educated Class 85

Sex in Brain 97

Woman as an Annex 129

The Moral Responsibility of Woman in

Heredity 151

Heredity in its Relations to a Double Stand-
ard OF Morals 183

Divorce and the Proposed National Law .... 207

Lawsuit or Legacy 227

Common Sense in Surgery 257

Heredity: Is AcqyiRED Character or Con-
dition Transmittiblk ? 273

Environment : Can Hbrbdity be Modified ? 289

(preface

(preface

There are at least two sides to evevy question.
Usually there are several times two sides; or at least
there are several phases in which the question has
a different aspect.

I am led to state these seemingly unnecessary
truisms because I have been confronted by hearers
or readers who assumed^ since I had presented
a certain phase or manifestation of heredity in a
given article or lecture, that I was intending to
argue that a fixed ruJe of transmission would nec-
essarily follow the line I had then and there drawn.

Nothing could be farther from my idea of the
workings of the law of heredity.

Nothing could be more absurdly inadequate to
the solution and comprehension of a great basic prin-
ciple.

Again; an auditor or critic remarks that "We
must not forget that we, also, get our heredity from
God;" which is much as if one were to say, in teach-
ing the multiplication table, "Remember that three
times three is nine except, only, the times when
God makes it fifteen." So absolute a misconception

of the very meaning of the word heredity could

9

10 . PREFACE

hardly be illustrated in any other way as in the
idea of "getting it from God."

Scientific terms and facts of this nature cannot
be confounded with metaphysical and religious
speculation without hopeless confusion as to ideas,
and absolute worthlessness as to the results of the
investigation.

The very foundation principle of Evolution, itself,
depends upon the persistence of the laws of hered-
itary traits, habits and conditions, modified and di-
versified by environment and by the introduction of
other hereditary strains from other lines of an-
cestry.

Of course, there are people who do not believe
that Evolution evolves with any greater degree of
regularity and persistence than is consistent with
the idea of a Deity who is liable to change his
plans to meet the prayers or plaints of aspiration
or repentance of those who chance to beg or de^
mand of him certain immunities from the workings
of the laws of nature. But with this type of men-
tality — with this grade of intellectual grasp — it
were fruitless to pause to argue. They must be left
to an education and an evolution of a less emotion-
al and imaginative cast before they will be able
to take part intelligently in a scientific discussion
even where the merest alphabet of the science is
touched, as is the case in these essays. They must

PREFACE II

learn a method of thought which keeps inside of
what is, or can be, known and demonstrated^ and
cease to vitiate the very basic premises by inject-
ing into them what is merely hoped or prayed for.
The two phases of thought are quite distinct and
totally dissimilar in method.

The essays here collected, which do not deal di-
rectly with heredity and its possibilities, have been
included in the book because of the repeated calls
for them upon the different magazines in which
they appeared and because they are rightly classed
among the facts and fictions of life with which we
wish here to deal.

That most of them touch chiefly the dark side of
the topics discussed is due to the fact that they
were one and all written for a purpose in which
that method of handling seemed most effective.
That there is a brighter side goes without saying;
but when a physician is writing a lecture upon
cholera or consumption he does not devote his time
and space to pointing out the indubitable fact that
many of us have not, and are not likely to contract,
either one.

In pointing out and commenting upon certain
social and hereditary conditions and evils, which
it is desirable to correct or to guard against, and
which it is all-important we shall first recognize as
existing and as in need of improvement, I have, it

12 PREFACE

is true, dwelt chiefly upon the evil possibilities
contained in these conditions. I am not, therefore,
a pessimist. I do not fail to recognize the fact that
both men and conditions are undoubtedly evolving
into better and higher states than of old. If one
may so express it these essays are the expressions
of a pessimistic optimist, — one who is pessimistic
upon certain phases of the present for the present,
and optimistic as to and for the future. Let me
illustrate: The housewife who does not have the
house cleaned because it stirs up a dust to do it,
is in the position of those critics who insist that it
is all wrong to call attention to abuses because
abuses are not pleasant things to have held up to
public gaze. Or like a physician who would say:
"For heaven's sake don't remove that bandage from
the broken skull to dress the wound or you will see
something even uglier than this soiled and ill-ar-
ranged cloth. Trust to luck. Some people have
rcovered from even worse conditions than this with-
out intelligent care and treatment. Let him do it."

I have often been asked how and why I ever
chanced to think or to write upon these topics.
"How can a woman in your station and of your type
know about them?" It is always difficult to say
just how or wh}^ one mind does and another does
not grasp any given thing.

When I was a very young girl I heard a famous

tab

PREFACE 13

Judge read and discuss a series of papers which were
then appearing in the Popular Science Monthly^
and which were called "The Relations Of Women To
Crime. " I was the only person admitted to the Club,
where the consideration of the papers took place,
who was not mature in years and connected with one
of the learned professions. I was admitted because
I begged the privilege as the guest of the family of
the Judge at whose house the Club met. More than
any other one thing, perhaps, the thoughts and
suggestions that came to me — a silent and unnoticed
child — while listening to the discussions of those
papers which hinted at the various possibilities of
inherited criminal tendencies — hearing the lawyers
comment upon it from the point of view furnished
by their court-room experiences, and the medical
men from their side of the topic, as practitioners
upon those who had inherited mental or physical
diseases, and the educators from their outlook and
experience with children and youths who had not
yet begun an open criminal course but who showed
in their tendencies the need of intelligent training
^o modify or correct their faulty inheritance, — more
than any other one thing, perhaps, this experience
of my childhood led me into the study of anthropolo-
gy and heredity. That other people have been inter-
ested in what I have written from time to time upon
this subject, and that I was, for this reason, asked

14 PREFACE

to present certain phases of it at the recent World's
Congress of Representative Women, accounts
for the publication of this book at this time. I pre-
sume it will be said that it is not "pleasant reading
for the summer season." It is not intended for that
purpose. It has been asked for by many teachers,
college professors, students and medical practition-
ers, the latter of whom have shown extraordinary
interest in its early issue and wide circulation, and
for whose kind encouragement and aid I am glad
to offer here renewed thanks.

I had intended to elaborate and enlarge and re-
publish in book form "Sex In Brain," but since
there have been hundreds of calls made for it and
since I have not yet found the time to combine,
verify and arrange the large amount of additional
material which I have been steadily collecting
through correspondence with leading Anthropolo-
gists and brain Anatomists in England, Scotland,
Germany, France and the United States and other
countries, ever since they received, with such cor-
dial and kindly recognition, the within printed
essay, which they have had translated into several
languages, I have concluded to include it with
these, leaving it as it was abridged and delivered
before the International Council in Washington in
1888.

Later on I hope to find time to arrange and verify

PREFACE 15

and issue the new material on the subject. It has
grown in confirmatory evidence as it has grown in
bulky with steady and assuring regularity.

Helen Hamilton Gardener.

^{e fictions of fiction

Reprinted from The Open Court

tit Siciiom of fiction

I read — on a recent railway journey — a populat
magazine. Its leading story was labeled as a "story
for girls." In it the traditional gentleman of re^
duced fortunes continued to still further deplete the
family-resources by speculation, and the three
daughters who figure in most such stories went
through the regular paces, so to speak.

One taught music; one painted well and sold her
bits of canvas for ten dollars each; but the third
girl had no talent except that of a cheerful temper*
ament and the ability to drape curtains and arrange
furniture attractively. These girls talked over the
fact, that they were now reduced to their last ten
dollars and the pantry was empty, father ill, and
mother — not counted. They joked a little, wept a
few tears, and prayed devoutly. Then the talent-
less one received an invitation in the very nick of
time to visit the richest lady in town (a cripple
with a grand house). She went, she saw, and, of

course, she conquered — earned money by giving ar-

19

20 THE FICTIONS OF FICTION

tistic touches to the houses of all the rich people
in town, and eight months later married the nephew
of the opulent cripple. No more mention is made
of the empty pantry, the sick father, and the two
talented girls whose labor did not previously keep
the wolf from the door. But it is only fair to sup-
pose that the new husband was to be henceforth
the head of the entire establishment — surely a warn-
ing to most young men contemplating matrimony
under such trying circumstances. All is supposed
to move on well, however, and every hapless girl
who reads such a story, is led to believe that she
is the household fairy who will meet the prince and
somehow (not stated) redeem her father's family
from want and despair. For it is the object of such
stories to convey the impression that everything is
quite comfortable and settled after the wedding.
The young girl who reads these stories looks out
upon life through the absurd spectacle thus fur-
nished her. She sees nothing as it is. Such little
plans as she can make, are based upon wholly in-
correct data. Her whole existence is unconsciously
made to bend to the idea of matrimony as a means
of salvation for herself and such persons as may be
in any way objects of care to her.

Indeed, what are commonly known as "safe sto-
ries for girls," are made up of just such rubbish,
which if it were only rubbish, might be tolerated;

THE FICTIONS OF FICTION 21

but the harm all this sort of thing does can hardly
be estimated. I do not now refer to the harm of
a more vicious sort that is sometimes spoken of as
the result of story reading. I am not considering
the deliberately scheming nor the consciously self-
sacrificing girl who struts her day on the stage and
in fiction marries to save the farm or her father or
any one else. I am thinking of the every-day girl,
who is simply led to see life exactly as it is likely
not to be, and is therefore disarmed at the outset.
She is filled with all sorts of dreamy ideas of rescue
by prayer or by means of some suddenly developed
— previously undreamed-of — rich relation or lover
or, I had almost said — fairy. And why not? Litera-
ture used to bristle with these intangible aids to the
helpless or stranded author. The name is changed
now, it is true, but the fairy business goes bravely
on at the old stand, and the young are fed with
views of life, and of what they will be called upon
to meet, which are none the less harmful and vis-
ionary because of the changed nomenclature.

A gentleman of middle age said to me not long
ago: "I grew up with the idea that people were
like those I met in books. I went out into life
with that belief. I measured myself by those stand-
ards, and I have spent much time in my later years
re-adjusting myself to fit the facts. It placed me
at a great disadvantage. I saw people and deeds

22 THE FICTIONS OF FICTION

as they were not — as they are never likely to be in
this world — and I could not believe that my own
case was not wholly exceptional. I began to look
at myself as quite out of the ordinary^ My expe-
riences were such as belied my reading, and it was
a very long time and after serious struggle, that I
discovered that it was my false standards, derived
from reading popular fiction, that had deceived me
and that, after all, life had to be met upon very
different lines from the ones laid down by the ordi-
nary writers of fiction. I really believe I was un-
fitted for life as I found it, more by the fictions of
fiction than by any other one influence.."

Another gentleman — a writer of renown — said to
me: "We may not 'hold the mirror up to nature'
as nature is. The critics will not have it. We must
hold it up to what we are led to think nature ou^ht
to be. "

Now that would be all very well, no doubt, if
the picture were labeled to fit the facts. If it were
distinctly understood by the reader that in ninety-
nine cases out of a hundred the outcome of real
life would be wholly different, that the right man
would not turn up, in the nick of time, to point out to
the defenseless widow that there was a flaw in the
deed; if the reader was warned that honest effort
often precedes failure; that virtue and vice not
only may, but do, walk hand in hand down many a

THE FICTIONS OF FICTIOJf 23

life-long path and sometimes get the boundary lines
quite obliterated between them; if he understood
that in life the biggest scoundrel often wears the
most benign countenance and does not go about with
a leer and a scowl that labels him, all might be
well.

A prominent woman, an authority on social topics,
who is also a writer, a short time ago announced
to her audience of ladies who gave the smiling re-
sponse of a thoughtless yes, that "no one ever com-
mitted a despicable act with the head erect and the
chest well out." "A dishonest man, a criminal, a
mean woman," she said, always carry themselves
so and so!

If that were true — if it bore only the relationship
of probability to truth — courts of law to determine
upon questions of guilt or innocence, would be quite
unnecessary. A photograph and an anatomical ex-
pert would do the business. The doing of a wrong
act would become impossible to a gymnast, and the
graceful "bareback lady" in the circus would be
farther removed from all meanness of soul than any
other woman living.

Yet some such idea— stated a little less absurdly
— runs through fiction, the drama, and poetry.

Ferdinand Ward or Carlyle Harris would figure
in orthodox fiction with " furtive eyes," "a hunted
look," and with very hard and repellant features.

24 THE FICTIONS OF FICTION

indeed; yet those who knew them well never dis-
covered any such expressions. Jesse James would
look like a ruffian and treat his old mother like a
brute. But in life he was a mild, quiet, fair-ap-
pearing man who adored his mother, and was shot
in the back (while tenderly wiping the dust from
her picture) by a despicable wretch who was living
upon his bounty at the time and accepted a bribe
to murder him. Young girls do not need to be
warned against "mother Frouchards." No girl of
fair sense would require such warning; but the
plausible, good-looking, and often nobly-acting man
or woman who lapses from rectitude in one path
while carefully treading the straight and narrow way
in all earnestness and with honest intent in others
are the ones for whom the fictions of fiction leave
us unprepared.

In short the people who do not exist — the vil-
lain who is consistently and invariably villainous,
the woman who is an angel, the people who never
make mistakes, or who are able and wise enough
to rectify them nobly, and all the endless brood
are familiar enough. We know all of them, and
are prepared for them when we meet them — which
we never do. But for the real people we are not
prepared. For the exigencies of life that come;
for the decisions and judgments we are called upon
to make, the fictions of fiction have contributed to

THE FICTIONS OF FICTION 25

disarm us. We are hampered. There is no pre-
cedent. We feel ourselves imposed upon; we are
face to face, so we believe — with a condition that
no one ever met before. We are dazed; we wait
for the orthodox denouement. It does not come.
We pray. There is no angel visitant who cools
our fevered brow with gentle wings and lulls our
fears with promise of help from other than human
agencies — which promises are straightway fulfilled,
of course, in fiction. We sit down and wait but
no rich relation dies and leaves us a legacy, nor
does the prince appear and wed us. Nothing is
orthodox, but we have lost much valuable time,
and strength, and hope in waiting for it to be so.
We have failed to adjust ourselves to life as it is.
We do not measure ourselves nor others by stand-
ards that have a par value. We are discouraged
and we are at sea.

A short time ago I read a story of the late war.
The burden of it was that, if a soldier had been
brave and loyal, he could also be depended upon
to be honest. I happened to read the story while
under the same roof with an old soldier who was
at that time a judge on the bench. He had served
faithfully while in the army; he was brave and he,
no doubt, deserved the honorable discharge he re-
ceived, and yet while he sat on the bench, he ap-
plied for a pension on the ground of incurable dis-

a6 THE FICTIONS OF FICTION

ease "contracted in active service." While those
papers were being investigated and one doctor was
examining him for his pension, he also applied
and was examined for life insurance as a perfectly
sound man and healthy risk, and he got both.

The fact is, human nature is very much mixed.
Good and bad is not divided by classes but is pretty
well distributed in the same individual. Weakness
and strength, wisdom and ignorance, impulse and
reason, play their part in the same life with all the
other attributes, passions, and conditions, and the
literature which makes any individual the personi-
fication of good or of evil leads astray its confiding
readers. Woman has been represented in literature
as emotion culminating in self-sacrifice and matri-
mony. That was all. And even unto this day many
persons can conceive of her in no other light. The
idea has always been productive of infinite misery
to woman whose whole book of life was read
by these pages only, as well as to man who had care-
fully to spell out the other pages in the characters
of wife or daughter when it was too late for him to
learn new lessons, or to develop a taste for an un-
known language.

Man has been known as pure reason touched
with chivalry and devotion, or else as a dangerous
animal who preys upon his kind. There may be —
m some other life or world — representatives of both

yUE FICTION? OF rjCTION 27

of the^e c|as3es, but they are not the men with
whom we live, and, therefore, whose acquaintance
it is de3irable we should make as early as possible.

fhat a large family is ^ crown of glory to the
parent^ and an inestimabl,e boon to the state, is an
idea running through literature. Is it a fact or is
it one of the fiction^ of fiction which it were well
to stimulate and galvanize into life less persistently?
What is the answer from reform schools and penal
iastitutions, filled by ignorance and passion held
in bondage by poverty; from cemeteries where
mothers and babies of the poor and ill -nurtured are
strewn like leaves; irom the homes of the educated
and well to do where small families are the rule —
large ones the deplored exception? What is the
logical reply in countries whose sociological stu-
dents sigh over the struggle for existence and a
scarcity of supplies; "over population" and des-
perate emigration? Misery and vice bearing strict
proportion to density of population and poverty,
surely offer a hint that at least one of the fictions of
fiction has gone far to do a serious injury to man-
kind.

But the fiction of fictions which has done more
real harm to the human race than any other, per-
haps, is the one which dominates it — the idea that
woman was created for the benefit and pleasure of
man, while mai;! exists for aqd because of himself.

28 THE FICTIONS OF FICTION

Fiction has utilized even her hours of leisure and
amusement to sap the self-respect of womanhood
while it helped very greatly to brutalize and lower
man by keeping — in this insidious form — the thought
ever before him that woman is a function only and
not a person, and that even in this limited sphere
she is and should be proud to be man's subject.
"He for God only, she for God in him."

It is true that since the advent of women writers
fiction has shown a tendency to modify, to a limited
extent, this previously universal dictum, but the
thought still dominates literature greatly to the
detriment of morals and of the dignity of both men
and women.

"The woman who has no history is the woman to
be envied," says literature — and yet people do not
envy her any more than they do the man of like in-
conspicuous position. No one wishes that she might
go down to history, if one may so express it, as
historyless. No one points with pride to Jane
Smith as his illustrious ancestor any more than if
. Jane had chanced to be John. To have been a Mary
Somerville, or an Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or a
George Eliot, most historyless women would be
wi41ing to change places even now, and as for "those
who come after," can there be a question as to
which would give more pride or pleasure to man or
woman, to say — "I am the son, or the brother, or

^^

THE FICTIONS OF FICTION 29

the niece of Mrs. Browning," or to say, "Jane Smith,
of Amityville, is my most famous relative?"

I have my suspicions that even * Mr. Fitzgerald
would waver in favor of Elizabeth in case both wo-
men were his cousins. In public, at least, he would
mention Jane less frequently and with less of a touch
of pride. Personally he might like her quite as
well. That is aside from the question. I have no
doubt that he might like John Smith as well as
Shakespeare, personally, too, and John may have led
a happier life than William, but is a man with no
history to be envied for that reason? The applica-
tion is obvious.

One of the most insidious fictions of fiction, which
it seems to me is harmful, is the theory that the
good are so because they resist temptation, while
the bad are vicious because they yield easily — make
a poor fight.

Leaving out heredity and its tremendous power,
it is likely that you would have yielded under as
strong pressure as it took to carry your neighbor
down. I say as strong pressure — not the same pres-
sure — for your tastes not being the same, your
temptations will take different forms, f If you had
been born of similar parents and on Cherry Hill ;

* Fitzgerald "thanked God" when Mrs. Browning died. See reply by Robert
Browning in Aiheneeum.

t "Our lives progress on the lines of least resistance."

—Van Dbr Warkbr, M. D.

Jb THE MICTIONS OF FICTION

i^ you had been one of a family of ten ; if you had
been stunted in mind and in body by want of nour-
ishment; if you had been given little or no edu-
cation ; if you had helped to get bread for the fam-
ily almost from the time you could remember; your
record in ftie police court would not differ very
greatly from that of those about you. In nine cases
out of fen you would be where you sent that con-
vict last year, if our pretty daughter would be the
associate of toughs. She might be pure — in the
sense in Which the word is applied to women — but
she ^ould have a mind muddy and foul with the
murk and odors of a life fit only for swine. She
^ould rbarry a brute Who honestly believes that so
soon as the Words of a priest or a magistrate are
said over them, she belongs to him to abuse if he
sees fit, to impose upon, lie to, or to let down into
the valley of death for his pleasure whenever he
sees fit, arid quite without regard to her opinions
of desires in the matter. She Would be an old and
broken woman at thirty, ugly, misshapen, and hope-
less, with hungry-faced children about her, whose
neit meal Would be a piece of bread, whose next
word would be ioo foul to repeat, whose next act
would disgrace a Wolf.

In turn they would perpetuate their kind in much
the same fashion, and some of your grandchildren
would be in the poor-house, some in prison, some

THE FICTIONS OF FICTION 3!

in houses of ill-repute, and perchance some doing
honest work — sweeping the streets or making shirts
for forty cents a dozen for the patrons of a literature
that goes on promoting the theory that the chief
duty of the poor is to irresponsibly bring more
children into the world — to work for them as cheaply
as possible. To the end that they may restrict their
own families to smaller limits and — by means of
cheaper labor caused largely by overpopulation
from below — clothe their loved ones in purple and
build untaxed temples of Worship, where poverty
and crime is taught to believe in that other fiction
of fictions — the "providence" that places us where
we deserve to be and where a loving God wishes
us to be content.

Indeed, this supernatural finger in literature has
gone farther, perhaps, to place and keep fiction
where it is, as a misleading picture of life and re-
ality, than has any other influence. It has dominated
talent and either starved or broken the pen of
genius. "Oh, if I might be allowed to draw a man
as he is!" exclaims Thackeray, as he leaves the
office of his publisher, with downcast eyes and
bowed head. He goes home and "cuts out most of
his facts," and returns the manuscript which is ac-
ceptable now, because it is not true to life!

Because it is now fiction based upon other fiction
and has eliminated from it the elements of proba-

32 THE FICTIONS OF FICTION

bility which might have been educative or stimulat-
ing or prophetic. Now, Thackeray was not a man
who would have mistaken preachments for novels
if he had been left to his own judgment ; neither
would he have painted vice with a hand that made
it attractive, but he chafed under the dictum that
he must not hold the mirror up to the face of na-
ture, but must adjust it carefully so as to reflect a
steel engraving of a water color from a copy of the
"old masters."

It might be well if silver dollars grew on trees
and if each person could step out and gather them
at his pleasure; but since they do not, what good
purpose could it serve if fiction were to iterate and
reiterate that such is the case, until people be-
lieved that it was their trees which were at fault
and not their fiction?

It might be a good idea, too, if babies were born
with a knowledge of Latin and Mathematics, but
to convince young people that such is the case and
that they are pitiful exceptions to a general rule,
is to place them at a humiliating disadvantage from
the outset.

It is one of the most firmly rooted of these fic-
tions of fiction, that such tales as I have mentioned
above are "good reading — safe, clean literature" for
girls. Nothing could be farther from the facts.
Indeed, the outcry about girls not being allowed

THE FICTIONS OF FICTION 33

to read this or that, because it deals with some
topic "unfit" for the girls' ears, is another fiction
of fiction which robs the girl of her most important
armor — the armor of truth and the ability to adjust
it to life.

ft

A famous man once said in my presence — "The
theory that to keep a girl pure you must keep her
ignorant of life — of real life — is based upon a belief
degrading to her and false as to facts. Some people
appear to believe that if they keep girls entirely
ignorant of all truth, they will necessarily become
devotees of truth, and if you could succeed in finding
a girl who is a perfect idiot, you would find one
who is also a perfect angel."

"We are a variegated lot at best and worst," said
a lady to me the olher day, when discussing the
character of a man who is in the public eye, "I know
a different side of his character. The side I know
I like. The side the public knows is so different."
But in fiction he would be all one way. He would
be a scamp and know it, or he would be a saint — and
know that too. The fact is he is neither; and we
are a variegated set at best and worst. Why not
out with it in fiction and be armed and equipped
for character and life as it is?

There is a school of critics who will say this is
not the province of fiction. Fiction is to entertain,
not to instruct. With this I do not agree — only in

34 THE FICTIONS OF FICTION

part. But accepting the standard for the moment,
I am sure that a picture of life as it is, is far more
entertaining than is that shadowy and vague pho-
tograph of ghosts taken by moonlight, which "safe
stories for the young" generally present.

But to enumerate the fictions of fiction would be
to undertake an arduous task — to comment upon
them all would be impossible.

How much remorse — how many heartbreaks —
have been caused by the one of these which may be
indicated briefly in a sentence thus — "Stolen pleas-
ures are always the sweetest."

"She sullied his honor," "He avenged his sullied
honor," and all the brood of ideas that follows in
this line have built up theories and caused more
useless bloodshed and sorrow than most others.
No wife can stain the honor of her husband. He,
only, can do that, and it is interesting to note the
fact that he who struts through fiction with a bro-
ken heart and a drawn sword "avenging" said
honor (in the sense in which the word is used),
seldom had any to avenge, having quite effectively
divested himself of it before his wife had the chance.

"She begged him to make an honest woman of
her." What fiction of fiction (and, alas, of law)
could be more degrading to womanhood — and hence
to humanity — than the thought here presented? The
whole chain of ideas linked here is vicious and

THE FICTIONS OF FICTION 35

vicious only. Why sustain the fiction that a wo-
man can be elevated by making her the permanent
victim of one who has already abused her confi-
dence; and now holds himself — because of his own
perfidy — as in a position to confer honor upon his
victim? He who is not possessed of honor cannot
confer it upon another. "The purity of family life"
is another fiction of fiction which never did and
never can exist, while based upon a double stand-
ard of morals. That there ever was or ever will be
a "union of souls" in a family where a double
standard holds sway, or that women are truthful or
frank with men upon whom they are dependent, are
fictions which it were time to face and controvert with
facts. Dependence and frankness never co-existed
in this world in an adult brain — whether it were
the dependence of the serf or of the wife or daugh-
ter, the result is ever the same. The elements of
character which tend to self-respect and hence to
open and truthful natures, are not possible in a
dependent — or in a social or political inferior. Do
the peasants tell the lord exactly what they think
of him, or do they tell him what they know he
wishes them to think?

Did the black men, while yet slaves, give to the
master their own unbiased opinion of the institution
of slavery? Not with any degree of frequency.
The application is obvious.

36 THE FICTIONS OF FICTION

Another of the fictions of fiction upon which the
vicious buildy and which has disarmed thousands
before the battle, is the insistency with which the
idea is presented that a man (or woman) who is
honestly and truly and conscientiously religious, is
therefore necessarily moral or honorable ; that he is
a hypocrite in his religion if he is a knave in his
life. Observation and history and logic are all
against the theory. Some of the most exaltedly
religious men have been the most wholly immoral.
It was honest religion that burned Servetus and
Bruno. They were not hypocrites who hunted
witches. It is not hypocrisy that draws its skirts
aside from a "fallen" sister, and immorally marries
her companion in illicit love to purity and inno-
cence. Do you know any religious father (or many
mothers) in this world who would refuse to allow their
son, whom they know to be of bad character, to marry
a girl who is as pure and spotless and suspicion-
less as a flower? "She will reform him," they say.
"It will be good for him to marry such a girl."
And how will it be for her? Does the religious
man or woman not take this view of morals? Has
right and wrong, sex? Is honor and truthfulness
toward others limited in application? Have you a
right to deceive certain people for the pleasure or
benefit of other people? If so where is the boun-
dary line? Would the girl marry you or your son

i

THE FICTIONS OF FICTION 37

if she knew the exact truth — if she were to see with
her own and not with your eyes — all of your life?
Would you be willing to take her with you, or for
her to go unknown to you, through all the experi-
ences of your past and present? No? Would you
be willing to marry her if she had exactly your
record? No? You truly believe then that she is
worthy of less than you are? Honor does not de-
mand as much of you for her as it does of her for
you? You would think she had a right — you would
not resent it if her life had been exactly what
yours was and is, and if she had deceived you? Is
that which is coarse or low for women not so for
men? Why is it that men will not submit to, if it
comes from women, that which they impose upon
women whom they "adore" and "truly respect?"

Would women accept this sort of respect and
adoration if they were not dependents? Does lit-
erature throw a true or a fictitious light on such
questions as these?

To whose advantage is it to sustain such fictitious
standard of morals, of justice, of love, of right, of
manliness, of honor, of womanly dignity and worth?
To whose advantage is it to teach by all the arts
of fiction that contentment with one's lot — whatever
the lot may be — is a virtue? Yet it is one of the
fictions of fiction that the contented man or woman
is the admirable person. All progress proves the

38 THE FICTIONS OF FICTION

contrary. To whose advantage is it to insist that
virtue is always rewarded — vice punished? We
know it is not true. Is it not bad enough to have
been virtuous and still have failed, without having
also the stigma which this failure implies under
such a code? We all know that vicious success is
common — that often vice and success are partners for
life and that in death they are not divided; that the
wicked flourish like a green bay-tree — why blink it in
fiction? Why add suspicion to failure and misfortune,
and gloss success with the added glory that it is
necessarily the result of virtue? To those who
know how false the theory is, it is a bad lesson — to
those who do not know it, it is a disarmament
against imposition.

Some of the fictions of fiction have their droll
side in their ndive contradictions of each other.
These examples occur to me:

"Women are timid and secretive." "They can't
keep a secret." "They are the custodians of virtue."
"They are the 'frailer* sex." "Frailty, thy name is
woman." "With the passionate purity of woman."

"Abstract justice is an attribute of the masculine
mind." "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless
thousands mourn."

"No class was ever able to be just to — to do
justly by another class — hence the need of popular
representation." "Women should take no part in
politics. "

THE FICTIONS OF FICTION 39

"Women are harder upon women than men are."

"He disgraced his honored name by actually mar-
rying his paramour."

"We are happy if we are good."

"He was one of the best and therefore one of the
saddest of men."

But why multiply examples. Many — and differ-
ent ones — will occur to every thinking mind, while
illustrations of the particular fictions of fiction,
which have gone farthest to cripple you or your
neighbor, will present themselves without more sug-
gestions.

@ ®ag in Conti

Reprinted from The Arena

@ ®a^ in Coutt

I. CRIMINAL COURT.

To those accustomed to the atmosphere and tone
of a court room, it is doubtful if its message is im-
pressive. To one who spends a day in a criminal
court for the first time after reaching an age of
thoughtfulness, it is more than impressive; it is a
revelation not easily forgotten. The message con-
veyed to such an observer arouses questions, and
suggests thoughts which may be of interest to
thousands to whom a criminal court room is merely
a name. I went early. I was told by the officer at
the door that it was the sumniing up of a homicide
case. "Are you a witness?" he asked when I in-
quired if I was at liberty to enter. "Were you sub-
poenaed?"

"No," I replied, "I simply wish to listen, if I
may, to the court proceedings. I am told that I
am at liberty to do so."

He eyed me closely, but opened the door. Just

as I was about to pass in he bent forward and

asked quickly:

"Friend of the prisoner?"

43

44 A DAY IN COURT

"No."

He said something to another officer and I was
taken to an enclosed space (around which was a
low railing) and given a chair. I afterward learned
that it was in this place the witnesses were seated.
He had evidently not believed what I said.

There was a hum of quiet talk in the room, which
was ill*ventilated and filled with men and boys and
a few women. Of the latter there were but two
who were not of the lower grades of life. But there
were all grades of men and boys. The boys appeared
to look upon it as a sort of matinee to which they
had gained free admission.

The trial was one of unusual interest. It had
been going on for several days. The man on trial
(who was twenty-four years of age and of a well-to-
do laboring class,) had shot and killed his rival in
the affections of a girl of fourteen. Some months
previous, he had been cut in the face, and one eye
destroyed, by the man he afterward killed, who
was at the time of the killing out on bail for this
offense. 1 had learned these points from the scraps
of conversation outside the court room, and from
the court officer. This was the last day of the trial.
There was to be the summing up of the defense,
the speech of the prosecutor, the charge of the
judge, and the verdict of the jury.

The prisoner sat near the jury box, pale and

.A m irOfc

A DAY IN COURT 45

Stolid looking. The spectators laughed and joked.
Court officers and lawyers moved about and chaffed
one another. There was nothing solemn, nothing
dignified, nothing to suggest the awful fact that
here was a man on trial for his life, who, if found
guilty, was to be deliberately killed by the State
after days of inquiry, even as his victim had been
killed, in the heat of passion and jealousy, by him.

The State was proposing to take this man's life
to teach other men not to commit murder.

"Hats off!"

The door near the Judge's dais had been opened
by an officer, who had shouted the command as a
rotund and pleasant-faced gentleman, with decidedly
Hibernian features, entered.

He took his seat on the raised platform beneath a
red canopy. The buzz of voices had ceased when
the order to remove hats was given. It now began
again in more subdued tones. In a few moments
the prisoner's lawyer — one of the prominent men
of the bar — began his review of the case. He pointed
out the provocation, the jealousy, the previous
assault — the results of which were the ghastly
marks and the sightless eye of the face before them.
He plead self defense and said over and over again,
"If I had been tried as he was, if I had been dis-
figured for life, if I had had the girl I loved taken
from me, Pd have killed the man who did it, long

46 A DAY IN COURT

ago! We can only wonder at this man's forbear-
ance!"

I think from a study of the faces that there was
not a boy in the room who did not agree with that
sentiment — and there were boys present who were
not over thirteen years of age.

The lawyer dwelt, too, upon the fact that the
prosecutor would say this or that against his
client. "He will try to befog this case. He will
tell you this and he will try to make you think
that; but every man on this jury knows full well
that he would have done what my client did under
the same conditions." "The prosecutor told you the
other day so and so. He lied and he knew it."
The defender warmed to his work and shook his
finger threateningly at the prosecutor. Every one
in the room appeared to think it an excellent bit of
acting and a thoroughly good joke. No one seemed
to think it at all serious, and when he closed and
the State's attorney arose to reply there was a smile
and rustle of quiet satisfaction as if the audience
had said:

"Now the fur will fly. Look out ! It is going to
be pretty lively for he has to pay off several hard
thrusts. "

There was a life at stake; but to all appearances
no one was controlled by a trifle like that when so
much more important a thing was risked also — the

A DAY IN COURT 47

professional pride of two gentlemen of the bar. In
the speech which followed, it did not dawn upon the
State's attorney — if one may judge from bis words
— that he was "attorney for the people," and that
the prisoner was one of "the people." It did not
appear in his attitude if he realized that the State
does not elect him to convict its citizens, but to
see that they are properly protected and represented.

Surely the State is not desirous of convicting its
citizens of crime. It does not employ an attorney
upon that theory ; but is this not the theory upon
which the prosecutor invariably conducts his cases?
Does he not labor first of all to secure every scrap
of evidence against the accused and to make light
of or cover up anything in his favor? Is not the
State quite as anxious that he — its representative —
find citizens guiltless, if they are so, as that he
convict them if they are offenders against the law?
Is not the prosecutor offending against the law of
the land as well as against that of ordinary humanity
when he bends all the vast machinery of his office
to collect evidence against and refuses to admit —
tries to rule out — evidence in favor of one of "the
people" whose employee he is?

These questions came forcibly to my mind as I
listened to the prosecutor in the trial for homicide.
He not only presented the facts as they were, but
he drew inferences, twisted meanings, asserted that

4B A DAY IN COURT

the case had but one side; that the defendant was
a dangerous animal to be at large; that his wit-
nesses had all lied; that his lawyer was a notorious
special pleader and had wilfully distorted every fact
in the case. He waxed wroth and shook his fist in
the face of his antagonist and appealed to every
prejudice and sentiment of the jury which might
be played upon to the disadvantage of the accused.
He sat down mopping his face and flashing his
eyes. The Judge gave his charge, which, to my
mind, was clearly indicative of the fact that he, at
least, felt that there were two very serious sides
to the case. The audience which had so relished
the two preceding speeches, found the Judge tame,
and when the jury filed out, half of the audience
went also. Most of them were laughing, highly
amused by "the way the prosecutor gave it to him"
as I heard one lad of seventeen say. The moment
the Judge left the stand there was great chaffing
amongst the lawyers, and much merry-making. The
prisoner and his friends sat still. The prosecutor
smilingly poked his late legal adversary under the
ribs and asked in a tone perfectly audible to the
prisoner, "Lied, did I? Well, I rather think I
singed your bird a little, didn't I?" When he
reached the door, he called back over his shoulder
— making a motion of a pendant body — "Down goes
McGinty!" Everyone laughed. That is to say,

A DAY IN COURT 49

(everyone except the white-faced prisoner and his
mother. He turned a shade paler and she raised
a handkerchief to her eyes. Several boys walked
past him and stopped to examine him closely. One
of them said, so that the prisoner could not fail to
hear, "He done just right. Pd 'a done it long be-
fore, just like his lawyer said."

"Me too. You bet," came from several other lads
—all under twenty years of age.

And still we waited for the jury to return. The
prisoner grew restless and was taken away by an
officer to the pen. There was great laughter and
joking going on in the room. Several were eating
luncheons abstracted from convenient pockets. I
turned to an officer, and asked:

"Do you not think all this is bad training for
boys? It must show them very clearly that it is a
mere game of chance between the lawyers with a
life for stakes. The best player wins. They must
lose all sense of the seriousness of crime to see it
treated in this way."

"Upon the other hand," said he, "they learn, if
they stay about criminal courts much, that not one
in ten who is brought here escapes conviction, and
not one in ten who is once convicted, fails to be
convicted and sent up over and over again. Once
a criminal, always a criminal. If they get fetched
here once they might as well throw up the sponge. "

50 A DAY IN COURT

"Is it SO bad as that?" I asked. He nodded.
"Is there not something wrong with the penal in-
stitutions then?" I queried.

"How?"

"You told me a while ago," I explained, "that
almost all first crimes or convictions were of boys
under seventeen years of age. Now you say that
not one in ten brought here, accused, escapes con-
viction, and not one in ten of these fails to be con-
victed over and over again. Now it seems to me
that a boy of that age ought not to be a hopeless
case even if he has been guilt}' of one crime; yet
practically he is convicted for life if found guilty
of larceny, we will say. Is there not food for re-
flection in that?"

"I do* know/* he responded, "mebby. If any-
body wanted to reflect. I guess most boys that
hang around here don't spend none too much time
reflectin' though — till after they get sent up.
They get more time for it then," he added, dryly.

"Another thing that impresses me as strange,"
I went on, "is the apparent determination of the
prosecutor to convict even where there is a very
wide question as to the degree of guilt."

"I don't see anything queer in that. He's human.
He likes to beat the other lawyer. Why, did
you know that the prosecutor you heard just now
is cousin to a lord? His first cousin married
Lord ."

A DAY IN COURT 5I

This was said with a good deal of pride and a
sort of proprietary interest in both the lord and
the fortunate prosecutor. I failed to grasp just its
connection with the question in point to which I
returned.

"But the public prosecutor is not, as I understand
it, hired to convict but to represent the 'people,' one
of whom is the accused. Now, is the State interested
in convictions only — does it employ a man to see
that its citizens are found guilty of crime, or is it to
see that justice is done and the facts arrived at in the
interest of all the people, including the accused?"

"I guess that is about the theory of the State,"
he replied, laughing as he started for the door,
"but the practice of the prosecuting attorney is to
convict every time if he can, and don't you forget
It.

I have not forgotten that nor several other things,
more or less important to the public, since my day
in a Criminal Court.

It may be interesting to the reader to know that
the jury in the case cited, disagreed. At a new
trial the accused was acquitted on the grounds of
self defense and the prosecutor no doubt felt that
he was in very poor luck, indeed: "For," as I was
told by a court officer, "he has lost his three last
homicide cases and he's bound to convict the next
time in spite of everything, or he won't be elected

52 A DAY IN COURT

again. I wouldn't like to be the next fellow in-
dicted for murder if he prosecutes the case, even if
I was as innocent as a spring lamb," said he suc-
cinctly.

Nor should I.

But aside from this thought of the strangely
anomalous attitude of the State's attorney; aside
from the thought of the possible influence of such
court room scenes upon the boys who flock there —
who are largely of the class easily led into, and sur-
rounded by, temptation; aside from the suggestions
contained in the officer's statement — which I can-
not but feel to be somewhat too sweeping, but none
the less illustrative, that only one in ten brought
before the Criminal Court escapes conviction, and
only one in that ten fails to be reconvicted until
it becomes practically a conviction for life to be
once sent to a penal institution; aside from all this,
there is much food for thought furnished by a day
in a Criminal Court room. A study of the jury,
and of the judge, is perhaps as productive of men-
tal questions that reach far and mean much, as are
those which I have brieflj' mentioned; for I am
assured by those who are old in criminal court
practice, that my day in court might be duplicated
by a thousand days in a thousand courts and that
in this day there were, alas, no unusual features.
One suggestive feature was this. When the jury

A DAY IN COURT 53

—an unusually intelligent looking body of men —
was sworn for the next case, seven took the oath
on the Bible and five refused to do so, simply affirm-
ing. This impressed me as a large proportion who
declined to go through the ordinary form; but since
it created no comment in the court room, I inferred
that it was not sufficiently rare to attract attention,
while only a few years ago, so I was told, it would
have created a sensation. There appeared to be a
growing feeling, too, against capital punishment.
Quite a number of the talesmen were excused from
serving on the jury on the ground of unalterable
objection to this method of dealing with murderers.
They would not hang a man, they said, no matter
what his crime.

"Do you see any relation between the refusal to
take the old form of oath, and the growth of a sen-
timent or conscientious scruple against hanging as
a method of punishment"? I inquired of the officer.

"I do* know. Never thought of that. They're
both a growin'; but I don't see as they've got any-
thing to do with each other."

But I thought possibly they had.

II. IN THE POLICE COURT.

The next week I concluded to visit two of the
Police Courts. I reached court at nine o'clock,

54 A DAY IN COURT

but it had been in session for half an hour or more
then, and I was informed that "the best of it was
over.'* I asked at what time it opened. The replies
varied "Usually about this time." "Some where
around nine o'clock as a rule. " "Any time after
seven," etc. I got no more definite replies than
these, although I asked policemen, doorkeeper,
court officer, and Justice. Of one Justice I asked,
"What time do you close?" .

"Any time when the cases for the day are run
through," he replied. "To-day I want to get off
early and I think we can clear the calendar by lo :30
this morning. There is very little beside excise
cases to-day and they are simply held over with
$ioo bail to answer to a higher court for keeping
their public houses open on Sunday. Monday
morning hardly ever has much else in this court."

I was seated on the "bench" beside the Judge.
At this juncture a police officer stepped in front of
the desk with his prisoner, and the Justice turned
to him.

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole tr — 'n — g
b tr'th — selp y' God. Kissthebook. "

The policeman had lifted the greasy volume, and
with more regard for his health than for the form
of oath, had carried it in the neighborhood of his
left cheek and as quickly replaced it on the desk.

"What is the charge?" inquired the Justice.

A DAY IN COURT 55

"Open on Sunday," replied the officer succinctly.

"See him selling anything?"

"No. I asked for a drink an' he told me he was
only lighting up for the night and wasn't sellin'
nothing. "

"Anybody inside?"

"Only him an' me."

"You understand that you are entitled to counsel
at every stage of this proceeding," said the Justice
to the accused man. "What have you to say for
yourself?"

"Your Honor, I have a dye house, and a small
saloon in the corner. I always light the gas at
night in both and have it turned low. I had on
these clothes. I was not dressed for work. I went
in to light up and he followed me in, and arrested
me and I have been in jail all night. I sold noth-
ing.

"Is that so, officer?" asked the Justice.

"Yes, your Honor, it is so far as I know. I
seen him in there lighting the gas, an' I went in
an' asked for a drink, an' he said he wasn't selling
an' 1 arrested him."

"Give the record to the clerk. Discharged," said
the Justice, and then turning to me he explained:
"You see he had to arrest the man for his own pro-
tection. If a police officer goes into a saloon and
is seen coming out, and doesn't make some sort of

56 A DAY IN COURT

an arrest, he'll get into trouble; so, for his protec-
tion he had to arrest the man after he once went
in, and I have to require that record, by the clerk,
to show why, after he was brought before me, I dis-
charged him. That is for my protection."

"What is for the man's protection?" I asked.
"He has been in jail all night. He has been dragged
here as a criminal to-day, and he has a court record
of arrest against him all because he lighted his
own gas in his own house That seems a little
hard, don't you think so?"

The Judge smiled.

"So it does, but he ought to have locked the
door when he went in to light up. Perhaps he was
afraid to go in a dark room and lock his door be-
hind him before he struck a light, but that was his
mistake and this is his punishment. Next!"

Most of the cases were like this or not so favor-
able for the accused. In the latter instance they
were held in bail to answer to a higher court. Two
or three were accused of being what the officer called
"plain drunks" and as many more of being "fighting
drunks" or "concealed weapon drunks." In these
cases the charge was made by the officer who had
arrested them. There was no suggestion that "you
are entitled to counsel," etc., and a fine of from
"$io or ten days" to "Jipo or three months" or
both was usually imposed.

A DAY IN COURT 57

A pitiful sight was a woman, sick, and old, and
hungry. "What is the charge against her, officer?"
inquired the Justice.

"Nothing, your Honor. She wants to be sent to
the workhouse. She has no home, her feet are so
swollen she can't work, and — **

"Six months," said the Justice, and turned to me.
"Now she will go to the workhouse, from there to
the hospital, and from there to the dissecting table.
Next. "

I shuddered, and the door closed on the poor
wretch who, asking the city for a home, only, even
if that home were among criminals, received a free
pass to three of the public institutions sustained
to receive such as she — at least so said the Justice
to whom such cases were not rare enough to arouse
the train of suggestions that came unbidden to me.
He impressed me as a kind-hearted man, and one
who tried to be a Justice in fact as well as in name.
He told me that it was not particularly unusual
for him to be called from his bed at midnight, go
to court, light up, send for his clerk and hold a
short session on one case of immediate importance
— such as the commitment of a lunatic or the bail-
ing of some important prisoner who declined to spend
a night in jail while only a charge and not a con-
viction hung over him. *

"I have never committed anyone without seeing

58 A DAY IN COURT

him personally," he explained. "Some judges do;
but I never have. Only last night a man's brother
and sister and two doctors tried to have me com-
mit him as a lunatic, but I insisted on being taken
to where he was. They begged me not to go in as
he was dangerous; but I did, and one glance was
all I needed. He was a maniac, but I would not
take even such strong evidence as his relations and
two doctors afforded without seeing him person-
ally. "

"And some judges do, you say?" I inquired.

"Oh yes. Next."

"Next" had been waiting before the desk for some
time. The officer went through the same form of
oath. I did not see a policeman or court officer
actually "kiss the book" during the two days which
I spent in the Police Courts. Some witnesses did
kiss it in fact and not only in theory. A loud re-
sounding smack frequently prefaced the most patent
perjury. Indeed in two cases after swearing to
one set of lies and kissing the Bible in token of good
faith, the accused changed their pleas from not
guilty to guilty and accepted a sentence without
trial.

These facts did not appear to shake the confi-
dence in the efficacy of such oaths and the onlookers
in the court did not sefcm either surprised or shocked.
Certainly the court officials were not, and yet the

A DAY IN COURT 59

swearing went on. That it was a farce to the swear-
ers who were quite willing to say they believed they
would "go to hell" if they did not tell the truth
and were equally willing to run the risk, looked to
me like a very strong argument for a form of oath
which should carry its punishment for perjury with
it to be applied in a world more immediate and
tangible.

The afternoon found me in a more crowded Po-
lice Court. The Justice was rushing business. I
stood outside the railing in front of which the ac-
cused were ranged. The charges were made by the
police officer who faced the Judge. The accused stood
almost directly behind the policemen something like
four feet away. I was by the officer's side and so
near as to touch his sleeve, and yet I can truly
say that I was wholly unable to hear one-half of
the charges made; most of them appeared to relate
to intoxication, fighting, quarreling in the street,
breaking windows and similar misdeeds.

Some of the "cases" took less than a minute and
the accused did not hear one word of the charge
made. What he did hear in most cases and all he
could possibly hear was something like one of
these :

"Ten dollars or ten days." "Three months."
"Ever been here before?"

"No, your Honor."

6o A DAY IN COURT

"Ten days. "

"Officer says you were quarreling in a hallway
with this woman. Say for yourself?"

"Well, your Honor, I was a little full and I got
in the wrong hall and she tried to put me out
and—"

"Ten dollars."

"Your Honor, I'll lose my place and Pve got a
wife and — " The officer led him away. Ten dollars
meant ten days in prison to him and the loss of his
situation. What it may have meant to his family
did not transpire.

To the next "case" which was of a similar nature,
the fine meant the going down into a well-iilled
pocket, a laugh with the clerk and the police officer
who took the proffered cigar and touched his hat to
the object of his arrest, who, having slept off his
"plain drunk," was in a rather merry mood. Many
of the accused did not hear the charges made against
them by the officer; in but few cases were they told
that they had a right to counsel; almost all were
fined and at least two-thirds of the fines meant im-
prisonment. A little more care was taken, a little
more time spent if the face or clothing of the ac-
cused indicated that he was of the well to-do or
educated class. Indeed I left this court feeling
that the inequality of the administration of justice
as applied by the system of fines was carried to its

A DAY IN COURT 6l

farthest limit, and that it would be perfectly pos-
sible — easy indeed — to find a man (if he chanced to
be poor and somewhat common looking) behind
prison walls without his knowing even upon what
charge he had been put there and without having
made the slightest defense. If he were frightened,
or ill, or unused to courts, and through uncertainty
or slowness of speech, or not knowing what the
various steps meant, had suddenly heard the Judge
say "Ten dollars," and had realized that so far as
he was concerned it might as well have been ten
thousand; it was quite possible, I say, for such a man
to find himself a convict before he knew or realized
what it meant or with what he was charged.

I wondered if all this was necessary, or if attention
were called to it from the outside if it might not
set people to thinking and if the thought might
not result in action that would lead to better things.

I wondered if a rapid picture of a boy of sixteen
arrested for fighting, shot through this court into
association with criminals for ten days, being found
in their company afterward and sent by the crim-
inal court to prison for three months for larceny,
and afterward appearing and re-appearing as a long
or short term criminal, would suggest to others
what the idea suggested to me? I wondered, in
short, if there were less machinery for the produc-
tion and punishment of crime and more for its pre-

62 A DAY IN COURT

vention, if life might not be made less of a battlefield
and hospital for the poor or unfortunate. I won-
dered if the farce of oaths, the flippancy of trials,
the passion of the prosecutor for conviction and all
the train of evils growing out of these were neces-
sary; and if they were not, I wondered if the vast
non -court-attending public might not suggest a rem-
edy if its attention were called to certain of the
many suggestive features of our courts that pre-
sented themselves to me during my first two days
as an observer of the legal machinery that grinds
out our criminal population.

t ?roi»n in Wit^ t^t City's ®eab

Reprinted from The Arena

t^toxott in HHt^ t^t City's ®eal>

I read that headline in a newspaper one morn-
ing. Then I asked myself: Why should the city's
dead be "thrown in?"

Where and how are they "thrown in?" Why are
they thrown in?

Why, in a civilized land, should such an expres-
sion as that arouse no surprise — be taken as a mat-
ter of course? What is its full meaning? Are
others as little informed upon the subject as I?
Would the city's dead continue to be "thrown in"
if the public stopped to think; if it understood the
meaning of that single, obscure headline? Believ-
ing that the power of a free and fearless press is
the greatest power for good that has yet been de-
vised ; and believing most sincerely, that wrongs
grow greatest where silence is imposed or ignorance
of the facts stands between the wrong doer, or the
wrong deed, and enlightened public opinion, I de-
cided to learn and to tell just the meaning — all of
the meaning — of those six sadly and shockingly
suggestive words.

Suppose you chanced to be very poor and to die

65

66 THROWN IN WITH THE CITY'S DEAD

iQ New York; or suppose, unknown to you, your
mother, a stranger passing through the city, were
to die suddenly. Suppose, in either case, no money
were forthcoming to bury the body, would it be
treated as well, with as humane and civilized con-
sideration as if the question of money were not in
the case? We are fond of talking about giving "ten-
der Christian burial," and of showing horror and
disgust for those who may wilfully observe other
methods. We are fond of saying that death levels
all distinctions. Let us see whether these are facts
or fictions of life.

The island where the "city's dead" are buried —
that is, all the friendless and poor or unidentified,
who are not cared for by some church or society —
is a mere scrap of land, from almost any point of
which you easily overlook it all, with its marshy
border and desolate, unkempt surface. It contains,
as the officer in charge told me, about seventy- nine
acres at low tide. At high tide much of the bor-
der is submerged. Upon this scrap of land — about
one mile long and less than half a mile wide at its
widest point — is concentrated so much of misery
and human sorrow and anguish, that it is difficult
to either grasp the idea one's self or convey it to
others.

There are three classes of dead sent here by the
city. Those who are imbecile or insane — dead to

THROWN IN WITH THE CITY'S DEAD 67

thought or reason; those who are dead to society
and hope — medium term criminals; and those
whom want, and sorrow, and pain, and wrong can
touch no more after the last indignity is stamped up-
on their dishonored clay. I will deal first with
these happier ones who have reached the end of
the journey which the other two classes sit waiting
for. Or, perhaps some of them stand somewhat
defiantly as they look on what they know is to be
their own last home, and recognize the estimate
placed upon them by civilized. Christian society.

Upon this scrap of land there are already buried
— or "thrown in" — over seventy thousand bodies.
Stop and think what that means. It is a large city.
We have but few larger in this country. Remem-
ber that this island is about one mile long and less
than a half mile wide at the widest point. In places
it is not much wider than Broadway.

The spot on which those seventy thousand are
"thrown in" is but a small part of this miniature
island. This is laid off in plots with paths be-
tween. These sections are forty- five feet by fifteen,
and are dug out seven feet deep. Again, stop and
picture that. It looks like the beginning of a cel-
lar for a small city house. But in that little cellar are
buried one hundred and fifty bodies, packed three
deep. Remembering the depth of a coffin, and
remembering that a layer of earth is put on each,

68 THROWN IN WITH THE CITY'S DEAD

it is easy to estimate about how near the surface
of the earth lie festering seventy thousand bodies.
They are not in metallic cases, as may well be im-
agined; but I need only add that I could distinctly
see the corpse through wide cracks in almost every
rough board box, for you to understand that sick-
ening odors and deadly gases are nowhere absent.

But there is one thing more to add before this
picture can be grasped. Three of these trenches
are kept constantly open. This means that some-
thing like four hundred bodies, dead from three
days to two weeks, lie in open pine boxes almost
on the surface of the earth.

You will say, "That is bad, but the island is
far away and is for the dead only. They cannot
injure each other. " If that were true, a part of the
ghastly horror would be removed, but, as I have
said, the city sends two other classes of dead here.
Two classes who are beyond hope, perhaps, but
surely not beyond injury and a right to considera-
tion by those who claim to be civilized.

Standing near the "general" or Protestant trench
— for while Christian society permits its poor and
unknown to be buried in trenches three deep; while
it forces its other poor and friendless to dig the
trenches and "throw in" their brother unfortunates;
while it condemns its imbeciles and lunatics to the
sights, and sounds, and odors, and poisoned air and

THROWN IN WITH THE CITY*S DEAD 69

earth of this island, it cannot permit the Catholic
and Protestant dead to lie in the same trenches! —
standing near the general trench, in air too foul to
describe, where five "short term men" were working
to lower their brothers, the officer explained.

"We have to keep three trenches open all the
time, because the Catholics have to go in conse-
crated ground and they don't allow the 'generals*
and Protestants in there. Then the other trench
is for dissected bodies from hospitals and the
like. "

"Are not many, indeed most of those, also, Cath-
olics?" I asked.

"Yes, I guess so; but they don't go in consecrated
ground, because they aint whole." This with no
sense of levity.

"Are not many of the unknown likely to be
Catholics, too?"

"Yes, but when we find that out afterward, we
dig them out if they were not suicides, and put
them in the other trench. If they were suicides,
of course, they have to stay with the generals. You
see, we number each section; then we number each
box, and begin at one end with number one and
lay them right along, so a record is kept and you
can dig any one out at any time."

"Then this earth — if we may call it so — is con-
stantly being dug into and opened up?" I queried.

70 THROWN IN WITH THE CITY'S DEAD

"I should think it would kill the men who work,
and the insane and imbecile who must live here."

"Well," he replied, smiling, "prisoners have to
do what they are told to, whether it kills 'em or
not, and I guess it don't hurt the idiots and luna-
tics none. They're past hurting. They're incura-
bles. They never leave here."

"I should think not," I replied. "And if by any
chance they were not wholly incurable when they
came, I should suppose it would not be long be-
fore they would be. Where does the drinking water
come from?"

"Drive wells, and — "

"What!" I exclaimed, in spite of my determina-
tion when I went that I would show surprise at
nothing.

He looked at me in wonder.

"Yes, it IS easy to drive wells here. Get water
easy. "

This time I remained silent. I did not wish to
frighten away any farther confidences which he
might feel like imparting.

There is one road from end to end of the island.
The houses for the male lunatics and imbeciles are
on the highest point overlooking at all times the
trenches and at all times within hearing of wliatever
goes on there. The odors are everywhere so that
night and day, every one who is on the island

THROWN IN WITH THE CITY'S DEAD 7 1

breathes nothing else but this polluted air, except
as a strong wind blows it, at times, from one di-
rection over another. The women's quarters — much
larger and better houses — are at the other end of
the island. Not all of these overlook the trenches.

Every fair day all these wretched creatures are
taken out to walk. Where? Along this one road;
back and forth, back and forth, beside the "dead
trenches." To step aside is to walk on "graves"
for about half the way. We sometime smile over
the old joke that the Blue Laws allowed nothing
more cheerful than a walk to the cemetery on Sun-
day. All days are Sundays to these wretches who
depend on the "civilized" charity of our city. All
laws are very, very blue; all walks lead through
what can by only the wildest abandon of charity be
called by so happy a name as a "cemetery," and
even the air and water the city gives them is neither
air nor water; it is pollution.

A gentleman by my side watched the long pro-
cession of helpless creatures walk past. One man
waved his hand to me and mumbled something and
smiled — then he called back, "Wie geht's? Wie
geht's?" and smiled again. Several of the wretched
creatures laughed at him ; but when I smiled and
bowed, nearly half of the line of three hundred,
turned and joined in his salutation. They filed
past four times (the whole walk is so short), and

7^ tttROWK IK WITH THE CITY*S DEAD

they did not fail each time to recognize me and
bid for recognition. If the}' know me as a stran-
ger, I thought, they know enough to understand
something of all this ghastliness. The line of wo-
men was a long, long line. I was told that in all
there were fourteen hundred women, and nearly five
hundred men on the island. The line of women
broke now and then as some poor creature would
run out on the grass and pluck a weed or flower,
and hold it gayly up or hide it in her skirts. One
waved her hand at us, and said in tones that in-
dicated that she was trying to assume the voice and
manner of a public speaker: "The Lord deserteth
not His chosen!" I did not know whether in her
poor brain, they or we represented the chosen who
were not to be deserted. Another said gayly and
in an assumed lisp and voice of a little girl (al-
though she must have been past fifty), "There's
papa, oh, papa, papa, papa! My papa!" This to
the gentleman who stood beside me. He smiled
and waved his hand to her. Then he said, between
his teeth:

"Civilized savages! To have them hereV*
"It don't hurt 'em," said the officer beside us.
"They're incurables. They won't any of 'em re-
member what they saw for ten minutes. People
don't understand crazy folks and idiots. They're
the easiest cowed people in the world. Long as

-^ -

THROWN IN WITH THE CITY*S DEAD 73

they know they're watched, they'll do whatever you
tell them — this kind will. Tfeey're harmless."

"But why have them here?" I insisted. "If they
are to be poisoned, why not do it more quickly
and—"

"Poisoned!" he exclaimed, astonished. "Why, if
one of the attendants was caught even striking one,
he'd be dismissed quick. They get treated well.
Only it is hard to keep attendants. We can't get
'em to stay here more than a month or so — just till
they get paid. We have to go to the raw immi-
grants to get them even then. Nobody else will
come. "

'Naturally," remarked the gentleman beside me.

'Yes, it's kind of natural. This kind of folks are
hard to work with, and the men attendants get only
about seventeen to twenty dollars a month, and the
women from ten to twelve dollars."

"So the attendants of these helpless creatures are
raw immigrants," I said; "who, perhaps, do not
speak English, who are constantly changing. The
water they get is from driven wells, the sights and
exercise are obtained from and in and by the dead
trenches. The air they breathe is like this, night
and day, you say, and no one ever leaves alive when
once sent here."

"No one."

'Who does the work — the digging, the burying.

II'

II'

•II

74 THROWN IN WITH THE CITY's DEAD

the handling of the dead, the carting, and the work
for the insane?"

"Medium term prisoners. All these are from one
to six months men/' waving his hand over the
men working below us in the horrible trench.

"Do you think they leave here with an admiration
for our system of caring for the city's dead —
whether the death be social, mental, or physical?
Do they go back with a desire to reform and be-
come like those who devise and conduct this sort
of thing?"

He laughed.

"Why, it's just a picnic for them to come up
here. You can't hardly keep 'em away with a club.
Of course, the same ones don't work right here long;
but when a fellow gets sent up to any of these
places, he comes over and over until he gets am-
bitious to go to Sing Sing and be higher toned."

I thought of the same information given me at
the Police and Criminal Courts a little while ago.
I wondered if there might not be some flaw some-
where in the whole reformatory and punitive sys-
tem. From the time a fourteen-year-old boy is
taken up for breaking a window; sent to the reform
school, where he is herded with older and worse
boys, until he passes through the police court
again, — let us say at sixteen, as a "ten-day drunk,"
— to herd again in a windowless prison van, packed

THROWN IN WITH THE CITV'S DEAD 75

close with fifteen hardened criminals (as I saw a
messenger boy of fifteen on my way to the island),
and taken where for ten days he enjoys the society
of the most abandoned; returns to town the com-
panion of thieves; and goes the next time for three
or six months for petit larceny, then for some
graver crime, on and up. At last, when he has no
more to learn or to teach, he is given a cell or
room alone until the State relieves him of the ne-
cessity of following the course which has been
mapped out for and steadily followed by so many.
He knows when he is a three months' man where
he is going at last. Has he not helped to dig the
trenches for the men who looked so hard and vile
to him when he broke that window and stood in
the Police Court by their sides?

Perhaps you will ask: "Why did he not take the
warning, and follow a better course, turn the other
way?"

Perchance it might be asked on the other hand
— since court, and morgue, and cemetery officials
unite in the assertion that the above record is
almost universal, and that our present methods not
only do not reform, but actually prevent the reform
of offenders — why this system is still followed by
the State, and if the warning has not been ample
and severe here, also.

Are we to expect greater wisdom, more far-seeing

76 THROWN IN WITH THE CITY*S DEAD

judgment and a loftier aim in these unfortunates
of societ}^ than is developed in those who control
them?

Since it is all such a dismal failure, why not
plan a better way? Why not begin at the other
end of the line to keep offenders apart? Why herd
them — good, bad, and indifferent — together, in the
stage of their career when there is hope for some,
at least, to reform; and begin to separate them
only when the last mile of the road is reached?

Why, if the city must bury its dead in trenches
and under the conditions only half described above
(because much of it is too sickening to present),
why, if cremation or some better mode of burial is
not possible — and certainly I think it is — why, at
least, need the awful, the ghastly, the inhuman
combination be made of burying together medium
term criminals, imbeciles, lunatics, and thousands
of corpses all on one mere scrap of land? If a
seven-foot mass of corruption exhaling through the
air and percolating through land and water must
be devoted to the dead poor of a great city, why
in the name of all that is civilized or humane,
permit any living thing to be detained and poisoned
on the same bit of earth?

I saw a woman who had come to visit her mother
who was one of these poor, insane creatures. "I
can't afford to keep her at home," she said, "and

THROWN IN WITH THE CITY'S DEAD 77

then at times she gets 'snags' and acts so that
people are afraid of her, so I had to let her come
here. It is kind of awful, ain't it?"

I thought it was "kind of awful," for more reasons
than the poor woman could realize, for she was so
used to foul air and knew so little of sanitary con-
ditions that she was mercifully spared certain
thoughts that seem to have escaped the authorities
also.

"It is her birthday and I brought her this," she
said, showing me a colored cookie. "She will like
it. We can visit here one day each month if we
have friends."

"How many bodies do you carry each week?" I
asked of the captain of the city boat.

"About fifty," he said. But later on both he and
the official on the Island told me that there were
six thousand buried here yearly, so it will be seen
that his estimate per week was less than half what
it should have been.

I looked at the stack of pine boxes, the ends of
which showed from beneath a tarpaulin on the
deck.

They were stacked five deep. There were seven
wee ones, hardly larger than would be filled by a
good-sized kitten.

I said : "They are so very small. I don't see
how a baby was put inside. "

78 THROWN IN WITH THE CITY'S DEAD

The man to whom I spoke — a deck hand who was
a "ten-day-self-committed," so the captain told me
later — smiled a grim, sly smile and said:

"I reckon you're allowin' fer trimmin's. This
kind don't get pillers and satin linin*s. It don't
take much room for a baby with no trimmin's an'
mighty little clothes."

"Why are two of them dark wood and all the rest
light?" I asked of the same man.

"I reckon the folks of them two had a few cents
to pay fergittin' their baby's box stained. It kind
of looks nicer to them, and when they get a little
more money, they'll come and get it dug up and
put it in a grave by itself or some other place. It
seems kind of awful to some folks to have their
little baby put in amongst such a lot."

He said it all quite simply, quite apologetically,
as if I might think it rather unreasonable — this
feeling that it was "kind of awful to think of the
baby in amongst such a lot."

At that time, I did not know that he was a pris**
oner. He showed me a number of things about the
boxes and spoke of the open cracks and knot holes
through which one could see what was inside. I
declined to look after the first glance.

"You don't mind it very much after you're used
to it," he said. "Of course, you would, but I mean
»s. "

THROWN IN WITH THE CITY'S DEAD 79

I began to understand that he was a prisoner.

"When you're a prisoner, you get used to a good
deal," he said, later on, when they were unloading
the bodies and some of the men looked white and
sick. "They're new to it," he explained to me. "It
makes them sick and scared; but it won't after a
while."

"Why are most of them here?" I asked. "Most
of them look honest — and — "

"Honest!" he exclaimed, with the first show he
had made of rebellion or resentment. "Honest!
Of course most of us are honest. It is liquor does
it mostly. None of us are thieves — yet!"

I noticed the "us," but still evaded putting him
in with the rest.

"Why do they not let liquor alone, after such a
hard lesson?"

He laughed. He had a red, bloated, but not a
bad face. He was an Englishman.

"Some of us can't. Some don't want to, and some
— some — it is about all some can get."

Later on, I was told that this man was honest,
a good worker, and that he was "self-committed to
get the liquor out of him. He's been here before.
When he gets out, he will be drunk before he gets
three blocks away from the dock, and he'll be sent
here again — or to the Island!"

"And has this system gone on for a hundred

8o THROWN IN WITH THE CITY' S DEAD

years," I asked, "without finding some remedy?"

"Well, since the women began to take a hand,
some little has been done," the ofl5cer replied.
"They built a coffee and lodging house right near
the landing, and take returning prisoners there, and
give them a chance to work if they want to — in a
broom factory they built. Some get a start that
way and if they work and are honest, they get a
letter saying so when they find places. It is only
a drop in the bucket, but it helps a few."

"It looks a little as though, if women were to take
a hand in public, municipal, or governmental affairs,
that reform, and not punishment, might be made
the object of imprisonment if imprisonment became
necessary, doesn't it?"

He laughed.

"Politics is no place for women. This they are
doing is charity. That is all very well, but they
got no business meddling with city government,
and courts, and prisoners only as charity."

"Yet you say that, for a hundred years, those who
look after the criminal population, thought very
little of helping the men who came out, much less
did they think of beginning at the other end and
trying to keep them from going in. Women have
been allowed to devise public charities, even, for
only a few years past. They had no experience in
building manufactories and conducting coffee and

THROWN IN WITH THE CITY'S DEAD 8l

lodging houses; they have but little money of their
own to put into such things and yet they have be-
thought them to start, in embryo, right here where
the returning convict lands, what appears to have
vast possibilities as you say. Now if this effort for
the prevention of crime and want were at the other
end of the line in municipal government, don't
you think it might go even nearer the root of the
matter and do more good?"

"How would you like to be a ward politician and
a heeler?" he inquired, wiping a smile away and
looking at my gloves.

"I should not like it at all."

"Well, now, look at that! Of course no lady
would, so — "

"Do you think it possible that the world might
get on fairly comfortably without having 'heelers'
and 'ward politicians' — in the sense you mean — in
municipal or state government? And that it might
be better without such crime producers?" I added,
as he began to laugh.

"You women are always visionary. Never prac-
tical. You—"

"I thought you said that the one and only really
practical measure yet taken to reduce the criminal
population as it returns from the Islands was in-
vented and is conducted by women and — "

"You can just make up your mind tliat in every

b2 THROWN IN WITH THE CITY'S DEAD

family of six there'll be one hypocrite and one fool,
either one of which is liable to be a criminal, too,
and the State has got to take care of 'em somehow.
But the prisons are getting too full and the Alms-
houses and Insane Asylums are growing very large.
But there is the Two Brothers' Island. I've got
to attend to my business now. Take the trip with
me again some time.*'

But it seems to me, I shall not need to go again,
and that no judge or legislator would need to take
the journey more than once, unless, perchance, he
took it in the person of either the hypocrite or the
fool of his family; which, let us hope, no judge and
no legislator is in a position to do.

Reprinted from 7%/ Ar^fta

(^n ^tUBponsiik &^ucaU^ CtoBff

Education, using the word in its restricted scho-
lastic sense, is always productive of restlessness and
discontent, unless education, in its practical rela-
tions to life, furnishes an outlet and safety valve for
the whetted and strengthened faculties. Mere men-
tal gymnastics are unsatisfactory after the first
flush of pleasurable excitement produced in the
mind newly awakened to its own capabilities.

There seems to be something within us which
demands that our knowledge be in some way ap-
plied, and that the logic of thought find fruition in
the logic of events. The moment the laborers of
the country found time and opportunity to whet
their minds, they also developed a vast and persist-
ent unrest — a dissatisfaction with the order of
things which gave to them the tools with which to
carve a fuller, broader life, but had not yet fur-
nished them the material upon which they might
work. Their plane of thought was raised, their
outlook was expanded, their possibilities multi-
plied ; but the materials to work with remained the

85

86 THE DANGER OF AN IRRESPONSIBLE

same. Their status and condition clashed with their
new hopes and needs. This state of things pro-
duced what we call "labor troubles," with all their
complications. Capital and labor had no contest
until labor became (to a degree) educated.

If — "in those good old days" — labor was not sat-
isfied, it did not know how to make the fact very
clearly understood. Capital smiled and patronized
labor, and labor smiled and said it was quite con-
tent to work for so kind a master. It was safer
to do that way — in those good old days. Then, too,
so long as labor's wits had not been sharpened, so
long as the laborer had not learned the relative val-
ues of things, perhaps he was content. Certainly
he was far more so than he is to-day.

It is well that, in his present state of angry un-
rest, he feels that he has but to organize and elect
his own representatives to help enact just and re-
peal unjust laws as they bear upon his own imme-
diate needs. But for this outlet to his feelings, and
this hope for his own future, the labor troubles
would be troubles indeed, and every additional book
read by labor, every new schoolhouse built for la-
bor, would but add flame to fire. But education
brings with it — when taken into practical life — a
certain sense of the responsibilities of life and of
the relations of things.

The laborer begins to argue, "Am not I partly

EDUCATED CLASS IN A REPUBLIC 87

responsible for my own condition? Is not my sal-
vation in my own hands and in the hands of my
fellows? We are units in our own government. We
are in the majority numerically, and we are, there-
fore, at least partially responsible for not only what
we do, but for that which is done to us."

It is this feeling that sobers and steadies while
it inspires the so-called working classes to-day.

If, with their present enlightenment, ambitions,
and needs, laboring men felt themselves wholly irre-
sponsible for the present or future legislation, riots
and lawlessness would be the inevitable result. A
sense of responsibility alone makes educational de-
velopment safe either in individuals or in classes.

Witness the truth of this in the lives of the
"gilded youths" of all countries whose sharpened
wits are not steadied by, or applied in, any useful
occupation. The results are disastrous to them-
selves and to those who fall under their sway or
influence.

Broadened ambitions, sharpened mental capac-
ities, developed intellectuality, demand correspond-
ing outlets and responsibilities. Lacking these,
education is but an added danger. Especially is
this true in a Republic where the theory of legal
and political equality is held. At the present time
there are but two wholly irresponsible classes in
our republic — Indians and women.

88 THE DANGER OF AN IRRESPONSIBLE

I place the Indians first because it has recently
been decided in South Dakota that if an Indian
(male) will "accept land in severalty," he thereby
becomes a sovereign, and is henceforth presumed
to have sufficient interest in the welfare of his gov-
ernment and the stability of affairs in general to en-
title him to be looked upon as a desirable citizen,
capable of legislating and desiring to legislate
wisely for the public weal.

Since the government has not yet come to believe
that any amount of land in severalty entitles wo-
men to so much confidence, and since the lack of re-
sponsibility develops in woman, as in man, a reckless
and wanton spirit, we have the spectacle of this irre-
sponsible element taking property laws into its own
hands, and proudly destroying in public the belong-
ings of other people where those belongings chanced
to be in the form of beverages which these women
disapproved of as articles of merchandise and use.
And we have seen, farther, the grave spectacle of
courts of law which will not or dare not enforce the
law for their punishment.

The due recognition of property rights is one of
the earliest developments of personal, legal, and
political responsibility. The negro notoriously
disregarded these when his own human rights and
individual responsibility were unrecognized. His
desires were likely to be the measure of your loss.

EDUCATED CLASS IN A REPUBLIC 89

He is not the light-fingered being that he was.
Mine and thine have a new meaning for him since —
for the first time in his life — "thine" has any
meaning to his one-time master.

He is also beginning to look to his ballot for his
safety and to himself to work out his future status,
whereas one day his legs were his sole dependence
when trickery or blandishment failed him. Woman
still depends — where she wishes to compass an end —
upon blandishment, deception, or a type of force
which she believes will not or cannot be resented
in the way it would unquestionably be resented if
offered by men. A body of respectable men in a
quiet community do not calmly walk into another
man's business house, and without process of law
destroy his property. Their sense of personal and
legal and political responsibility is a most effective
police force; and no matter how rabid a prohibi-
tionist John Smith is, he does not collect a band of
otherwise respectable men about him and proceed
to destroy — with praise and prayer as an accompa-
niment — the belongings of his neighbor.

No; he goes to a legal infant and apolitical non-
existent, and gets her to do it if it is to be done.
He knows that to her the limit of responsibility is
the verge of her desires on this question. He knows
that she recognizes no right of property in a bever-
age she does not approve and a traffic she hopes

go THE DANGER OF AN IRRESPONSIBLE

*

to destroy. He knows that her sense of helplessness
within the law — where she has no voice — gives her
that reckless spirit of the political non-existent of all
classes, which finds its revenge in lawlessness so
long as it may not hope to have a voice in lawfulness.
While woman was uneducated and wholly a depend-
ent, there was little danger from her. She had too
much at stake, in a purely physical sense. Then,
too, she had not reasoned out the logical sequence
between the pretension that a Republic of political
equals before the law exists, while in fact one-half
of that Republic has no political status whatever
and no voice in the laws they obey. Uneducated
and wholly dependent as woman was, this was safe
enough. Educated, and to a degree financially in-
dependent, as she now is, she is a menace to social
order so long as she stands without legal responsi-
bility or political outlet for the expression of her
opinions and desires in matters of government.

So long as her only means of expression on the
subject of the liquor traffic is a hatchet and prayer,
she will use both, and we will have the shocking
spectacle, witnessed a little over a year ago, of a
court refusing to even fine those who committed as
clear and wanton an outrage on property rights as
often finds record.

The steadying sense of personal and mental re-
sponsibility can develop only under the exercise of

EDUCATED CLASS IN A REPUBLIC 9I

such responsibility. Man passed through the stage
of regulative and prohibitive thought, and learned
the true significance and value of Liberty only by
its possession. By being responsible he learned the
folly and danger of undue restrictive legislation,
and the utter futility of the attempt to legislate
taste, moral sense and lofty ideals (i. ^., his per-
sonal taste and ideals) into his neighbors.

He also learned the futility and danger of lawless
raids upon those who were not of his way of think-
ing as to what they should eat or drink, or where-
withal they should be clothed. Woman will have
to learn the same important lesson in the same way.
She will abuse the personal rights and liberties of
others who disagree with her (now that she is edu-
cated and has the power) unless she is steadied, given
legal and political responsibility, and held to the
same account for her acts as are her brothers. Be-
ing helpless within the law — having no means of
expression nor of making her will and opinions
felt, having no voice in municipal or governmental
management— she has begun to find lawless outlet
for her newly acquired talents and intellectual ac-
tivity. She is playing the part of border "regu-
lator" and lobbyist — two very dangerous and de-
grading roles in any case but doubly so in the hands
of an educated but unrepresented class.

It has been argued, by men who are otherwise

92 THE DANGER OF AN IRRESPONSIBLE

favorable to woman suffrage, that to grant the bal-
lot to woman would be to yield up, upon the altar
of fanaticism and narrow personal desires, much of
the liberty for which man has fought and struggled.
They argue that women do not stop to consider
whether they have the right to interfere with what
others do, but that they only ask whether they like
the thing done.

The argument goes further and asserts that wo-
men only want the ballot that they may restrict
the liberty of other people, pass prohibitory, sump-
tuary, and religious laws ; and that the ballot in the
hands of woman means a return to a union of church
and state, and the meddlesome, personal legislation
of the type known to us as Blue Laws.

It is no doubt true that there are many half-de-
veloped thinkers among women who demand the
ballot, who desire political power for these petty
reasons. It is also undoubtedly true that many of
these would travel the same road trod by their
fathers before them, and learn political wisdom
slowly and only after a struggle with their own nar-
row ideas of liberty, which means their own liberty
to restrict and regulate the liberty of other people.

It may be readily admitted, I say, that woman
will make some of the same mistakes, political,
religious, and sociological, that have been made by
men in the reach after a better way. But what has

EDUCATED CLASS IN A REPUBLIC 93

taught thoughtful men wisdom? What has broad-
ened the conception of political liberty? What
taught men the danger and folly of religious and
restrictive (sumptuary) legislation? What but ex-
perience and responsibility?

Nothing so steadies the hasty and narrow judg-
ment as power, coupled with the recognition that
responsibility for the use of that power is sure to
be demanded.

Many a man will advise, as secret lobbyist, what
he would not do in open legislature. Many a man
in private life asserts that "If I were judge or pres-
ident/' or what not, so and so should not be done.
When the power and responsibility once rests upon
him, his outlook is broadened, and he recognizes
that he would endanger a far more sacred principle
were he to adhere to his plan.

This holds true with woman. With her newly
acquired intellectual and financial power she is seek*
ing an outlet for her capacities. She sees certain
municipal and governmental ills. Having no direct
power of expression, no legal, political status in a
country which claims to have no political classes,
she does what all disqualified, irresponsible, dissat-
isfied classes of men have done before her when
deprived of equal opportunity with their fellows ;
she seeks by subterfuge (indirection) or lawless-
ness to compass that which she may not attempt

94 AN IRRESPONSIBLE EDUCATED CLASS

lawfully and which, had she the steadying influ-
ence and discipline of responsibility and power,
she would«not do.

Inexperience, coupled with irresponsibility and
a lax sense of the rights of others, always did and
always will produce tyrants.

Unite this naturally produced and inevitable
social and political condition and outlook with the
developed mental capacities and consequent rest-
less, undirected, and unabsorbed ambition of the
women of to-day, and we have a dangerous lobby
— working in secret by indirection and without open
responsibility for their words, deed, or influence —
\o iianaie in our Republic.

^e;i; in Q^rain

Read before the International Council of Women in Washington.

1888

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in introducing the speaker said: "The first
speaker of the evening is Helen Gardener, who is to give us an address on the
Brain. You know the last stronghold of the enemy is scientific. Men have
decided that we must not enter the colleges and study very hard; must not
have the responsibility of government laid on our heads, because our brains
weigh much less than the brains of men. Dr. Hammond, of New York, has
published several very elaborate articles in the Ih^ular Science Monthly to
prove this fact. But Helen Gardener has spent about fourteen months in in-
vestigation, and has conferred with twenty able specialists upon the subject,
and will give us to-night the result of her investigation. She will show tons
that it is impossible to prove any of the positions that Dr. Hammond hm*
maintained.

§t^ in (j§tain

Ladies and Gentlemen: — The political conditions
of woman are very greatly influenced to-day by what
is taught to her and about her by those fwo con-
servative moulders of public opinion — clergymen
and physicians. Our law-makers have long since
ceased to merely sneer at the simple claim of human
rights by one-half of humanity, and for refuge they
have flown to priest and practitioner, who do not
fail them in this their hour of great tribulation. It
is true that men, most of whom never enter a
church, have grown somewhat ashamed to press
the theological arguments against the equality of the
sexes, and to these the medical argument has be-
come an ever-present help in their time of trouble.

In the early days woman was under the absolute

sway of club and fist. Then came censer and gown,

swinging hell in the perfumed depths of the one

and hiding in the folds of the other, thumb-screw

and fagot for the woman who dared to think. At

last the theory of the primal curse upon her head

has grown weaker. Mankind struggles to be less

brutal and more just. Manly men are beginning to

97

gS SEX IN BRAIN

blush when they hear repeated the well-worn fable
of the fall of man through woman's crime and her
inferiority of position and opportunity, justified by
priest and pleader, because of legends inherited
from barbarians — tnental deformities worthy of
their parentage.

When religious influence and dogma began to
lose their terrors, legal enactments were slowly
modified in woman's favor and hell went out of
fashion. Then Conservatism, Ignorance, and Ego-
tism, in dismay and terror, took counsel together
and called in medical science, still in its infancy,
to aid in staying the march of progress which is
inevitable to civilization and so necessary to any-
thing like a real Republic. Equality of opportunity
began to be denied to woman, for the first time,
upon natural and so-called scientific grounds. She
was pronounced physically and mentally incapable,
because of certain anatomical conditions, and she
must be prevented — for her own good and that of
the race here — from competition with her mental
and physical superiors.

It was no longer her soul, but her body, that
needed saving from herself. Her thirst for knowl-
edge the clergy declared had already damned the
souls of a very large majority of mankind — in a
hereafter known only to them. The same vicious
tendency, the doctors echoed, will be the ruin of

SEX IN BRAIN QQ

the physical bodies of the race in this world, as we
are prepared to prove. The case began to look
hopeless again. Opportunity must be denied, these
doctors sa3% because capacity does not exist.
Where capacity seems to exist, it is, it must be,
at the expense of individual health and future ma-
ternal capabilities.

As a person, she has no status with these consist-
ent believers in "equal rights to all mankind." As
a potential mother only, can she hope for consid-
eration either by religious or medical theorist.
This has been a difficult combination to meet.
Few who cared to contest their verdict, possessed
the bravery to fearlessly face the religious dicta-
tors, and fewer still had the anatomical and anthro-
pological information to risk a fight on a field which
assumed to be held by those who based all of their
arguments upon scientific facts, collected by mi-
croscope and scales and reduced to unanswerable
statistics.

The priest, reinforced by the doctor, promised a
long and bitter struggle, on new grounds, to those
who fought for simple justice to the individual,
aside from her sex relations; who wished for neither
malediction nor mercy; those who claim only the
right of a unit to enjoy the common heritage un-
trammeled by superstition and artificial difficulties.
They do not ask to be helped — only not to be hin-

lOO SEX IN BRAIN

dered. They had hailed science as their friend
and ally; and behold, pseudo-science adopted theo-
ries, invented statistics, and published personal
prejudices as demonstrated fact. All this has done
a vast deal of harm to the cause of woman.

Educators, theorists, and politicians readily ac-
cept the data and statistics of prominent physicians,
and, in good faith, make them a basis of action,
while the victims of their misinformation have been
helpless. It is, therefore, very important to learn,
if possible, just how far medical science and an-
thropology have really discovered demonstrable
natural sex differences in the brains of men and
women, and how far the usual theories advanced
are gratuitous assumptions, founded upon legend
and fed by mental habit and personal egotism.

I began an investigation into this matter a little
while ago by questioning the arguments and logic
of the medical pseudo-scientists from their own
basis of facts. I ended by questioning the facts
themselves, upon the evidence furnished me by
leading members of the profession, some of whom
are known in this country and abroad as leaders in
original investigation as brain students and anato-
mists. None of these gentlemen knew the aim or
motive of my inquiries, and they gave me all the
information to be had on this subject without bias
and quite freely. The specialists and brain students

S&X m BRAtK ioi

to whom my questions were submitted, were of
widely different religious beliefs, which beliefs, of
course, colored their theories as well as their mo-
tives, either consciously or unconsciously.

But the profession has reason to be proud of the
ability of the most of these men, no less than of
their sincerity and willingness to confess to igno-
rance of facts where proof was lacking. The abler
the man the more willing was he to do this. One
or two tried to explain, and, as it seemed to me,
to force an agreement between scientific facts which
they did possess, and their inherited belief in "rev-
elation." Others, who did not themselves recognize
it, performed the same mental gymnastics from
mere force of habit, and gave a black eye to their
facts in preserving a blind eye to their faith. But
in the following results are to be found the opin-
ions of eminent medical men, some of whom are
Roman Catholic, some Protestant, and some of the
negative systems of religion. So far as I know,
not one is a believer in "Woman Suffrage," nor
even in the more radical but less comprehensive
measures for her development. Not one, who
touched directly upon the subject, believed in sex
equality in its entirety or had not personal prejudice
and long-cherished sentiments opposed to it, if his
reason approved. By some of them this was frankly
stated, even while giving facts in her favor. Not

t02 SEX IN BRAIN

more than one, so far as I know, is "agnostic** in
religion or a believer in evolution in its entirety.

I have mentioned these latter points, because I
found in this line of investigation, as in all others,
that a man's religious leanings inevitably color and
modify all of his opinions, and govern his entire
mental outlook. They even add bitterness to his
"jalop" and fizz in his "seltzer". If he absolutely
believe in the "Garden of Eden" story he deals with
"Adam" as a creature after "God's own heart and
in his image," and therefore capable and deserving
of all opportunity and development for and because
of himself, and to promote his own happiness.
"Eve," of course, receives due attention as a phys-
ical, anatomical specimen, "with intuitions" — a
mere bone or rib of contention, as it were, be-
tween man and man. The more orthodox the man
the bonier the rib. The more literal and consistent
his faith the less likely is he to deal with woman
as an intellectual being, capable of and entitled
to the same or as liberal, mental, social, and finan
cial opportunities or rights as are universally con-
ceded in this country to be the birthright of man,
and quite beyond farther controversy in his case.
Evidence in her favor which cannot be evaded,
must be overwhelming, indeed, then, if an investi-
gator starts out handicapped with the theory of
"revelation" as a part of his mental equipment,

SEX IN BRAIN 10$

and with the "sphere of woman" formulated for
him by the ancient Hebrews.

I went to the men whom the doctors themselves
told me were the best authority to be found on the
subject of brain anatomy and microscopy. One of
these men, Dr. E. C. Spitzka, of New York, was re-
ferred to by physicians of all schools of practice as
undoubtedly the best informed man in America,
and second to none in the world, in this branch
of the profession. They, one and all, told me that
what he could not tell me himself on this subject,
or could not tell me where to find, could not be of
the slightest importance.

I have been asked to tell you just what I started
out to learn, and how far I succeeded. But before
I do this it may not be out of place to tell you an an-
ecdote of my experience in this undertaking: I
went personally with my questions to about twenty
of the leading physicians of New York. [I had
them submitted in other ways to many more in this
and other cities. I got written communications
from the Old World as well as the New.] Nearly
every one of these twenty, after very kindly telling
me what he himself knew and what he believed on
the subject, referred me to the same man as the
final appeal; but not one of them was willing to
introduce me to him. They would introduce me
to anybody and everybody else, but they did not

I04 SEX IN BRAIN

like to risk sending me to him. He was, they
said, utterly impatient of ignorance, and might
treat me with scant courtesy. He would very likely
tell me flatly that he could not waste time on so
trivial a matter — that I and everybody else ought to
know all about "sex in brain."

Now, this is a secret — I would not have it get
out for a good deal. It took me a long while to
get my courage up to go to that man without an
introduction — a thing I did not do with any of the
others. I finally, with fear and trembling, made
up my mind to learn what he knew on this subject
or perish in the attempt. So I took my life in my
hands, put on my best gown — I had previously dis-
covered that even brain anatomists are subject to
the spell of good clothes — and went. I fully ex-
pected to be reduced to mere pulp before I left;
but he listened quite patiently, asked me a few
questions as to why I had come to him; told me
to read him my questions; asked me sharply, "Who
wrote those questions?" I said meekly, "I did."
He looked at me critically, wrote something on a
card, and dismissed me. I was uncertain whether,
he had been so kind in his manner, because he
considered me a harmless lunatic or not. Once in
the street I read the card. I was to call again
when he could give me more time.

I went not once, but many times. I devoted

S£X m BRAIN 105

some months to brain anatomy and anthropology.
In his laboratory he had brains from those of a
mouse to those of the largest whale on record.
He showed me the peculiarities of brains as shown
by microscope and scales. He looked up points in
foreign journals to which I had not access. In short,
he did all he could to aid me; and he said that no
such investigation as I was trying to learn about
had ever yet been made, although no fair record of
the difference of sex in brain, of which we hear
so much, could possibly be made without it. He
was delightfully frank, earnest, and thoroughly
honest. He knew — and, what is better, he was
willing to tell — where knowledge stopped and
guessing began ; a point sadly confused, I found,
by even prominent members of the profession. "I
do not know," was a hard sentence to get from a
doctor so long as he was under the impression that
others of his profession would know. "I do not
know; nobody knows," came freely enough from
the man who was sure of the boundaries of investi-
gation, who recognized the vast difference between
«

theories and proof. From him, and through him,
I collected material that is of intense interest and
importance to woman in this stage of the move-
ment for her elevation.

It is only right that I say here that I am of
opinion that he does not himself believe in the

Io6 SEX IN BRAIN

equality of the sexes, but he is too thoroughly scien-
tific to allow his hereditary bias to color his state-
ments of facts on this or any subject. In the hands
of a man who has arrived at that point of mental
poise and dignity, our case is safe, no matter what
his sentiments may be. Such men do not go to
their emotions for premises when it comes to a
statement of scientific facts. There are writers on
this subject who do.

As you all know, any statement calmly and per-
sistently made is reasonably sure to be accepted as
true, even by its victims. Frequency of iteration
passes as proof. Even thoughtful men, after spend-
ing years of time in trying to explain why a thing
is true, often end with the discovery that it is not
true, after all. We are all familiar with the story
of the wrangle of the philosophers as to why a ves-
sel containing water weighed no more with a fish
weighing a pound in it than it did after the fish
was removed. After long and acrimonious debate
over the principle of philosophy involved, some
one bethought him to weigh it, and, of course,
discovered that no unfamiliar principle was involved,
since it was a simple mis-statement as to facts.

The assumptions of "divine rights" by kings and
priests stood as unquestioned facts for centuries by
those who were the victims of both. The "divine
right" of men rests still on the same bare-faced

SEX IN BRAIN IO7

fraud, and is simply the last of this interesting trin-
ity to die, and it naturally dies hard, as its fellows
did. If a charlatan loudly asserts that he can do
a certain thing, no matter how unlikely that thing
is, if he insists that he has done it often, he will
find many believers who will spend much time in
an attempt to explain how he does it, while only
the few will think to question first if he does it.

Upon this basis of calm assumption on the one
side, and credulous acceptance on the other, has
grown up a very general belief that there are great
and well-defined natural anatomical differences be-
tween the brains of the sexes of the human race;
that these differences are well known to the medical
practitioner or anatomist, and that they plainly
indicate inferiority of capacity in the female brain,
which is structural, while, strangely enough, no one
argues that this is the case in the lower animals.
It therefore occurred to me to question — admitting
that the microscope and scales really do show the
differences to exist in adults — whether it would not
be fair to assume, at least, that they are not nat-
ural and necessary sex differences, but that they
are due to difference of opportunity and environ-
. ment, and, under like conditions, would be produced
between members of the same sex; that since this
superiority of brain in the male sex is said to ap-
pear in the human race only, where alone, in all

Io8 SEX IN BRAIN

nature, superior opportunities and environments
are held as a sex right and condition by the males,
that the so-called "superiority of structure" is sim-
ply better development of the equally capable but
restricted brain of the other sex.

I proposed to test this by an appeal to the brains
of infants. And my assumption although not new,
appeared to be borne out by the accepted, though
unproven theory, that the brains of the men and
women are nearer alike the lower we go into the
human scale. This assumption is clearly based
upon the idea that where the mental opportunities
of the men and women are nearer equal the phys-
ical results are also similar. Indeed, Topinard
plainly slates this fact in his Anthropology. He
says: "The reason that the brain of woman is
lighter than that of man is that she has less cere-
bral activity to exercise in her sphere of duty. In
former times it was relatively larger in the depart-
ment of Loz6re, because then the woman and man
mutually shared the burdens of the daily labor.
The truth is that the weight of the brain increases
with the use we make of it." Since women are not
given diversified and stimulating mental employ-
ment, they can not be expected to show the results
of such training on the brain itself.

"Of the physiology of the brain comparatively
little is known," says Dr. McDonald, author of
"Criminology."

SEX IN BRAIN lOQ

I was started on my work in this matter by sev-
eral articles written by the boldest of the medical
men in this country, who is the leader of the med-
ical party which claims to be opposed to the edu-
cational and political advancement of women be-
cause of the inevitable injury to her physical con-
stitution. The writings of such a man, aided by
the circulation and prestige of the leading journals
of the country, which publish them as authoritative,
must inevitably influence school directors, voters,
and legislators, and go far to crystalize the belief
that facts are well known to the medical profession,
with which it would be dangerous to trifle, when
the truth is that the positive knowledge on the sub-
ject is not sufficient at this moment to form even
an intelligent guess upon. In spite of this fact the
well-known physician of whom I speak, Dr. Wm.
A. Hammond, reiterates in these articles all of the
old, and adds one or two new arguments to prove
that woman should not be allowed to develop what
brain she has, because she possesses very little and
even that little is of inferior quality.

Professor Romanes, who is said by many to stand
second only to Herbert Spencer in his branch of
science, has also recently published a very exten-
sive paper on mental differences of the sexes and
the proper education of woman, which is, unfortu-
nately, but most likely honestly, based upon this

ZIO SEX IN BRAIN

same assumption, under the belief that it was a
demonstrated fact. His paper has been very widely
copied in spite of its extreme length, and the fact
that the same journals "absolutely can not find
space" for even a moderately long one on the other
side. The editors say, "The public is not inter-
ested in it" — that is, in its correction. I mention
these two men not because they are peculiar in,
but because they are honored representatives of,
the so called scientific school of objectors to hu-
man equality, and claim to base the right of male
supremacy upon important scientific facts.

Of course all this is an old assumption and as
such has been dealt with before. But Dr. Ham-
mond now boldly asserts that these differences are
easily discoverable by microscope and scale, and
that they are natural, necessary sex differences. He
claims: (i.) That woman's brain is inferior to man's
in size and quality, and, therefore, in possibility.
(2.) That these marks of inferiority are natural and
potential, and not produced by environment. (3.)
That they are easily recognizable in the brain mass
itself. (4.) That in consequence of these natural
organic and fundamental differences the female
brain is incapable of, first, accuracy; second, sus-
tained or abstract thought; third, unbiased judg-
ment (judicial fairness); fourth, the accomplish-
ment of any really first-class or original work in the

SEX IN BRAIN III

fields of science, art, politics, inveDtion, or even
literature. He points out the great danger to wo-
man herself, and to the race, as her children, if she
is allowed to attempt those things for which the
structure of her brain shows her to be incapacitated.
From this outlook it is easy to see that the non-
professional voter, the school director, and the leg-
islator might really feel it to be his duty to protect
woman against her own ambition. It is in this
way that the assertions of such men can, and do,
cause the greatest injury to women. There are a
number of other indictments; but for the present
let us examine these. First, in the matter of size,
the doctor concedes that the relative size and
weight of the brain in the sexes is about the same,
slightly in woman's favor, which he says does not
count; although, when he finds this same differ-
ence between men, as between higher and lower
races, he argues that it does count for a great deal.
But in the dilemma to which this seemed to reduce
him in proving his case, he says : "Numerous ob-
servations show beyond doubt that the intellectual
power does not depend upon the weight of the brain
relative to that of the body so much as it depends
upon absolute brain weight." Now, if this were
the case, an elephant would out-think any of us,
and the whale, whose intellectual achievements
have never been looked upon as absolutely incen-

Iia SEX IN BRAIN

diary (if we except Jonah's friend), would rank the
greatest man on record, and have brain enough left
to furnish material for a fair-sized female semi-
nary.

The average human male brain is said to weigh
from 1,300 to 1,400 grammes, and even a very
young whale furnishes 2,312 grammes of 'intellect-
producing substance," as the doctor felicitously
terms it, while the brain of a large whale weighed
in 1883 tipped the beam at 6,700 grammes. Ttuly,
then, if absolute brain weight and not relative
weight is the test, here was a "mute inglorious Mil-
ton," indeed. Almost any elephant is several Cuv-
iers in disguise, or perhaps an entire medical fac-
ulty.

The doctor says : "The female brain, however,
is not only smaller than that of man, but it is
different in structure, and this fact involves much
more as regards the character of the mental facul-
ties than does the element of size." Again he
says: "Thus accurate measurements show that the
anterior portion of the brain, comprising the frontal
lobes, in which the highest intellectual faculties re
side, is much more developed in man than in wo-
man, and this not only as regards its size, but its
convolutions also. Now, the part of the brain
which is especially concerned in the evolution of
mind is the gray matter, and this is increased or

SEX IN BRAIN XI 3

diminished in accordance with the number and
complexity of the convolutions. The frontal lobes
contain a greater amount of gray cortical matter
than any other part of the brain, and they are, as
we have seen, larger in man than in woman."

Accepting these sweeping statements for the mo-
ment — although many of them are questioned by
the highest authority — would it not be fair to test
the case as to whether this difference in adults is
fundamental and pre-natal, or whether it is the re-
sult of outside artificial influences, by an appeal to
the brain of infants. If the brains of one hundred
infants (each child weighing ten pounds) were ex-
amined, would the brains of the fifty males be dis-
tinguishable from those of the fifty females? In
other words, when the weight of the body, the age,
and other conditions are the same as to health,
parentage, etc., and before the artificial means of
development, educational stimulus and opportunity
are applied to the one and withheld from the other,
could the sex be determined by the difference in
brain, weight, shape, size, quality, or convolutions?
That would be the test, although it would not al-
low for the ages of hereditary dwarfage of the one,
and healthy exercise of the brains of the other sex;
but, as an opening, I was willing to stand on that
test. It was in pursuance of this idea that I caused
the following questions to be submitted to a large

114 SEX IN BRAIN

number of the leading brain students of America^
went myself somewhat into the study of anthropology,
and collected from several countries certain bits of
information as to just how much basis there is for
all this cry about the difference in men's and wo-
men's brains. Being a matter of heads, I wanted
to know how much was "cry" and how much was
"wool. "

These are the questions submitted to the doctors,
brain anatomists and microscopists at the outset
of my task : (i. ) Is it known to the medical pro-
fession whether in infants (of the same age, size,
health, and inheritance at birth) the quantity,
quality, and specific gravity of the gray matter
differs in the sexes? Does the relative amount of
gray matter differ? (2.) Do the convolutions?
Form? Actual amount of gray matter, differ? (3.)
Given the brain, only, of a number of infants of the
same age, weight, etc., could the sex be determined
by the difference in shape, quantity, quality, and
convolutions? (4.) If so, are the differences more or
less marked in infants than in adults? Is the
frontal region of the brain larger and more devel-
oped in male than in female infants? Is the differ-
ence as marked as in adults? (5.) Does use, train-
ing, etc., develop gray matter, change texture, size,
shape, etc., of the brain mass, or are these deter-
mined and fixed at birth? The same as to convolu-

SEX IN BRAIN II5

tions? (6.) Does use have to do with the location
of the fissure of Rolando, or is that fixed at birth?
In an uneducated man would there be as much of
the brain in front of this fissure as in a man of
trained and developed mind? (7.) Does use or
development of the mental powers change the spe-
cific gravity of the brain mass? Would it be the
same in a great scholar as in a common laborer of
the same general size and health? (8.) Is there
unanimity of opinion on these questions? Are the
facts known or only conjectured? (9.) If ten boys
of the same weight, health, and general inheritance
were taken in infancy and five of them subjected
for fifty years to the conditions of a street or farm
laborer, while the other five received all the ad-
vantages of the life of a scholar, would the ten
brains present the same relative likenesses at death
as at birth? Would opportunity and mental ex-
ercise make a change in the brains of the five stu-
dents that would be discoverable by microscope
and scales?

In reply to the last question, the universal opin-
ion was that it would be fair to assume that such
difference would be perceptible. But one of the
replies was that these points must necessarily re-
main only conjectural, since we can not do as the
Scotch villager who shows to a wondering public
the remains of a famous criminal, with this bit of

Il6 SEX IN 6RAIK

history: "This is the skull and brain of a man who
was hanged, at the age of forty, for murdering his
entire family. This is the skull and brain of the
same man at the age of seven. You can readily
trace in the boy the man that was to be.** Since
it might be looked upon with disfavor if we were
to attempt to brain people from time to time in an
effort to discover the effects of culture upon the
fissure of Rolando, we must base all such arguments
upon reason and analogy. Is it not a fair presump-
tion, since reason and analogy lead to this univer-
sally accepted theory as between man and man,
that the same causes would produce the same re-
sults when applied between man and woman?
Strangely enough, this is not held to be the case
by these acute reasoners against sex equality in
brain.

But to illustrate once more the necessity of
questioning facts first and the reasons for them
afterward, I am assured by the most profound and
capable students of these branches of science, that
if such differences exist in the brains of infants as
are indicated by my questions, it is not known to
those who make a specialty of brain study; but,
upon the contrary, the differences between individ-
uals of the same sex — in adults, at least — are known
to be much more marked than any that are known
to exist between the sexes. Take the brains of the

S&X IN fiRAiN tl7

two poets, Byron and Dante. Byron's weighed
1,807 grms., while Dante's weighed only 1,320
grms., a difference of 487 grms. ; or take two states •
men, Cromwell and Gambetta. Cromwell's brain
weighed 2,210 grms., which, by the way, is the
greatest healthy brain on record — although Cuvier's
is usually quoted as the largest, a part of the
weight of his was due to disease, and if a diseased
or abnormal brain is to be taken as the standard,
then the greatest on record is that of a negro,
criminal idiot — while Gambetta's was only 1,241
grms., a difference of 969 grms. Surely it would
not be held because of this, that Gambetta and
Dante should have been denied the educational and
other advantages which were the natural right of
Byron and Cromwell. Yet it is upon this very
ground, by this very system of reasoning, that it
is proposed to deny women equal advantages and
opportunities, although the difference in brain
weight between man and woman is claimed to be
only 100 grms., and even this does not allow for
difference in body weight, and is based upon a sys-
tem of averages, which is neither complete nor ac-
curate. There is, then, not only no proof that the
sex of infants could be distinguished by their brains,
but all of the evidence which does exist on this
subject is wholly against the assumption.

Up to this point in my investigation I learned

Il8 ' SEX IN BRAIN

only what I had fully expected to learn. At the
next step, and in connection with it, I met with
information which seems to me to offer an oppor-
tunity for reflection upon the matter of mental — not
to say verbal — accuracy in the sex which does not
wear "bangs." In the papers referred to, Dr. Ham-
mond asserted, and no male voice or pen has seen
fit to publicly correct him, that "it is only necessary
to compare an average male with an average female
brain to perceive at once how numerous and strik-
ing are the differences existing between them." He
then submits a formidable list of striking differ-
ences which include these: "The male brain is
larger, its vertical and transverse diameters are
greater proportionately, the shape is quite different,
the convolutions are more intricate, the sulci
deeper, the secondary fissures more numerous, and
the gray matter of the corresponding parts of the
brain decidedly thicker."

But as if all these were not enough to enable the
merest novice to distinguish the one from the other,
even if he were near-sighted, he offers these rein-
forcements : "It is quite certain, as the observations
of the writer show, that the specific gravity of both
the white and gray matter of the brain is greater
in man than in woman." This would seem to leave
woman without a reef to hang to; for if by any
chance her brain did. not fall short in gray matter,

SEX IN BRAIN IIQ

the specific gravity of the rest of it would enable
the doctor to ticket her as accurately as though she
were to appear with ear-rings and train in a ball-
room. Of this point this is what the leading brain
anatomist in America wrote me: "The only article
recognized by the profession as important and of
recent date which takes this theory as a working
basis is by Morselli, and he is compelled to make
the sinister admission, while asserting that the spe-
cific gravity is less in the female, that with old age
and with insanity the specific gravity increases."
If this is the case, I don't know that women need
sigh over their short-coming in the item of specific
gravity. There appear to be two very simple meth-
ods open to them by which they may emulate their
brothers in the matter of specific gravity if they so
desire. One of these is certain, if they live long
enough, and the other — well, there is no protective
tariff on insanity. But to finally clinch his argu-
ment. Dr. Hammond continues: "The question is,
therefore, not so much that of quantity" (which
appears to collide with his statement that it was
the "absolute brain weight" which was the sublime
test, and drops my whale into the water again), "as
it is of quality. The brain of woman is different
from that of man in structure."

Again I applied my test. Does all this difference
of structure and quality appear in the infant or only

icz or nuus

lo cfce adoit bninM? Since it is held that these
«er)' differences are the ooes produced by education
and properly diversified mental stimolus — as be-
tween man and man — is it not iiir to assume that
like causes produce like results as between man and
wcman? Since woman has nerer had the advant-
aces of these bra in -developing processes, is it not
/air to assume, if aJJ these differences do exists that it
is less a matter of natural and characteristic in-
ienonty than of environment and opportunity, un-
less it exists in the same ratio in infants? That
would be the test as to whether these are natural,
neccssar>% pre-nstsl sex characteristics, or whether
thrv are developed by external circumstances axid
environnient. The physical sex characteristics,
which sre nsturtil, are as readily distinguished at
*>irfh as at maruritj-.

ti hi\ ^^^^'^ * ^omMn'3 waist and brain are put into

a poor .'^*'* *"'' ""'''^^ ^^ ^^ the fashion, it is rather

PhysicalTf '"^ ^*"''^'' ""^ ^^^'^ "•^"^^^ fifTure, either

Questjons /» '* ^*® **"* <»°e reply to my

..». " was this:

"«'«• o/ /«/.„,. *** «ver been made with the

' '*««> ti.at the

SBX IN BRAIN 121

inference was perfectly legitimate that the great
and numerous differences in the brains of adults,
in so far as that was not, also, a mere flight of
fancy, was not natural, pre-natal, and necessary,
but that it was certainly fair to assume it to be
produceable, by outside measures or environment,
and that it could be no more natural nor desirable,
for the digestive organs and the brain of one sex to
be decreased and deformed by pressure, than it is
for those of the other.

But I confess I was wholly unprepared for the
final result of my last question and argument. I
discovered that these differences are not only not
known to exist in infants, but that in spite of all
the talk, the pathetic warnings, and the absolute
statements to the contrary, that in a like number
of adult brains such differences are not only not to
be "perceived at once," but that if Dr. Hammond
or anybody else will agree to allow me to furnish
him with twenty well-preserved adult brains to be
marked in cipher, so that he will not have his in-
formation before he makes his test, he will find
that his "numerous, striking, and easily perceived"
differences will not appear with any relation to sex,
so far as is known at the present time. I made
this offer to him through the Popular Science
Monthly some six months ago. Up to date the
twenty brains I offered him to try on have not been
called for.

122 SEX IN BRAIN

Upon the contrary there will be found greater
difference between individuals of the same sex than
any known to exist between the sexes in any and
all of these test characteristics; that, in the main,
since women weigh less than men, it would be
pretty safe to guess that most of the lighter brains
belonged to the women, but that this test would
prove wrong in many cases, and that the others
would fail utterly.

I asked them why they did not correct the. gen-
eral impression which men of their profession had
given out in this matter. They said they did not
see the use of it; what difference did it make, any-
how? And then it was a good enough working
theory. I said, "But suppose it worked the other
way, do you think that you would say that it made
no difference, and that a working theory that worked
all one way was a safe or an honest one to put forth
as an established fact?"

"Well, we are willing to tell you the truth about
it," they said; "the fact is, it is all theory as yet;
there has not been a sufficient number of tests made
to warrant the least dogmatism in the matter; what
more can you ask of us than that?"

What indeed?

I made another discovery; it was this: The brain
of no remarkable woman has ever been examined!
Woman is ticketed to fit the hospital subjects and

SEX IN BRAIN 1 23

tramps, the unfortunates whose brains fall into the
hands of the profession, as it were, by mere acci-
dent; while man is represented by the brains of
the Cromwells, Cuviers, Byrons and Spurzheims.
By this method the average of men's brains is
carried to its highest level in the matter of weight
and texture; while that of women is kept at its
lowest, and even then there is only claimed loo
grammes difference! It is with such statistics as
these, it is with such dissimilar material, that they
and we are judged.

Finally, I discovered that there is absolutely no
definite information on the subject now in the
hands of the medical profession which can justify
the least show of dogmatism in the matter; or that, if
it were on the other side, would not be explained
entirely away in five minutes, and there would not
be the least question as to the desirability of the
explanation, either. They told me not only that
they did not know, but that no one could possibly
know upon the statistics and with the instruments
in the hands of the profession to-day.

This being the case, perhaps it will be just as well
for women themselves to take a hand in the future in-
vestigations and statements, and I sincerely hope that
the brains of some of our able women may be pre-
served and examined by honest brain students, so
that we may hereafter have our Cuviers and Web

124 ^^^ ^^ BRAIN

sters and Cromwells. And I think I know where
some of them can be found without a search-war-
rant — ^when Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, and some
others I have the honor to know, are done with
theirs. Until that is done, no honest or fair com-
parison is possible. At present there is too great
a desire on the part of these large-brained gentle-
men, like Dr. Hammond, to look upon themselves
and their brains as "infant industries/* entitled to
and in need of a very high protective tariff, to pre-
vent anything like a fair and equal competition with
the feminine product.

But the fact is that we have heard so much on
the one side about woman's physical and mental
short-comings, and on the other side, from our pro-
hibition friends and others, so much of the moral
delinquencies of men, that it seems to me that we
are in danger of believing both. And I, for one,
am beginning to feel a good deal like Mark Twain's
Irishman, whenever I hear either one discussed.
He had been having a controversy with another
man, and, as a final "clincher" to his side of the
argument, said, with emphasis: "Now, I don't want
to hear anything more from you on that subject but
silence — and mighty little of that."

Allow me to read the closing paragraph of a letter
to me from Dr. E. C. Spitzka, the celebrated New
York brain specialist, to whom I am greatly in-
debted for much valuable information;

SEX IN BRAIN 1 25

"You may hold me responsible for the following
declaration: That any statement to the effect that
an observer can tell by looking at a brain, or exam-
ining it microscopically, whether it belonged to a
female or a male subject, is not founded on care-
fully-observed facts. The balance and the com-
passes show slight differences; the weight of the
male brain being greater, and the angle formed by
the sulcus of Rolando, forming a larger expansion
of the frontal lobes; but both these points of differ-
ences have been determined by the method of av-
erages. They do not necessarily apply to the in-
dividual brain and hence can not be utilized to de-
termine the sex of a single brain, except by those
who are willing to take the chances of guessing.
The assertion that the microscope reveals definite
characteristic points of difference between the male
and female brain is utterly incorrect. No such
difference has ever been demonstrated, nor do I
think it will be by more elaborate methods than
those we now possess. Numerous female brains
exceed numerous male brains in absolute weight,
in complexity of convolutions, and in what brain
anatomists would call the nobler proportions. So
that he who takes these as his criteria of the male
brain may be grievously mistaken in attempting to
assert the sex of a brain dogmatically. If I had
one hundred female brains and one hundred male
brains together, I should select the one hundred con-
taining the largest and best developed brains as
probably containing fewer female brains than the
remaining one hundred. More than this no cau-
tious, experienced brain anatomist would venture
to declare."

T27oman m an (^nntjc

Read before the World's Congress of Representative Women,

Chicago, 1893

'Xt^oman as an (^nntjc

^

Ladies and Gentlemen: — If it were not often trag-
ic and always humiliating, it would be exceedingly
amusing to observe the results of a method of
thought and a civilization which has proceeded al-
ways upon the idea that man is the race and that
woman is merely an annex to him and because of
his desires, needs and dictum.

Strangely enough, the bigotry or sex bias and
pride does not carry this theory below the human
animal. Among scientists and evolutionists, and, in-
deed, even among the various religious explanations
of the source and cause of things, the male and fe-
male of all species of animals, birds and insects come
into life and tread its paths together and as equals.
The male tiger does not assume to teach his mate
what her "sphere" is, and the female hippopotamus is
supposed to have sufficient brain power of her own
to enable her to live her own life and plan her own
occupations, decide upon her own needs and gen-
erally regulate her own existence, without being
compelled to call upon the gentleman of her fam-
ily in particular, and all of the gentlemen of her

129

130 WOMAN AS AN ANNEX

species in general, to decide for her when she is
doing the proper thing. The laws of their species
are not made and executed by one sex for the other,
and the same food, sun, covering, educational and
general conduct and opportunities of life which
open to the one sex are equally open and free for
the other. No protective tariff is put upon mas-
culine prerogative to enable him to control all the
necessaries of life for both sexes, to assure to him
all the best opportunities, occupations, education
and results of achievement which is the common
need of their kind. In short, the female is in no
way his subordinate.

In captivity it is the female which has been, as
a rule, most prized, best cared for and preserved.
In the barnyard, field and stable alike, it is deemed
wise to sell or kill most of the males. They are
looked upon as good food, so to speak, but not as
useful citizens. What they add to the world is not
thought so much of — their capacities for the future
are less valued than are those of the other sex. Even
the man-made, religious legends bring all of these
animals into life in pairs. Neither has precedence
of the other. Neither is subject to the other.

But when it comes to the human animal— the final
blossom of creative thought, as religionists word it,
or of universal energy, as scientists put it — the
male, for the first time, becomes the whole idea.

WOMAN AS AN ANNEX I3I

A helpmate for him is an after-thought, and accord-
ing to man's teaching up to the present time, an
after-thought only half matured and very badly ex-
ecuted. In spite of all the practice on other pairs —
one of each sex — it remained for the Almighty,
or nature, to make the mistake (for the first time)
of creating the human race yfith one of its halves
a mere "annex" to the other. A subject. A subor-
dinate. Without brains to do its own thinking,
without judgment to be its pwn guide. This blunder
is not made with any other pair. In the case of all
other animals each sex has its own brain power with
which it directs its own affairs, makes its own laws
of conduct, and so preserves its own individuality,
its personal liberty, its freedom of action and of
development. *

I am not ignorant of, nor do I forget, the scien-
tific fact that in nature among ants, birds and
beasts there are tribes and communities where some
are slaves or are subject to others; but what I do
assert is this, that this is not a sex distinction or
degradation. It is not infrequently the males who
are the subjects in these communities where liberty
is not equal and where, therefore, the very basic
principal of equality is impossible or unknown.
And did it ever occur to you that a community or
a people which recognizes in its fundamental laws
and customs — in its very forms of expression — that

132 WOMAN AS AN ANNEX

it is right to preserve inequality of opportunity, of
education, of emolument and of conduct has yet to
learn the meaning of the words "liberty" and "jus-
tice?"

Nowhere in all nature is the mere fact of sex —
and that the race-producing sex — made a reason for
fixed inequality of liberty, of subjugation, of subor-
dination and of determined inferiqrity of opportu-
nity in education, in acquirement, in position — in a
word, in freedom. Nowhere until we reach man!

Here, where for the first time in nature there
enter artificial social conditions and needs, these ar-
tificial demands coupled with the great fact of ma-
ternity (everywhere else in nature absolutely under
its own control), maternity under sex subjection,
linked with financial dependence upon the one not
so burdened, has fixed this subordinate status upon
that part of the race which is the producer of the
race. This fact alone is enough to account for the
slow, the distorted, the diseased and the criminal
progress of humanity.

Subordinates cannot give lofty character. Ser-
vile temperaments cannot blossom into liberty-lov-
ing, liberty-giving descendants. Many of the lower
animals destroy their young if they are born in
captivity. They demand that maternity shall be
free. Free from man's conditions or captivity, as

WOMAN AS AN ANNEX 1 33

it always has been free from the tyranny of sex
control in their own species. *

It is the fashion in this country now-a-days to say
that women are treated as equals. Some of the
most progressive and best of men truly believe what
they say in this regard. One of our leading daily
papers, which insists that this is true, and even
goes so far as to say that American gentlemen be-

*While reading the proof for this book this corroborative and in-
teresting illustration appeared in the J\rew York IVorld of date
June 24:

The tragedy which has been expected to occur any time at the
Zoo was enacted yesterday, when Alice, the lioness who gave birth
to three whelps on Wednesday morning, ate one and killed another.
The third was only rescued by strategy. Animals never kill their
young in their wild state, except the male lion, from whom the fe-
male hides the young. In captivity it's a common thing.

Keeper Downey first discovered the deed, and when the Director
arrived Alice was just finishing one of her offspring. Another lay
dead in the comer and the third had crawled away and was crying
pitifully. Director Smith had the door raised which leads into
another cage and Alice was coaxed inside. Then the door was let
down and Keepers Downy and Snyder caught the only survivor
and secured the body of the other. It was a dangerous proceeding,
as Alice was terribly angry and beat her great body against the
thick iron bars.

The dead cub was sent to the Museum of Natural History, and
after a good deal of skirmishing around by Keepers Downey and
Shannon a Newfoundland dog belonging to an employee of Clau
sen's Brewery, on East Fifty-fifth street, who yesterday morning
gave birth to eight pups, was found, and last evening the survivor
of the triplets was taken to the brewery.

The Director will pay the owner of the dog $3 per week for the
baby's board and lodging, and, to the credit of the generous-hearted
mother dog, she has taken the little lioness to her breast without
so much as a questioning look. She licked it and snuggled it as
she did her own and caressed it into nursing. After it is a few
weeks old and is strong it can be taken away from the dog and,
with little trouble, can be brought up on a bottle.

134 WOMAJN AS AN ANNKX

lieve in and act upon the theory that their mothers
and daughters are of a superior quality — and are
always of the very first consideration to and by men
— recently had an editorial headlined "Universal
Suffrage the Birthright of the Free Born." I read
it through, and if you will believe me, the writer
had so large a bump of sex arrogance that he never
once thought of one-half of humanity in the entire
course of an elaborate and eloquent two-column ar-
ticle! "Universal" suffrage did not touch but one
sex. There was but one sex "free born." There
was but one which was born with "rights." The
words "persons," "citizens, ""residents of the state"
and all similar terms were used quite freely, but
not once did it dawn upon the mind of the writer
that every one of those words, every argument for
freedom, every plea for liberty and justice, equality
and right, applied to the human race and not
merely to one-half of that race.

Sex bias, sex arrogance, sex pride, sex assumption
is so ingrained that it simply does not occur to
the male logicians, scientists, philosophers and pol-
iticians that there is a humanity. They see, think
of and argue for and about only a sex of man — with
an annex to him — woman. They call this the race;
but they do not mean the race — they mean men.
They write and talk of "human beings; " of their
needs, their education, their capacity and develop-

WOMAN AS AN ANNEX 1 35

ment; but they are not thinking of humanity at all.
They are thinking of, planning for and executing
plans which subordinate the race — the human en-
tity — to a subdivision, the mark and sign of which
is the lowest and most universal possession of male
nature — the mere procreative instinct and possibility.
And this has grown to be the habit of thought un-
til in science, in philosophy, in religion, in law, in
politics — one and all — we must translate all lan-
guage into other terms than those used. For the
word "universal we must read "male; " for the "peo-
ple," the "nation," we must read "men." The
"will of the majority — majority rule" — really means
the larger number of masculine citizens. And so
with all our common language, it is in a false t.ense.
It is mere democratic verbal gymnastics, clothing
the same old monarchial, aristocratic mental beliefs,
with man now the "divine right" ruler and with
woman his subject and perquisite. Its gender is
misstated and its import multiplied by two. It does
not mean what it says, and it does not say what it
means.

Our thoughts are adjusted to false verbal forms,
and so the thoughts do not ring true. They are
merely hereditary forms of speech. All masculine
thought and expression up to the present time has
been in the language of sex, and not in the language
of race; and so it has come about that the music

136 WOMAN AS AN ANNEX

of humanity has been set in one key and played on
one chord.

It has been well said that an Englishman cannot
speak French correctly until he has learned to think
in French. It is far more true that no one can
speak or write the language of human liberty and
equality until he has learned to think in that lan-
guage, and to feel without stopping to argue with
himself, that right is not masculine only and that
justice knows no sex. Were the claim to superior
opportunity, status and position based upon ca-
pacity, character or wealth, upon perfection of form
or grace of bearing, one could understand, if not ac-
cept, the reasonableness of the position, for it would
then rest upon some sort of recognized superiority,
but while it is based upon sex — a mere accident of
form carrying with it a brute instinct, which is not
even glorified by the capacity to produce, and sel-
dom throughout nature, to suffer for and protect the
blossom of that instinct — surely no lower, less vital
or more degraded a basis could possibly be chosen.

Not long ago a heated argument arose here in
Chicago over the teaching of German in the pub-
lic schools. This argument was used by one of the
leading contestants in one of the leading journals:

"The whole amount of education that 95 per cent,
of our public school pupils receive is lamentably
small. It is far less than we could wish it to be.

WOMAN AS AN ANNEX 1 37

Most of these children, who are to be the citizens,
and b}' their ballots the rulers of this nation, can
often remain but a few years in the schoolroom.
For the average American citizen who is not a pro-
fessional man, or who is not destined for diplomatic
service abroad, English can afford all the mental
and intellectual pabulum needed."

Now here is an amusing and also a humiliating
illustration of the way these matters are handled,
and it is for that reason, only, that I have used a
local question here. "Ninety-five per cent, of our
public school pupils," etc., "by their ballots are
to be rulers of the nation," etc., "future citizens,"
forsooth! Now it simply did not occur to the gen-
tleman who wrote this, and to the hundreds who
so write and speak daily, that the most of those
95 per cent have no ballots, do not "rule," are not
"future citizens," but that they belong to the pro-
scribed sex, have committed the crime of being
girls, even before they entered the public schools,
and so have permanently outlawed themselves for
citizenship in this glorious republic of "equals."
But his entire argument (made upon so large a
per cent) really rests upon a much smaller num-
ber. But the girls made good ballast for the argu-
ment. They answered to fill in the "awful exam-
ple," but they are not allowed the justice of real
citizenship, nor to be the future "culers" for and

138 WOMAN AS AN ANNEX

because of whom the whole argument is made, foi
whose educational rights and needs, alone, because
of their future ballots, he cares so tenderly. It will
not do to attempt to avoid this issue by the hack-
neyed plea. "The hand that rocks the cradle
rules the world." Every one knows that this is
not true in the sense in which it is used. It is
true, alas! in a sense never dreamed of by politi-
cian and publican.

It is true that the degraded status of maternity
has ruled and does rule the world, in that it has
been, and is, the most potent power to keep the
race from lofty achievement. Subject mothers
never did, and subject mothers never will, produce
a race of free, well poised, liberty-loving, justice-
practicing children. Maternity is an awful power.
It blindly strikes back at injustice with a force that
is a fearful menace to mankind. And the race which
is born of mothers who are harassed, bullied, sub-
ordinated and made the victims of blind passion
or power, or of mothers who are simply too petty
and self-debased to feel their subject status, can-
not fail to continue to give the horrible spectacles
we have always had of war, of crime, of vice, of
trickery, of double-dealing, of pretense, of lying,
of arrogance, of subserviency, of incompetence, of
brutality, and, alas! of insanity, idiocy and disease
added to a fearful and unnecessary mortality.

WOMAN AS AN ANNEX 1 39

To a Student of anthropology and heredity it re-
quires no great brain power to trace these results
to causes. We need only remember that the men-
taly as well as the physical conditions, capacities
and potentialities are inherited, to understand how
the dead level of hopeless mediocrity must be pre-
served as the rule of the race so long as the poten-
tialities of that race must be filtered always
through and take its impetus from a mere annex to
man's power, ambition, desires and opinions.

Let me respond right here to those who will —
who always do — insist that woman is not so held
to-day at least in England and America. That her
present status is a dignified, an equal or even a supe-
rior one. I will illustrate : In a recent speech by the
Hon. William E.Gladstone he pleaded most eloquent-
ly and earnestly for the right of Irishmen to rule and
govern themselves. Among many other things he
said: "The principal weapons of the opposition are
bold assertion, persistent exaggeration, constant
misconstruction and copious, arbitrary and baseless
prophecies. True there are conflicting financial ar-
rangements to be dealt with, but among the diffi-
culties nothing exists which ought to abash or ter-
lify men desirous to accomplish a great object. For
the first time in ninety years the bill will secure
the supremacy of parliament as founded upon right
as well as backed by power."

140 WOMAN AS AN ANNEX

Had these remarks been made with an eye single
to the "woman question," they could not have been
more exactly descriptive of the facts in the case;
but with Irishmen only on his mind he continued
thus : "The persistent distrust of the Irish people^
despite all they can do, comes simply to this, that
they are to be pressed below the level of civilized
mankind. When the boon of self government is
given to the British colonies is Ireland alone to be
excepted from its blessings? To deny Ireland home
rule is to say that she lacks the ordinary faculties
of humanity."

He said "Irish people," but he meant Irish men
only. But see to what his argument leads. Hei
says it is "pressing them below the level of civilized
mankind" to deny them the right to stand erect, to
use their own brains and wills in their own gov-
ernment; and a great part}' in his own country and
a great party in this country echo with mad enthu-
siasm his opinions — for men! They call it "man-
kind." They mean one-half of mankind only, for
not even Mr. Gladstone is able to rise high enough
above his sex bias to see that the denial of all self-
government, all representation in the making of the
laws she is to obey "presses woman below the level
of civilized mankind." Words cease to have a par
value even with the stickler for verbal accuracy the
instant their own arguments are applied to the

WOMAN AS AN ANNEX I4I

Other sex. Eloquently men can and do portray the
wrongs, the outrages, the abuses which always
have arisen, which always must arise from class
legislation — from that condition which makes it im-
possible for one class or condition of citizens of a
country to make their needs, desires, preferences
and opinions felt in the organic law of their country
on an equal and level footing with their fellows.
Men have needed no great ability to enable them
to prove that tyranny unspeakable always did and
always will follow unlimited power over others so
long as their arguments applied between man and
man^ but the instant the identical arguments are
used to apply between man and woman that in-
stant their whole attitude changes.

That instant words lose all par value. That in-
stant all men, including those who have but just
waxed eloquent over the injustice and the real dan-
ger of permitting inequality before the law, become
aristocrats. Claiming to be the logical sex, man
throws logic to the winds. Claiming to have fought
and bled to enthrone "liberty," he forgets its very
name! Asserting that in his own hand alone can
the scales of justice be held level, he makes of
justice, of liberty and of equality a mockery and a
pretense! He has so far read all of those words in
the masculine gender only. He has not yet learned
to think them in a universal language. He stulti-

142 WOMAN AS AN ANNEX

fies his every utterance and makes of his mind a
jailer, and of his laws slave drivers, for all who
cannot by physical force wrench from him the right
to their own liberty and to their human status of
equality of opportunity.

Men have everywhere grown to believe that they
have been born and that they rule women by divine
right. Woman is a mere annex to and for his
glory. She exists for him to rule, to think for, to
adore, to tolerate or to abuse as he sees fit, or as
is his type or nature. Her appeal must not be to
an equal standard of justice which she has helped
to frame, administer and live by; but it must be to
his generosity, his tenderness, his toleration or his
chivalry— in short, to his absolute power over her.
•'No people can be free without an equal legal foot'
ing for all of its citizens!" exclaims the statesman,
and drums beat and trumpets blare and men march
and countermarch in enthusiastic response to the
sentiment. "We must have a government of the
people, by the people, for the people" is cheered
to the echo whenever heard, and nobody realizes
that what is meant always is a government of men,
by men, for men, with woman as an annex.

Only three weeks ago all of our papers had lead-
ers, editorials and cablegrams to announce that
"universal suffrage has bean granted in Belgium."
They all grew enthusiastic over it. One of our lead-

WOMAN AS AN ANNEX 1 43

ing New York editors said (and I use his editorial
simply because it is a very good example of what
almost all of our important journals said):

"The triumph of the Belgian democracy is an
event of the first significance. The masses had long
appealed in vain for a removal of the property
qualification which restricted the right of suffrage
to 140,000 persons out of a population of over 6,-
000,000 but the chambers, dominated by the wealthy
classes, resolutely refused to comply with the de-
mand until a dangerous revolution was inaugu-
rated.

"Even "now the change in the constitution granting
universal suffrage is coupled with the right of plural
voting by the property-owners, but it is quite cer-
tain that this obnoxious feature will be soon aban-
doned by the chambers and universal suffrage will
prevail, as in the adjoining nations of France and
Germany.

"When these newly enfranchised electors choose
the next legislature important changes may be ex-
pected in the laws applicable to the employment
of labor, which have hitherto been framed solely in
the interest of the mine-owners and the manufac-
turers. Fortunately for the king, he seems to be in
sympathy with this effort of the masses to acquire
a fair representation in the government. In the
recent riots the hostility of the people was directed
against the assembly rather than against the crown.
It is very evident that the democratic spirit is gain-
ing ground throughout Europe. Its influence is
manifest in the home rule movement in England,
in the hostility to the army bill in Germany, and in
the rapid changes of the ministers of France. It
steadily advances in every direction and never loses

144 WOMAN AS AN ANNEX

ground once acquired. It progresses peacefully if
it can, but forcibly if it must. Its triumph in Bel*
gium is one of the signs of the times in the old
world. ••

"The people" are all male in Belgium, in France,
Germany and America, or else all of these state-
ments are mere figures of speech, are wholly untrue,
for the women of Belgium, of France, of Germany
— and, alas! of democratic America, were not even
thought of when the words "people," "citizens,"
"masses," "laborers," etc., were used. They are
counted in the estimates of the population as all
of these. They are used to fill vacancies, to swell
estimates, to round out statistics, but in the result
of these arguments and statistics, in the victories
won for liberty to the individual, woman has no
part. She is the one outlaw in human progress.
In a recent magazine this passage occurs:

"Austria. — On April 2 Dr. Victor Adler, a social-
ist leader, spoke to about 4,000 workingmen in favor
of universal suffrage. He said that two-thirds of the
adult men had not the suffrage. Only half -civilized
countries, like Russia and Spain, now placed their
citizens in such inequality before the law. The
workingmen of Austria had never before this winter
suffered such hardships, and now in Vienna 26,000
workmen were without shelter."

Yet there is no report that Dr. Adler nor the ed-
itor of the magazine, who waxed eloquent over it,
saw any special "hardship" or "inequality" in a de-

WOMAN AS AN ANNEX I45

graded status for all women. "Universal suffrage/'
indeed! And has Austria no women citizens?
Were the working women who have not the ballot,
better sheltered than the men? Or do they need
no shelter? Another editor says: "Don't talk
about a free ballot while the bread of the masses is
in the giving of the classes."

Yet, had a venturesome girl type-setter made it
read, "Don't talk about a free ballot, a democracy
or freedom while the bread of women is in the giv-
ing of men," the editor would have said: "She is
insane, and besides that, she is talking unwomanly
nonsense. "

It is the same in science, in literature, in relig-
ion. All estimates are made on and for the "human
race," "the people of a country," etc. The "will
of the people" is spoken of; we are told all about
the brain size and capacity and convolutions, etc.,
of the different "peoples" ; we hear learned discourses
about it all, and when you sift them, woman — one-
half of the race talked about — is used always simply
and only as ballast, as filling to make a point in
man's favor. She does not figure in the benefits.
He is the race — she his annex.

Not long ago an amusing illustration of this came
to my knowledge. As you may perhaps know, there
is more money invested in life insurance than in
any other great financial enterprise in the world.

Z46 WOMAN AS AN ANNEX

This is the way insurance experts look at the wo-
man question. The estimates of longevity, desira-
bility of risk, etc., are based upon male standards.
This is not in itself unnatural or unreasonable,
since men have been the chief insurers, but few
companies, indeed, being willing to insure women
at all. But not long ago a lady applied for a pol-
icy on her life in a first-class company. She had
three little children for whom she wished to pro-
vide in case of her death. She believed that she
could properly support them so long as she lived.
To her surprise she was told that the rate at which
she must pay was $5 on each $1,000 more than her
brother had to pay at the same age. She asked the
actuary — a very profound man — why this was so.
He told her that women had been found to be not
so good risks as men, since they were subject to
more dangers of death than were men, and that to
make the companies safe it had been found neces-
sary to charge women a higher rate.

She had heard much and eloquently all her life
long of the dangers of men's lives; of the shielded,
'sheltered state of feminine humanity, and she had
never dreamed that it was — from a mortuary point
of view — "extra hazardous" to be a woman. She
assumed, however, that it must be so and paid her
extra hazardous premium, just as if she belonged
to the army or was a blaster or miner or "contem-

WOMAN AS AN ANNEX 1 47

plated going up in a balloon. " A short time after-
ward her mother, an elderly lady, had some money
to invest. She did not wish to care for it herself,
as she had never had the least business experience.
She applied to the same actuary to know how much
of an annual income or annuity she could buy for
the sum she had. He figured on it for a while and
told her. It was a good deal less than a man could
get for the same amount. She had the temerity to
ask why.

"Well," said the actuary, gazing benignly over
his glasses at her in a congratulatory fashion, "you
see women live longer than men do — "

"But you told my daughter that they did not live
so long, and so she pays at a higher rate on insur-
ance to make you safe lest she should die too young.
Now you charge me more for an annuity on the
theory that a woman lives longer than a man."

"Well," said he, readjusting his glasses and go-
ing carefully over the mortuary table again, "that
does seem to be the fact. If a woman assures her
life she beats the company by dying sooner than a
man and if she takes an annuity she beats us by
living longer than he would. Don't know how it
happens, but we charge extra to cover the facts as
we find 'em."

Such is masculine logic upon feminine perversity
even in death.

148 WOMAN AS AN ANNEX

Yet men say that they understand us and our
needs so much better than we do ouselves that they
abandon all of their reasoning, logic, enthusiasm
and beliefs on the great fundamental principles of
justice, equality, liberty and law the moment their
own arguments are applied to women instead of to
"labor," the "Irish question" or to any other phase
of class legislation as applied between man and man.
The fact is simply and only this, that the arrogance
of sex power and perversion is now so thoroughly
ingrained that man really believes himself to be —
by divine right — the human race and that woman
is his perquisite. He has no universal language.
He thinks in the language of sex. But more than
this, and worse than this, he insists upon no one
else being allowed to think in the language of hu-
manity, and to translate that thought into action.

Z^ (gtotdf (gcBpoMiiitiiii of Woman

in ^^ebife

Read before the World's Congress of Representative Women*

Chicago, 1893

$9e (gtotdf (gtBponBxMxtt of OVoman

in ^erebif e

Ladies and Gentlemen: — Poets, statesmen, nov-
elists, and artists have for ages untold striven to
eclipse each other in the eulogies of motherhood.
On the stage nothing is so sure of rapturous ap-
plause as is some touching bit of sacrifice which has
reached its climax in a mother's love wherein she
has yielded all to shield, to protect, or to better
the condition of husband or child. From the crude
topical songs which advise the son to "Stick to your
mother when her hair turns gray," through the va-
rious phases of maternal love and devotion or sacrifice
in the "Camille" type of thought, on up to the
loftiest touches in art and literature, there is alike
the effort to celebrate the power, the potentiality
and the beauty of motherhood and to stimulate the
sentiments of gratitude and love and of admiration
for and emulation of the ideal depicted. But through
it all, in the building and nurturing of the ideal,
there runs — ever and always — the thread of thought
that self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, self-efiacement,

are the grandest attributes of maternity. That in

151

153 THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

order to be a perfect, an ideal wife and mother, the
woman must be sunk, the individual immolated,
the ego subjugated. To a degree and in a sense,
that is, of course, true. For the willingness to go
down to the gates of death ; to face its possibility for
long, weary months; to know that suffering, and to
fear that death, stands as a sure and inevitable host
at the end of a long journey — to know this and to
be willing to face it for the sake of others is a he-
roism, a bravery, a self-abnegation so infinitely
above and beyond the small heroism of camp or
battlefield that comparison is almost sacrilege.

The condemned man, upon whom the death watch
has been set, who cannot hope for executive clem-
ency, who is helpless in the hands of absolute
power, still knows that, although death may be
sure, physical sufiering is unlikely or at the worst
will be but brief ; but he alone stands in the position
to know — even to a degree — the nervous strain, the
mental anguish, the unthinking but uncontrollable
panics of flesh and blood and nerve which woman
faces at the behests of love and maternity and, alas,
that it can be true, at the behests of sex power and
financial dependence!

But when we study anthropology and heredity
we come to realize the indisputable facts that her
love, her physical heroism and her bravery, linked
with her political and financial subject status, has cast

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY 1 53

a physical blight, a moral shadow and a mental threat
upon the world, we cease to clap quite so vigorous-
ly at the theater and our tears or smiles are mingled
with mental reservations and a sigh for a loftier ideal
of the meaning and purpose of maternity than the
merely physical one that man has depicted as ma-
terial sacrifice to the child and self-abnegation and
subjection to him. We begin to wonder if much
of the vice, the crime, the wrong, the insanity, the
disease, the incompetence and the woe of the world
is not the direct lineal descendant of this very self-
debasement of the individual character of woman in
maternity!

We wonder if an unwilling, a forced or supinely
yielding (and not self -con trolled), a subject mother-
hood, in short, is not responsible to the race for
the weak, the deformed, the depraved, the double
dealing, pretense-soaked natures which curse the
world with failure, with disease, with war, with in-
sanity and with crime. We wonder if the awful
power with which nature clothes maternity in he-
redity does not strike blindly back at the race for
man's artificial and cruel requirements at the hands
of the producer of the race. We wonder if moth-
ers do not owe a higher duty to their offspring than
that of mere nurse. We wonder if she has the
moral right to give her children the inheritance that
accident and subserviency stamps upon body and

154 '^^^ MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

mind. We wonder how she dares face her child
and know that she did not fit herself by self-devel-
opment and by direct, sincere, firm and thorough
qualifications for maternity before she dared to as-
sume its responsibilities. We wonder that man has
been so slow in learning to read the message that
nature has telegraphed to him in letters of fire and
photographed with a terrible persistency upon the
distorted, diseased bodies and minds of his children
and upon the moral imbeciles she has set before him
as an answer to his message of sex domination.*

Self-abnegation, subserviency to man — whether
he be father, lover, or husband — is the most danger-
ous that can be taught to, or forced upon her, whose
character shall mould the next generation! She
has no right to transmit a nature and a character
that is subservient, subject, inefficient, undeveloped
— in short, a slavish character, which is either
blindly obedient or blindly rebellious and is there-
fore set, as is a time-lock, to prey or to be preyed
upon by society in the future!

If woman is not brave enough personally to de-
mand, and to obtain, absolute personal liberty of

* "Alienists bold, in general, that a large proportion of mental dis-
eases is the result of degeneracy; that is, they are the offspring of
drunken, insane, syphilitic and consumptive parents, and suffer
from the action of heredity." — Dr. MacDonald; author of Crimi-
nology.

"Who has sinned, this man or his parents that he was blind?"

Bible.

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY 1 55

action, equality of status and entire control of her
great and race-endowing function of maternity, she
has no right to dare to stamp upon a child, and to
curse a race with the descendants of a servile, a
dwarfed, a time-and-master-serving character.

We have been taught that it is an awful thing
to commit murder — to take a human life. There
are students of anthropology and heredity who think
that it is a far more awful thing to thrust, unasked,
upon a human being a life that is handicapped be-
fore he gets it. It is a far more solemn responsi-
bility to give than to take a human life! In the
one case you invade personal liberty and put a stop
to an existence more or less valuable and happy,
but at least all pain is over for that invaded indi-
viduality. In the other case — in giving life — you
invade the liberty of infinite oblivion and thrust
into an inhospitable world another human entity
to struggle, to sink, to swim, to suffer or to enjoy.
Whether the one or the other no mortal knows, but
surely knows it must contend not only with its en-
vironment but with its heredity — with itself.

Not long ago a great man, who is successful beyond
most human units, who is wealthy, socially to be
envied, who enjoys almost ideal family relations, who
is in all regards a man of broad intellect, of large
heart, who is beloved, successful and powerful — not
long ago this man said to me, when talking of life

156 THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

and its chances, its joys and its burdens and wrongs :
"Well, the more I think of it all, the more I
know, the more I delve into philosophy and science,
the more I understand life as it is and as it must
be for long years to come, if not forever, the more
I wonder at the sturdy bravery of those who are less
fortunate than I. Does it pay me to live? Would
I choose to be born again? Were I to-day unborn,
could I be asked for my vote» knowing all I do of
life, would I vote to come into this world? Taking
life at its best estate are we not assuming a tre-
mendous risk to thrust it unasked upon those who
are at least safe from its pitfalls? I ask myself
these questions very often," he said, and then hes-
itatingly, "I sometimes think it pays after all. Of
course, since I am here I am bound to make the
best of it, but for all that I am not sure how I would
vote on my birth if I had the chance to try it — not
quite sure."

"If you are so impressed with life for yourself —
you, a fortunate, healthy, wealthy, happily married,
successful man," said I, "don't you think it is a
pretty serious thing to assume the right to cast that
vote for another human pawn, who could hardly
conceivably stand your chances in the world?"

"Serious," he exclaimed. "Serious! With the
world's conditions what they are to-day, with the
physical, moral and mental chances to run, with

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY 1$J

woman, the character-forming producer of the race
a half-educated subordinate to masculine domi-
nation, it is little short of madness; it is not far
from a crime. It is a crime unless the mother is
a physically healthy, a mentally developed and
comprehending, morally clear, strong, vigorous
entity who knows her personal responsibility in
maternity and, knowing, dares maintain it.

It has been the fashion to hold that the mothers
of the race should not be the thinkers of the race.
Indeed, in commenting upon this Congress of Rep-
resentative Women, the most widely read newspaper
on this continent last week said editorially:

"There is to be a great series of women's con-
gresses held at Chicago during the Fair. The pur-
pose is to illustrate and celebrate the progress of
women. Accordingly there will be sessions to dis-
cuss the achievements of women in art, authorship,
business, science, histrionic endeavor, law, medi-
cine and a variety of other activities.

"But so far as the published programmes enable
us to judge not one thing is to be done to show the
progress of women as women. There will be no
showing made of any increased capacity on their
part to make homes happier, to make their hus-
bands stronger for their work in the world, to en-
courage high endeavors, to maintain the best stand-
ards of honor and duty, to stimulate, encourage,
uplift — which — from the beginning of civilization —
has been the supreme feminine function. • Nothing,
it appears, is to be done at the congresses to show
that a higher education and a larger intellectual

158 THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

advancement has enabled women to bear healthier
children or to bring them up in a manner more
surely tending to make this a better world to live
in, the noblest of all work that can be done by wo-
men.

"We need no congress to show us that women
are more thoroughly educated than they once were,
or that they can successfully do things once forbid-
den to them. But have wider culture and wider
opportunities made them better wives and mothers?
A congress which should show that would make all
men advocates of still larger endeavors for woman's
advancement. A congress, on the other hand, which
assumes that the only thing to be celebrated is an
increased capacity to win fame or money will teach
a disastrously false and dangerous lesson to our
growing girls."

This fatal blunder as to woman's development as
woman — quite aside from her home relations, which
the editor confuses with it — has retarded the real
civilization and caused to be transmitted— unnec-
essarily transmitted — the characteristics which have
gone far to make insanity, disease and deformity of
mind and body, the heritage of well-nigh every fam-
ily in the land.

A great medical expert said to me not long ago,
"There is not more than one family in ten who can
show a clean bill of health, mental and physical —
aye, and moral — from hereditary taints that are se-
rious in threat and almost certain of development
in one form or another.

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY 1 59

Now, if a man with a contagious disease enters a
community he is quarantined for the benefit of his
fellows, who might never take it if he were not re-
strained and isolated. But if a man with a hered-
itary or transmittible disorder, which is certain, en-
ters a community, he is allowed to marry and trans-
mit it to the helpless unborn — to establish aline of
posterity — who are far more directly his victims
than would be those who were exposed to a cholera
contagion by a lack of quarantine. Fathers, phy-
sicians, society, and all educational and economic
conditions have conspired to keep mothers igno-
rant of all the facts of life of which mothers should
know everything; and so it has come about that
the race is the victim of the narrow and dangerous
doctrine of sex domination and sex restriction, and
of selfish reckless indulgence. If not one family
in ten can show a clean bill of heredity, is it not
more than time that the mothers learn why, learn
where, and in what they are responsible, and that
they cease "to close the doors of mercy on mankind?"

Maternity, its duties, needs and responsibilities has
been exploited in all ages and climes; in all phases
and spheres, from one point of view only — the point
of view of the male owner. If you think that
this statement is extreme I beg of you to read "The
Evolution of Marriage" by Letourneau. Read it all.
Read it with care. It is the production of a man

l6o THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

of profound learning and research, a man who sees
the light of the future dawning, although even he
sometimes lapses from a universal, language of hu-
manity into hereditary forms of speech, hedged in
by sex bias.

But in all the past arguments maternity with its
duties to itself; maternity with its duties to the
race, has never been more than merely touched
upon, and even then it has been chiefly from the
side of the present, and not with the tremendous
search-light of heredity and of future generations
turned upon it. It has been ever and always in its
relations to the desires, opinions and prejudices of
the present man power which controls it.

Some time ago a famous doctor in New York
took up the cudgel against higher education for
women, and under the heading of "Education and
Maternity; Woman's Proper Sphere; the Dangers
Which Threaten Intellectual and Society Women;"
wrote in favor of ignorant wives and a larger num-
ber of children. A great journal published his ar-
ticle without protest, thus giving added prestige
to the opinions expressed. This, too, in spite of
the fact that at that very time the same journal
was appealing for alms, for free nurses, for volun-
teer doctors and for a fresh-air fund to enable the
ignorant mothers of the crime-infested, disease-pol-
luted, over populated tenements of the city to get

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY l6l

even a breath of fresh air by the sea, which is only
two miles from its doors! In spite of the fact, too,
that Lombroso, Ricardo, Mendel, Spitzka, MacDon-
ald and other famous anthropologists and experts
have pointed out so plainly in their criminal, in-
sane, imbecile and mortuary statistics the all-per-
vading evil of rapid, ill advised, irresponsible par-
entage.

Professor Edward S. Morse, in a recent paper
called "Natural Selection in Crime," which he
courteously sent to me, said: "To one at all famil-
iar with the external aspects of insanity in its va-
rious forms it seems incredible that its ph3'sical
nature was not sooner realized. Had the laws of
heredity been earlier understood it would have
been seen that mental derangements, like physical
diseases and tendencies, were transmitted."

Of late years there has sprung into existence a
school of criminal anthropology, with societies,
journals, and a rapidly increasing literature. A
most admirable summary of the work thus far accom-
plished has recently been given by Dr. Robert
Fletcher in his address as retiring president of the
Anthropological Society of Washington. In his
opening paragraphs Dr. Fletcher thus graphically
portrays the scourge of the criminal and his rapid
increase:

"In the cities, towns and villages of the civilised

l62 THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

world every year thousands of unoffending men and
women are slaughtered ; millions of money, the
product of honest toil and careful saving, are car-
ried away by the conqueror, and incendiary fires
light his pathway of destruction. Who is this de-
vastator, this modern "scourge of God," whose deeds
are not recorded in history? The criminal! Sta-
tistics unusually trustworthy show that if the car-
nage yearly produced by him could be brought to-
gether at one time and place it would excel the
horrors of many a well-contested field of battle. In
nine great countries of the world, including our
own favored land, in one year, 10,380 cases of hom-
icide were recorded, and in the six years extending
from 1884 to 1889, in the United States alone, 14,
770 murders came under cognizance of the law.

"And what has society done to protect itself
against this aggressor? True, there are criminal
codes, courts of law, and that surprising survival
of the unfittest, trial by jury. Vast edifices have
been built as prisons and reformatories, and philan-
thropic persons have formed societies for the in-
struction of the criminal and to care for him when
his prison gates are opened. But, in spite of it
all, the criminal becomes more numerous. He
breeds criminals; the taint is in the blood, and
there is no royal touch can expel it."

Commenting on this Professor Morse says: "Cer-

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY I63

tain results of the modern school of anthropology,
as presented by Dr. Fletcher, may be briefly sum-
med up by stating broadly that in studying the
criminal classes from the standpoint of anatomy,
physiology, external appearance, even to the minuter
shades of difference in the form of the skull and
facial proportions, the criminal is a marked man.
His abnormities are characteristic, and are to be di-
agnosticated in only one way. That these proposi-
tions are being rapidly established there can be no
doubt. As an emphatic evidence of their truth, the
criminal is able to transmit his criminal propensi-
ties even beyond the number of generations allotted
to inheritance by Scripture."

And where do all these lunatics and criminals
come from? From educated mothers? from mothers
who are in even a small and limited sense allowed
to own themselves, to think for themselves, control
their own lives? Not at all. They are the mothers
whose lives belong to their men, as this learned doc-
tor, who objects to the higher education of women,
argues that all wives should.

Maternity is an awful power, and I repeat that
it strikes back at the race, with a blind, fierce, far-
reaching force, in revenge for its subject status. Dr.
Arthur MacDonald, in his "Criminology," says: "The
intellectual physiognomy shows an inferiority in
criminals, and when in an exceptional way there

164 THE MORAL RESPOKSIBILITY

is a superiority, it is rather in the nature of cunning
and shrewdness. . . . Poverty, misery and
organic debility are not infrequently the cause of
crime."

Who is likely to transmit "organic debility?"
The mother of many children or of few? Who is
likely to stamp a child with low intellectual physi-
ognomy? The mother who is educated or she who
is the willing or unwilling subordinate in life's ben-
efits?

Again he says : '^ Every asymmetry is not necessa-
rily a defect of cerebral development, for, as sug-
gested above, under the influence of education de-
fects of function can be corrected, covered up or
eradicated." Can this be true of criminals and not
of normal women?

Again he says : "When we consider the early
surroundings, unhygienic conditions, alcoholic pa-
rents, etc., of the criminal, where he may begin
vice as soon as consciousness awakes, malformation,
due to neglect and rough treatment, are not sur-
prising. Yet the criminal malformations may be fre-
quently due to osteological conditions. But here
still hereditary influence and surrounding conditions
in early life exert their power." Benedikt sa5^s:
"To suppose that an atypically constructed brain
can function normally is out of the question."
So long as motherhood is kept ignorant, dependent

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY 1 65

and subject in status just that long will heredity
avenge the outrage upon her womanhood, upon ht;r
personality, upon her individual right to a dignified,
personal, equal human status, by striking telling
blows on the race.

But let me return to the arguments of the author
of "Higher Education and Woman's Sphere," since
he represents all the reactionary thought on this topic
and because he ignores utterly, as do all of his fel-
lows, woman's duty to herself and her awful power
for good or evil upon the race, according as she
makes herself a dignified, developed, educated and
independent individuality first and a function of
maternity second. It seems to me that in discuss-
ing no other question in life is there so little logical
reasoning and so much arbitrary dogmatism as in
the ones which are usually embraced under "wo-
man's sphere." In the first place, it is assumed
that because women are mothers they are nothing
else ; that because this is her sphere she can have,
should have, no other.

Men are fathers. That is their sphere, therefore
they should not be mentally developed, legally and
politically emancipated, socially civilized or eco-
nomically independent. This would appear to most
men, doubtless, as a somewhat absurd proposition.
It appears so to me, but it 'is not one whit less
absurd when applied to women. Yet this is con-

l66 THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

stantly done. Because women are mothers is the
very reason why they should be developed mentally
and physically and socially to their highest possible
capacity. The old theory that a teacher was good
enough for a primary class if she knew the "A B
C's'* and little else has long since been exploded.
A high degree of intellectual capacity and a broad
mental grasp are more important in those who have
the training and molding of small children than if
the children were older. The younger the mind the
less capable it is to guide itself intelligently and
therefore the more important is it that the guide
be both wise and well informed. In a college, if the
professor is only a little wiser than his class it does
not make so much difference. In a post-graduate
course it makes even less, for here all are supposed
to be somewhat mature. Each has within himself
an intelligent guide, a reasoner, a questioner and
one to answer questions.

With little children the one who has them in
charge most closely must be all this and more. She
must understand the proportions and relations of
things and wherein they touch — the bearing and trend
of mental and physical phenomena. She must fur-
nish self-poise to the nervous child and stimulus to the
phlegmatic one. She must be able to read signs
and interpret indications in the mental and moral, as
well as in the physical being of those within her

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY 167

care. All this she must be able to do readily and
with apparent unconsciousness if she is best fitted
to deal with and develop small children. More than
this, she must be not only able to detect wants but
have the wisdom to guide, to stimulate; to restrain,
to develop the plastic creature in her keeping. If
she had the wisdom of the fabled gods and the self-
poise of the Milo she would not be too well equipped
for bearing and educating the race in her keeping.
But more than this the ideal mother should know
and be. She must have love too loyal and sense of
obligation too profound to recklessly bring into
the world children she cannot properly endow or
care for. It does not appear to occur to the phy-
sicians and politicians who discuss this question
that it may be due to other causes than incapacity
that the educated women are the mothers of fewer
children than are the "ideal wives and mothers" of
whom they speak in their arguments against her high-
er education — the squaws of the Kaffirs and Black-
feet Indian women, who "devote but a few hours to
the completion of this act of nature^ " as our doctor
felicitously expresses it. It is no doubt true that
habits of civilization do tend to make the dangers
of motherhood greater. So do they tend to render
men less sturdy — less perfect animals. A Kaffir or
an Indian buck would not find it necessary to stay
at home from his office, for example, because of a

l68 THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

broken arm, cr a gun shot wound in the leg. He
would tramp sturdily through the forest, and sleep
in the jungle with an arrow imbedded in his flesh.
He would sit stolidly down on a log and cut it out
of himself with a scalping-knife. Yet nobody would
think it a desirable thing for a member of the
Union League club to stop on his way up Fifth
avenue and attend to his own surgery on the side-
walk. They would expect him to faint, and to be
"carried tenderly into the nearest drug store" and
a doctor would be sent for. He would be put under
the influence of an anaesthetic drug during the ope-
ration, and carefully nursed for weeks afterward by
his devoted wife, and intelligent physician. Then
if he pulled through it would be heralded far and
wide as because of his "magnificent physique, his
pluck and the excellent treatment he received."

Well now, is he a less "manly man" than is the
Kaflir or the Indian buck? Is he a less desirable
husband and father? Is he "deteriorating in his
sphere?" The fact is, the more sensitive men have
become to pain, whether it be mental or physical,
the more manly have they grown, the more nearly
fitted to be the fathers of a race of men and women
who are not mere brutes. The race does not need
the brute type any longer. It has already too many
mere human animals to deal with — in its asylums,
almshouses, prisons and impoverished districts.

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY 169

This world is in no danger of suffering from a lack
of children, the cry has always been "over popula-
tion" and even in our new country the wail has
begun. Not more children, but a better kind of
children is what is needed. Who will be likely to
furnish these? The ideal "squaw wife" or the ed-
ucated woman, who knows that her obligation to
her child begins before it is born, and does not end
even with her death, for she must leave it the
heritage of a good name, an earnest life, a noble
example, even after she is gone.

If by "being unfitted for the sphere of wife and
mother" it is meant that this sphere is truly that
of a mere animal — a healthy animal — if in order
to be an ideal wife to civilized man, woman should
remain a savage; if to be ar mother to an intellect-
uall}^ advancing race she need not even comprehend
the advance, then truly are these arguments against
her higher education and intellectual development
logical.

But even then they are not fair. Why? Simply
because she has not been consulted as to her choice
in the matter. The argument is still based on the
tremendous assumption that man's happiness, man's
desires, man's wishes, man's rights, are the sum
total of all desire, all right, all freedom, all hap-
piness and all justice. It omits two tremendous
equations — that of the woman herself and that of

lyo THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

her offspring, who will have a right to demand of
her how she dared equip him so badly for the life
into which she has taken the liberty to bring him.
To demand of her how she dared equip herself so
ill for her self-imposed task of creator of a human
soul!

Up to the present time woman's moral responsi-
bility in heredity has been below the point of zero,
for the reason that she has had no voice in her own
control nor in that of her children. With the present
knowledge of heredity she who permits herself to
becomte a mother without having demanded and ob-
tained (i) her own freedom from sex dominion and
(2) fair and free conditions of development for her-
self and her child, will commit a crime against her-
self, against her child and against the race.

But the learned doctor deplores the fact that ed-
ucated women are bringing fewer children into the
world, and argues that, this being the case, it shows
that education is not within woman's sphere. Now,
if a man does not choose to become the father of
ten or twelve children nobody on earth feels called
upon to criticise him as not properly filling his
sphere — as out of his proper sphere — in case he pre-
fers to spend more of his time on mental devel-
opment and progress than upon irresponsible phys-
ical indulgence and paternity. If he makes up his
mind that he cannot or does not wish to become

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY 171

responsible for the mental and physical endowment
and well-being of more than one or two children,
or of none, nobody says that his "college training
unfitted him for the holy position of husband and
father, which is his sphere." Perhaps the college
training may have a good deal to do with it in the
sense that with his developed mind and wider in-
formation, his sense of right and of personal obli-
gation to the unborn has tended in that direction.
We do not often notice a vast degree of self dis-
cipline of this nature in the uneducated, whether
it be man or woman, but is this a reason for depre-
cating intellectual training for our boys? Why
then for the girls? It appears to me that it is one
of the greatest possible arguments in favor of higher
education for women, unless, indeed, it is desirable
to he mere KaiSirs, both male and female, which
has its strong points. Kaffirs are healthier, hardier,
more irresponsibly, happily brutal. They have
few nervous moments, I fancy, over the future good
of wife or child or friend. Their sense of obliga-
tion does not keep them awake nights. They are
neither afraid nor ashamed to create helpless hu-
man beings simply to furnish targets for another
tribe. They have not even a glimmer of the thought
— still embryonic, indeed, in civilized man — that
the woman whose life is risked, and the child upon
whom life is thrust unasked, are of the least con-

172 THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

sideration in the matter. These have no rights which
the Kaffir lord is bound to respect. I fancy if he
were asked a question on the subject he would look
at you in stupid, silent wonder, if he did not ask:
"What have they got to do with it? I am the
race. What she and my children are for is to look
after me, to make me comfortable, to be my inferiors,
for my glory. " Most likely he would be so stupidly
unequal to even the shadow of a thought not purely
egotistic that he could not even formulate such pre-
posterous questions and self-evident statements as
these. But his civilized brother does it for him — so
why complain?*

Now, suppose a woman would prefer to enjoy her
mental capabilities to the full and develop these
rather than to be the mother of a large brood; sup-
pose she thinks she should be a developed woman
first before daring to become a mother, whose
right is it to object? If men prefer Kaffir wives
there is a large assortment on hand. Squaws,
both white and red, are to be had for the asking.

* The report of the marriage of another educated and refined
white woman to a full-blooded Sioux Indian shows the species of
lunacy that attacks those who make a hobby of Indian educa-
tion. The woman who has cast in her lot with an Indian, whose
savagery is only veneered with civilized manners, will repent of
her act, as all her sisters in misery have done before her. As a
husband the American Indian is not a model, for even long train-
ing among white people fails to uproot his native idea that a
woman is simply provided to bear him children and to do hard
work which is beneath his dignity. — N, ¥-. Press. June, iSgj,

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY 173

Whose right is it to decide that all women shall
be squaws in mental development, in social posi-
tion, in legal status and in political and economic
relations, if all women do not choose to be such?
Has a woman not the right to be a human being
and count one in the economy of life before she is
a mother — quite aside from her maternal capabili-
ties? If not, when and where did she forfeit that
right? When and where did man get his? Every
man has and maintains the right to be a man first
— a. unit, a responsible human being; after that —
aside from it — he may, if he choose, become also
a husband and a father. Is it not more than pos-
sible that the whole human race has been dwarfed
and retarded and hampered in its upward struggle
because of this unaccountable effort to climb one
side at a time, because brute force and phenomenal
egotism have always refused to place humanity on
terms of equal opportunity and leave nature alone?
We are constantly informed that those who insist
on equal opportunities, on equal status before the
law for women are making an effort to subvert na-
ture; that nature has done this and that and the
other thing with and for women. Well if she has,
then she will take care of the results in an open
field. She does not need special, restrictive laws
placed on the sex that she has already put under
the ban of inferiority. If the superior sex cannot

174 "^"^^ MORAL

Still more than hold its own without potting a
high protective tariff on itself then how can it claim
to be the superior sex? Nature has managed very
well with the lower animals, giving them equal
surroundings and opportunities. That nature is not
allowed to manage for women is the very point we
object to. Men have made all sorts of laws for and
about women that are not made for and about men.
Why not make laws and make them apply to the
human being, leaving the sex of that human being
out of the question? It is the special, restrictive,
unnatural sex provisions in the laws and in the con-
ditions of life that are objected to. No woman ob-
jects to nature's decree that she is a potential
mother any more than men object to her decree that
they are potential fathers.

It is the fact that men insist that women are this
and nothing more — which nature did not say — ^to
which women object. Nowhere else in nature does
the male claim all of the other avenues of life as
his special sex privilege, except alone the one
which he cannot perform — that of maternity. The
sexes stand on an exact equality as to opportunity
until we come to man. The brain of each is devel-
oped to the extent of its capacity. The freedom
and opportunity for food and pleasure are enjoyed
by the sexes alike. When the desire for maternity
is strong upon her is the only time that the female

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY 1 75

brute animal ever becomes a mother. She decides
when she is a mere mother, and when she is an
animal with all the rights and privileges of her
genus. With the human race alone is one-half
governed upon the theory, and its opportunities
fitted to the idea, that the female is never a unit,
never a human being, never a person, but that she
is simply, solely and only a potential mother, whose
one '.'sphere" even then is to be controlled and reg-
ulated as to time, place and conditions — not by
nature, not by herself, as with the lower animals,
but by the other half of the race, which holds it-
self as first human, individual, and with rights,
duties, privileges and ambitions pertaining to him
as such* His sex relation, his potential paternity,
is truly his "sphere" also, but that it is his whole
sphere he has never dreamed. There are women
who look at life the same way, for the other half
of humanity, and decline to read nature's teachings
— are unable to read them — in any other way.

But aside from all this the doctor first claims that
it is the intellectual development which cripples
maternal capabilities and then he proceeds to give
the reasons for the poor health of girls, which turn
out to be bad ventilation in their schools, unwhole-
some sanitary conditions, injudicious or insufficient
nourishment or physical and mental habits, and a
lack of intelligent mothers and teachers, who dress

176 THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

and train the girls unhealthfully and in vitiated sur-
roundings. How would boys fare under like con-
ditions? Would the doctor say that it was the in-
tellectual training which wrecked the health of the
boys or would he say that it was the absurd condi-
tions under which they got their training? Would
he advise less mental work or less vile air; fewer
studies or better light ; more healthful clothing and
food and exercise, or that the boys go home/'and
devote themselves to the sphere nature marked out
for them" — paternity?

Again the doctor appears to confuse society wo-
men with college women. As a rule they are totally
distinct classes. The mere society woman who — so
the doctor says— "wrecks her health in rounds of
pleasure and bears sickly children or none," is, in
nine cases out of ten, the exact opposite of the intel-
lectual woman — the college-bred girl — who has
learned before she leaves college the value of health
and the obligation to herself and others to be well.
It is true that certain of the fashionable schools
which fit girls for society and for nothing else on
earth call their girls educated; but, since no one
else does, it were futile to confuse the two classes.
The mere society girl, as a rule, is, so far as real
mental development and higher education and ca-
pacity to think logically, are concerned, as truly a
squaw as if she wore blanket and feathers. Indeed,

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY 1 77

this is what she does wear mentally. She should
be a perfect wife for the men who wish wives to
be physical and not mental companions; she would
be second only to the Kaffir women in that she
wears a trifle more clothing.

But even in her case, would it not be wise to
infer that she has not necessarily physically inca-
pacitated herself for maternity by her frivolous
life, so much as that she does not care for children,
and would find them troublesome to a brain,
which holds nothing more serious and valuable than
jewels and reception dates? And, if she did repro-
duce her kind, would this world be benefited?
Why this constant cry for more children in a
world crushed by the weight of sorrow, suffering
and wrong to those already here? Until children
can be born into better conditions let us be thank-
ful that there is one class of women too narrowly
selfish and another class too ful] of the sense of
obligation to add very rapidly to this bee hive of
misery and discontent and wrong.

The world needs healthier, wiser, truer children,
not more of them, and until mothers are both ed-
ucated and rank before the law as human beings,
they will never be able to give that kind to the
world. Just so long as men must get their brains
from the proscribed sex, just that long will their
minds remain an "infant industry" and be in need

178 THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

of a high protective tariff in the shape of restrictive
laws on women to shield men from equal competi-
tion in a fair field as and with human units. The
laws of heredity are as inflexible as death. Invariable,
they are not; but so surely as there is a family
likeness in faces, there are hereditary reasons for
crime, for insanity, for disease, for mental and for
moral imbecility, and women owe it to themselves,
and to the world which they populate, not to allow
themselves to be made either the unwilling, or the
supine, transmitters or creators of a mentally,
morally or physically dwarfed or distorted progeny.

While reading the proof for this book, this interesting article
comes to me from Germany and shows how thoroughly the false
basis of thought is being undermined, in other countries than our
own. H. H. G.

'*There has been so much discussion concerning the physical and
mental differences between men and women, and the representa-
tives of social science have expressed so many contradictory opin-
ions regarding this question, that I feel it my duty, as a physi-
ologist, to give my opinion on this important matter. Several fathers
of the Church have entirely denied that woman has a soul. The
canonists write: 'Woman is not formed after the image of God;*
and many philosophers in the same manner have considered women
of small consequence. In a discourse 'concerning the education
and culture of women. ' Prof Sergi has followed the lead of this
pessiq[|ist}c school. The differences between the sexes, to which
Pfof . Sergi l^as caUfsd attention, are doubtless significant for an-
tf^ropolqgy an^ physiology but, in my opinion, do not depend on
the original pqn4itioT^ of woman, but are caused by the barriers
which have b^i^ faised by spciety regarding hef flestiny. In order

OF WOMAN IN HEREDITY X79

to obtain an unprejudiced judgment, we must free woman from the
yoke which man has placed upon her. We must observe her in
the natural position, where she represents a particular language in
the zoological scale. The ladies must now pardon me if I compare
them with the lower animals, for in this way I can the better exalt
them.

"As objects of comparison we will observe the most intelligent
and faithful animals. With regard to dogs and horses we notice
little difference between either the strength or the temperament of
males and females. The hunter fears the lioness more than the
lion, and the same is true of tigers and panthers. Prof. Sergi, in
the above-named discourse, has expressed the following condemna-
tory opinion: "Neither in her physical nor mental capacities has
woman reached man's normal scale of development, but on an
average has remained so far behind that this sex seems to have
come to a standstill in the general development of the race." This
statement has surprised me in the highest degree. It appears to
me that the marks of the human race, and the real physical char-
acteristics which distinguish us from the animals, are feminine pe-
culiarities. The principle has been adduced that the structure of
the brain shows the abyss between man and animals. This is in-
correct. There is no immeasurable difference between our brain
and that of the gorilla, and the effects of the central cavities are
shown only in the advancing development of the expressions of
physical activity, not in their formation and character. A greater
morphological difference between man and the animals is shown in
the form of the pelvis. No physician, even twenty steps away,
could mistake the pelvis of man for that of an anthropoid ape. The
pelvis of woman is a new type which has appeared on the earth.
Until now we have sought in vain for that animal which shall com-
plete the chain between us and animals. It is striking: the narrow,
high pelvis of the man is more ape-like than that of the woman. If
the assertion is correct that the upright gait (on two feet) is the
mark of distinction, and the noblest one for man, then woman cer-
tainly possesses the advantage of a pelvis particularly suitable for
upright walking. Darwin has also demonstrated that female ani-

i8o woman's responsibility in heredity

•

mals often revert to the mascnline tjrpe, while the reverse seldom
happens. More favorable conditions are necessary for the produc-
tion of a female animal than a male, because the female embryo
exhibits a greater fulness of life. Statistics have shown that under
unfavorable conditions more men than women are born; also, male
animals die more easily than female.

' 'Several judges of the woman question who consider that the
brain of woman cannot compare with that of man, add that women
should not enter into emulation with men in the mental domain
lest they should lose the charm of their femininity, and because
they should give themselves up completely to their vocation as wife
and mother. This division of the work is certainly very useful for
man and has greatly assisted him to his position of power ^ and has
pushed woman into the background. But it is incorrect that woman
loses her womanliness by cultivating her mind."

[From the Deutsche Rivue,']

Serebifs in Hb (gdaiionB to a ®ou6fe
^iaixbatb of Q|tota(0

Read before the World's Congress of Representative Women,

Chicago, 1893

^erebifs in Hb (gdatioM to a ®ou6fe
^ian^atb of (^orafs

Ladies and Gentlemen: -As a student of Anthro-
pology and Heredity one is sometimes compelled
to make statements which seem to the thoughtless
listener either too radical or too horrible to be true.
If I were to assert, for example, that good men,
men who have the welfare of the community at
heart, men who are kind fathers and indulgent hus-
bands, men who believe in themselves as pure, up-
right and good citizens, if I were to say that even
such men are thorough believers in and supporters
of the theory that it is right and wise to sacrifice
the liberty, purity, health and life of young girls
and women and, through the terrible power of he-
redity, to curse the race, rather than permit meii
and boys to suffer in their own persons the results
of their own misdeeds, mistakes or crimes, I would
be accused of being "morbid" and a "man hater."
But let us see if the above statement is not quite
within the facts.

I shall take as an illustration the words and ar-
guments of a man who stands second, only, to our

183

184 HEREDITY IN ITS RELATIONS

Chief Police officer in the largest city in the United
States, and since he was permitted to present his
arguments in the most widely read journals of the
country it seems fitting that these opinions be dealt
with as of unusual importance. All the more is this the
case since they were intended to influence legisla-
tion in the interest of State-regulated vice.
Among other things he said:

"Of course there are disorderly houses, but they
are more hidden, and less of that vice is flaunted,
than in any other city in the world. Such places
have existed since the world began and men of
observation know that this fact is a safe-guard around
their homes and daughters. Meirof candid judg-
ment, religious men, know, too, that they had ten
thousand times rather have their live, robust boys
err in this indulgence, than think of them in the
places of those unfortunates on the island, whose
hands are mufHed or tied behind them. This is a
desperately practical question with more than a
theoretical and sentimental side. It ought to be
talked about and better understood among fathers,

"Thank God that vice is so hidden that Dr. Park-
hurst has to get detectives to find disorderly houses,
and that thousands of* wives and daughters do not
know even of their existence. Such horrible dis-
closures as were made before innocent women and
girls in Dr. Parkhurst's audience do vastly more
harm in arousing their curiosity and polluting their
minds than a host of sin that is compelled to hide
its head. When I was Captain of the Twenty-ninth
Precinct, I went with Dr. Talmage on his errand
for sensational information for his sermons. I

TO A DOUBLE STANDARD OF MORALS 1 85

know, from observation and from reports which I was
careful to gather, that never in their history were
the places he described as thronged by patrons,
largely from Brooklyn,- or so much money spent
there for debauchery as after those sermons."

Now I assume that this Police Inspector is a
good citizen, father, husband and man. I assume
that he is sincere and earnest in his desire and
efforts to suppress crime and promote — so far as he
is able — the welfare of the community. I assume,
in shorty that he is, in intent and in fact, a loyal
citizen and a conscientious officer. I have no rea-
son to believe that he is not doing what he con-
ceives is best and right, and yet even he is quoted
as advocating the sacrifice of purity to impurity,
the creating of moral and social lepers in one sex
in order that moral and social lepers or the igno-
rantly vicious of the other sex may escape the re-
sults of their own mistakes or vice. It impresses me
anew that such teaching, from such authority, is
not only the most unfortunate that can be put be-
fore a boy but that it goes farther perhaps than
anything else can to confirm in men that condi-
tions of sex mania which the Inspector says is more
desirable should be cultivated by means of regularly
recognized state institutions for the utter sacrifice
and death of young girls than that it should end
in the wreck of the sex maniac himself and in his
own destruction.

1 86 HEREDITY IN ITS RBLATIOKS

But were our statesmen students of heredity,
they would not need to be told that there is, there
can be, no "safeguards around wives and daughters**
so long as their husbands, fathers and sons are
polluting the streams of life before they transmit
that life itself to those who are to be "our daugh-
ters and wives.**

But not going so deeply into the subject, for the
moment, as to deal with its hereditary bearings;
upon what principle his argument can be valid, I
fail to see. Why is it better that some girl shall
be sacrificed, body, mind and soul; why is it bet-
ter that she shall be his victim than that he shall
be his own? And then again, the problem is not
solved when she is sacrificed. He has simply
changed the form of his disease, and in the change,
while it is possible that he has delayed for himself
the day of destruction, he has, in the process, cor-
rupted not only his victim but the social con-
science, as well. Were this all perhaps it would
be still thought wise to follow the advice of the
Inspector — and alas, of some physicians — and con-
tinue to sacrifice under the bestial wheel of sex power
those who are from first to last prey to the condi-
tions of social and legal environment in which they
are allowed no voice.

But this is not all. The seeming "cure** is no cure
at all. It is simply a postponement of the awful

TO A DOUBLE STANDARD OF MORALS 187

day for the sex maniac himself and, worse than this —
more terrible than this — it is the cause of the con-
tinuance of the mania not only in himself but in
his children. He marries some honest girl by
and by and thus associates, with the burnt - out
dregs of his life, one who would loathe him did
she know his true character and his concealed but
burning flame of insanely inherited, insanely in-
dulged, bestially developed disease. But he is now
— under the shadow of social respectability and
church sanction — to perpetuate his unfortunate
mania in those who are helpless — the unborn. He-
redity is not a slip-shod thing. It does not follow
one parent and one alone. The children of a father
who "sowed his wild oats" by the method prescribed
by the Inspector (and alas, by social custom) are
as truly his victims as is the pariah of humanity
who is to be quarantined in some given locality,
made a social leper and a physical wreck that he,
personally, may be neither the one nor the other.
But nature is a terrible antagonist. She bides her
time and when she strikes she does not forget to
strike a harder, wider-reaching, more terrible blow
than can be compassed by a single individuality
or a single generation. This i3 the lesson that, so
far, we have absolutely refused to learn. I do not
hesitate to take issue with the Inspector, therefore,
and say that it is far better for society, far better

1 88 HEREDITY IN ITS RELATIONS

for the fathers of unfortunate victims of sex mania,
far better for the victim himself that he be "on the Is-
land with hands muffled or tied behind him," where
death to one will end the misery toall, than that by
applying the remedy which the Inspector recom-
mends, the result should be, as it is, a future gen-
eration of sex maniacs, scrofulous, epileptic or
simply constitutionally undermined weaklings.

The boys who are encouraged to "sow their wild
oats" and taught that it is safe to do so under State
regulation should hear the reports of some of the
students of hereditary traits, conditions and devel-
opments. There is to-day in an asylum not so far
from the Inspector's own door but that its records
are easy of access, one victim of this pernicious
theory whose history runs thus: He was a gentle-
man of good social, financial and mental surround--
ings. He was a "young man about town." He
possessed, (perhaps it was an hereditary trait)
more consciousness of the fact that he was a male
animal than that he was an intelligent, self-respect-
ing human being who had no moral right to degrade
another human being for his gratification, while he
assumed to still retain a higher and safer plane thian
his companions in vice. He was, in brief, no bet-
ter and no worse than many young fellows who —
alas, that they are so taught by men who believe
themselves good and honorable — "turn out to be
good family men."

TO A DOUBLE STANDARD OF MORALS 189

After bis system was thoroughly inoculated,
physically, mentally, and morally or ethically, with
the tone, the condition, the trend of the life which
the inspector, and many other good men, insist is
unfit for the ears of women, but necessary to the
welfare of men and "best" for them; after his life
and flesh had this trend and absorption he married
a lovely wife from a good family. All went well.
Society smiled (this is history, not fiction), and
said that rapid men when they did marry, made
the best husbands after all. It said such men knew
better how to fully appreciate purity at home.

Society did not state that there could be no purity
in a stream where half of the tributaries are pol-
luted. But society was satisfied to talk of "pure
homes" so long as there was one pure partner to the
compact, which resulted in the home. It does not
talk of an honest firm if but one of its members is
(privately and in his own person,) honest while he
accedes to the dishonest practices of his associates.
But society was satisfied. A child was born, so-
ciety was charmed. Four more children came. So-
ciety said that this late profligate was doing his
duty as a good citizen of the State. He is now
about forty-seven years old. He is a "paretic" in
an asylum, and, if that were all, then the inspector's
theory might still stand, because he would say that
at least the awful calamity had been staved off all

IQO HEREDITY IN ITS RELATIONS

these years while he had built a "pure" home and
left to his country others to take his place. The
facts are these: His oldest son is an epileptic, the
second is a physical caricature of a man, the third
is a moral idiot. He has no moral sense at all,
while he is mentally bright. He delights in vic-
timizing dogs, cats, or even smaller children. All
things, in fact, which are in his power are his le-
gitimate prey. Then there is a girl. In the
phraseology of the doctor she **shows only the gen-
eral, constitutional signs of her inheritance."

The youngest son is now less than seven years
old; he is siich a hopeless sex maniac even now that
the parents of other children do not dare allow them
to be alone with him for one moment.

In telling me of this case the asylum physician,
himself a profound student of heredity, said of the
child :

"He would shame an old Parisian debauchee.
The Spartans were not so far wrong after all. They
killed all such children as these before they had the
chance to grow up and still further pollute the
stream of life." And so our good citizen followed
only the usual course prescribed by the inspector —
and by society — and the result is (leaving out the
horrible, necessary sacrifice of a woman — some wo-
man or some number of women) — the result of
the plan is this; % house of .yice, (in a secluded

TO A DOUBLE STAffBURD OP MORALS IQZ

quarter "for greater safety") ; a few years of license
which he believed to be his legitimate perquisite
in the world and "no harm done; " the association
of the later years of his wasted energies, and his
pretense and vice-soaked life and flesh with the life
of a pure girl, and then the legacy to society of five
more sex maniacs, (who, being born in a wedlock,
which, by its present terms, laws, and theories, still
further develops sex mania in men and thereby im-
plants the disease in each generation to be fought
with or yielded to again); a doddering, drivelling
wreck of a man in an asylum at the prime of his
manhood; a worse than widowed wife with a knowl-
edge in her soul which is an undying serpent as
she looks in despair upon the five lives she has
given, in her pathetic ignorance and trust. And
his is not an unusual record. Of course its details
are seldom known outside of the family and physi-
cians. It is legitimate fruit of a tree which society
in its avarice and ignorance and vice carefully fosters.
It is the tree, the fruit of which fills our jails,
mad-houses, asylums, poorhouses and prisons year
after year, and yet we tend it carefully and keep its
root strong and vigorous by exactly the methods
recommended by the police inspector and by all be-
lievers in State regulated and State licensed vice,
that is: It must be systematically continued for the
good of "robust boys who might else be on the i§^

192 HEREDITY K'^TS RELATIONS

land with muffled hands. It must be kept in cer-
tain quarters and secret for greater safety to men,
and that our wives and daughters may not hear of
it."

Not hear of it until when? Not until the years
come when the honest physician must tell her, if
not the cause, at least the horrible facts, when it
is too late for her to prevent the awful crime of
giving life to the children of such a husband. We
hold it a terrible crime to take life. Is it not far
more terrible in such a case to give life? In the
one instance the results to the victims are simply
the sudden ending of a more or less desirable exist-
ence in a more or less comfortable world. In the
other case it is assuming to thrust unasked upon
helpless children a living death, an inheritance of
pollution which must, and does, develop itself in
one or another form as the years go by. Which is
the greater, more awful responsibility, to give or
to take life? The law says the latter.

Is it certain that heredity — nature's surest and
least heeded voice — does not in many cases say the
former? When society is wiser it will be a bit
more like the Spartans. It will say : Far better that
they be "on the island" than that they lay their
fatal curse upon the world to expand and blight to
the third and fourth generation, and, I believe, it
was to be the "sin of the fathers'' which was thus

TO A DOUBLE STANDARD OF MORALS 1 93

to follow the children, was it not? What was that
sin? Are not its roots to be found in the very soil
advocated as good by believers in State regulation
and in a double standard of morals, and in the igno-
rance which they say is desirable for "our wives and
daughters." Ignorance that such things exist as the
secret, legalized, regulated slaughter (social, moral,
and actually physical) of hundreds and thousands
of one sex at the demands and for the gratification
of the other?

Are there not sex maniacs in more directions than
one?

Is not this very double standard theory in itself
a sex mania?

Are not the men who advocate and the legislators
who make laws which recognize these double moral
standards, and who ignore the plainest finger-
boards set up by nature in hereditary conditions —
are not these, in a sense, one and all sex maniacs?

When they talk of "keeping our wives and daugh-
ters" pure and ignorant they do not seem to realize
that the taint of blood which flows in the veins of
that very daughter, which she herself does not un-
derstand, and which an ignorant mother does not
dream of, and therefore cannot stand guard over,
flows as an ever present threat that she shall be one
of those very outcasts whom her own father ia
laboring to quarantine in darkness and oblivion!

Nature has no favorites.

194 HEREDITY IN ITS RELATIONS

Heredity does not spare your daughter, and yet
men who plant the seeds of sex perversion in their
own families have the infinite impudence to cast
from their doors the blossom of their own tillage!

They go into heroics about being "disgraced."
"You are no longer child of mine I" that rings in a
thousand pages of literature, in one hundred cases
out of one hundred and one should be met by the
reply: This act of mine proves as no other could
\\i2X I am, indeed, your daughter! Blood of your
blood and flesh of your flesh ! Nature has told your
secret through me. Let us cry quits. You put the
cursed taint in my blood when I could not protect
myself. / am the one to complain, not you. Do
not cry out for quarter like a very coward. Face
your record made in flesh and blood. This polluted
life of mine is Nature's reply to your life of li-
cense and uncleanness! / am Nature's reply to
your uncontrolled passions — inside of marriage and
out; I, the moral or mental idiot; I, the disease
polluted wreck; I, the epileptic; I, the lunatic;
I, the drunkard; I, the wrecker of the lives of
others — I am your lineal descendant! You sac-
rificed others recklessly, by act and by law, to your
desires and your arbitrary sex power ; you cultivated
a taint in your blood.

It is true that you took the precaution to trans-
mit it through purity and ignorance to me. That

TO A DOUBLE STANDARD OF MORALS 1 95

very purity and ignorance of my mother served to
save your peace of mind and enable you to take
advantage of her for infinite opportunity for mis-
chief. It, alas, could not save me, for I am your
child also. Her ignorance was your partner in
a crime against me, her helpless infant! Do
not complain. Dislike my face as you will;
presented to you in whatsoever form or phase of
distortion it may be, I am your direct, lineal de-
scendant! Build better! Or go down with the
structure you planned for other men's daughters
and in which you locked me before I was born!

If, because of their sex, men demand privileges,
rights, emoluments, honors, opportunities and free-
dom, which they claim as good for and necessary to
them and their welfare, while they insist that all
these are not to be allowed to women — would be her
damnation — are not these, also, sex maniacs? Has
not humanity been long enough cursed by so de-
grading and degraded, so ignorant and so fatally
wrong a mental, moral, social and legal outlook? I
am attacking no individual. I am using an individ-
ual utterance on this subject simply to the better
present the side of the case which is sustained by
all of our present laws, conditions and male senti-
ment. I am wishing to present the reverse side of
this awful picture. From man's point of view it is
often presented — and in many ways. But once or

196 HEREDITY IN ITS RELATIONS

twice have I ever seen the other side in print where
it was looked at from a rational or scientific point
of view.

A short time ago a book was written which
touched, to a moderate degree, woman's side as
well as the general human side of this problem.
It was put in the form of a novel that it might ap-
peal to a larger reading public than would an essay
or magazine article. It had a tremendous sale, and
the only — or the chief — adverse criticism made upon
it was, that it pictured a type of father which
either did not exist or was too rare to be even taken
as an illustration in fiction. Now, it is this very
type of father of which the Inspector speaks thus:
"Men of candid judgment, religious men, know too,
that they had rather have their live, robust boys
err in this indulgence than think of them in the
places of those unfortunates on the island, etc.,
etc."

That is exactly the point made by the book re-
ferred to, and which was criticised by one man as
"morbid in its imaginings about fathers." Is this
Inspector "morbid?"

He said: "This is a desperately practical ques-
tion with more than a theoretical or sentimental
side. It ought to be talked about and better un-
derstood among fathers."

And I agree with him perfectly so far.

TO A DOUBLE STANDAkD OF MORALS I97

It is indeed, a desperately practical question for
both men and women and Anthropology and Hered-
ity teach, in all peoples and in each succeeding
generation, that the question has not been solved
by the adoption of the double standard of morals!

It is so desperately practical that the land is lit*
erally covered with the deplorable results, in hos-
pitals, in prisons, in imbecile asylums and in mad
houses; but when he goes on to "thank God that
this vice is hidden, and that thousands of wives and
daughters do not know of even its existence," it
impresses me that the Inspector is, in deploring the
ignorance of fathers and commending it in mothers,
attempting to still farther hedge boys about with
a condition which inevitably makes of them sex
maniacs in more directions than one. Is not his
mother as deeply interested in her boy's welfare as
is his father? Is it not to her eyes and wisdom his
younger days are most left and to whose watchful-
ness, intelligence and information he must be trusted
not to develop or acquire fatal habits? or if he
has them in his blood as a heritage from his
father, or from his father's father, by whom
vice was looked upon as "safe" if only kept
from the ears and eyes of wife and daughter; is it
not imperative that the trained eye and mind of a
woman who is not ignorant of nor blind to the very
earliest indications that Nature has sent a message

igS tlER&DtTV IK ns EPILATIONS

that there is a blood taint, so that, in so far as it
is possible she may labor to modify and control his
awful inheritance before it has him in a fatal grip?

Instead of this being the case it is advocated as
desirable that she be even "ignorant of the existence
of such vice!" It is due more to the fact that she
has been ignorant than to any other one thing that,
later on, the boy's developed hereditary curse, or
his acquired bad habits, have so fixed themselves
upon his young mind and body that the Inspector
and the boy's father find themselves in a position
to choose between a straight jacket for the boy
himself, or first a wrecked and outraged woman-
hood and later on descendants that are marked
with a brand that is worse than Cain's.

The Inspector says that such disclosures as Dr.
Talmage's sermon before innocent women and girls
do vastly more harm than a host of sin that is com-
pelled to hide its head.

Now what is the implication? Did he mean to
imply that those places have, since the sermon,
been thronged with the "wives and daughters of
Brooklyn?" If not, how did he know that it "pol-
luted their minds?" Has he not jumped at that
conclusion and cast a slur upon the wrong sex?
the sex that did not "squander its money in patron-
izing these resorts?" Was not that a rather desper-
ate eHort to sustain an argument by a non-sequitur?

TO A DOUBLE STANDARD OP MORALS IQQ

Are women's minds polluted by a knowledge of vice
which they avoid intelligently rather than simply
escape from ignorantly? Are ignorance and inno-
cence the same thing? Did the Inspector believe
that a knowledge of the degradation into which
their sons are led and pushed by just such theories
as these backed by a blind hereditary impulse which
has no intelligent care from a wise parentage, did
he believe that such knowledge would drive or lure
"wives and daughters" into polluting vice? And
is it not strange to hear of a condition of things
which can be spoken of as good and desirable for
boys and men which is in the same breath depicted
as pollution even to the ears of women? Can good
women live with these same men and not be pol-
luted? How about the children?

Man has for ages past, claimed to be the logical
animal. Beasts have no logic at all, and in this
regard woman has been gallantly classed, if not ex-
actly with the beasts, certainly not with man. We
may say she has been counted by him as a sort of
missing link. She had logic — if she agreed with all
he said. Otherwise she was an emotional, irra-
tional, unclassified creature.

Now, when it comes to dealing with his fellows,
man has — in the main — a fair amount of reason and
logic; but the moment he is called upon to think
of woman as simply a human being like himself,

200 HEREDITY IN ITS RELATIONS

to deal with and for her as such, to give her a chance
to do the same with, and by, and for herself, that
moment man becomes an emotional, irrational sex
maniac. He is absolutely unable to look upon wo-
man as first of all, a free individuality, a human
being on exactly the same plane as himself. She
is instantly "wife," "daughter," or victim to his
mind always. Never for one instant does he con-
template her as an entity entitled to life and liberty,
for, and because of herself. Always it is her relation
to him that he sees and deals with — and alas for his
theories of justice, gallantry or right — always it is
as his subordinate, for his use, abuse, or pleasure,
that he thinks of and plans for her.

Why confine gilded houses to one quarter? To
keep their vicious inmates away from "our wives
and daughters, and the streets which they are on,"
says the Inspector. But that is making sex irreg-
ularity a reason for restricting liberty of residence
and resort — even of promenade and pleasure. That
is to say, it restricts the libert}' of one party to the
vice — to the irregularity of sex relations. And un-
fortunately it is the wrong party who is restricted to
compass the object claimed! The one whose vice
can and actually does injure — the wife and daugh-
ter — (the pure woman who is his victim in marriage,
and the daughter who is his victim in heredity)
the one who can do infinite wrong, is left to roam
at large!

TO A DOUBLE STANDARD OF MORALS 201

It is the wrong partner in vice from whom State
regulation seeks to "protect" "our wives and daugh-
ters." It is the one who can do the intelligent
wife or daughter no harm whatever!

Man, we are told, is the logical animal. Why not
apply a bit of logic right here? Why not set a watch
on and restrict the one who does the real and perma-
nent harm to the race?

Men claim that it is necessary to their health, hap-
piness and comfort to sacrifice utterly the charac-
ters, health, lives, and even liberty of locomotion
of thousands of women every year. This is simply
infamous and Nature teaches its infamy and un-
naturalness.

From the protozoan to the highest beast or bird
there is no distinction of right, or opportunity or
privilege as to the occupation, life, liberty or the
pursuit of happiness anywhere in nature between
the sexes until we reach the one species of animal
where one sex has been subordinated to the other
by artificial industrial conditions — by financial
dependence.

Now, it so happens that as civilization goes on.
Nature is taking a most terrible revenge upon the hu-
man race for this sex perversion. Asylums multiply,
weaklings abound, criminals and lunatics blossom
out from heretofore honored ancestry. Nature is a
terrible antagonist. Having the power, man may

*

202 HEREDITY IN ITS RELATIONS

pollute the fountain of life if he will, but Nature
revenges herself on him still.

He may cover his vice with the shimmer of gold,
but the curse of the serpent is there as of old. He
may bind up the eyes of justice and right ; but he
learns at the last 'tis a desperate fight. A cover
for vice in the father may be as fatal as ignorant
maternity. Combined they sow broadcast on the
air the horrors of life and breed its despair. It is
to the "ignorance of our wives and daughters" on
these points, combined with the silence of law-pro-
tected vice for men and "regulated" infamy for
women that is due the possibility of passing in
some states a bill to reduce to ten years the "age
of consent" at which a girl is held legally respon-
sible for her own ruin. If there was one good wo-
man in the legislature no such bill would have a
ghost of a chance to pass, or be kept from the pub-
lic knowledge and rushed through a "secret ses-
sion. " Yet fathers of daughters pass such bills!

Is it true, after all, that men are not so good
protectors of women as is woman of her sister?
Ten years of age! Why, a girl is a baby then!
Think of your own little girl at ten ! Do not dare
to stop thinking and talking and writing on the
subject until such infamous laws are an impossibility!

Do not allow any one to make you believe that
it is not "modest" or becoming for a woman to know

TO A DOtJBLfi STAKDARD OF MORALS 20$

about — and fight to the bitter death— any and all
such laws! You have no right not to know it! You
have no right to dare to bring into this world a
child who shall be subject to such a law! It seems
beyond belief but it is true. And then men talk of
"protecting" women! Men who hold that a girl is
not old enough to give lawful consent to lawful mar-
riage or to the sale of property until she is i8 years
old, say she is, at the age of ten, to be held old
enough to give consent to her own eternal disgrace,
ruin, degradation!

That such atrocious acts are possible is largely
due to the fact that "our wives and daughters" do
not know these things. The ignorance of one
sex in all the vital affairs of life coupled with its
financial dependence upon the other sex has gone
far to make of all men sex maniacs and of so many
children the victims of a polluted ancestry and the
future progenitors of an enfeebled race.

A famous physician who is an expert in these mat-
ters says in one of his articles, read before his
brother practitioners: "There are few families in
this country not tainted with one or another form of
sex pollution. If it is not physical in its demon-
strations it is mental. Often it is both, and to
the trained eye, and thought, of a student of an-
thropology and heredity, the present outlook is pit-
iful, indeed."

204 HEREDITY AND MOPAL STANDARDS

And again he sa3's — and remember that it is not
said by a woman about man. It is the serious warn-
ing of a famous expert to his fellows who were to
meet and guard, in their profession, against the
hereditary results of just the sort of legislative pro-
vision which has gone far to make of man the sex
maniac he is. He said: "The wild beast is slum-
bering in us all. It is not necessary, always, to
invoke insanity to account for its awakening." And
if you will take the trouble to understand those
few sentences by a great specialist you will have
found the whole of my essay a mere illustration.

(Dpening paper of a Symposium in Thf Arena

OiJDorce and t^e tptopoB^ Q^attonaf £(00

In discussing any question which involves the
welfare and happiness of people who live to-day,
or are to live hereafter, I think we may take it for
granted that we must consider it in the light of con-
ditions now existing or those likely to exist in the
future. We must clearly understand to what do-
main the question fairly belongs; whether it is a
question of vital importance between human beings
in their relations to each other, and whether it is
a matter in which the law is the final appeal. We
may fairly assume that the questions of marriage
and divorce have to do with this world only. In-
deed, that point is yielded by the marriage service
adopted by the various Christian churches when it
says, "until death us do part," and by the reply
said to have been given by Christ himself, to the
somewhat puzzling query put to him as to whose
wife the seven times married woman would be in
heaven.

According to the record, he evaded (somewhat

skilfully it must be admitted) the real question;

207

208 DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW

but his reply at least warrants us in saying that he
held the view that the marriage relation had noth*
ing whatever to do with another life, but belonged
to the province of this world only, and the neces-
sities and duties of human beings toward each other
here.

This point is conceded, too, by every church when
it permits the widowed to re-marry, and gives them
clerical sanction.

Therefore the religious and the civil basis of dis-
cussion are logically on the same premises, and in
America, at least, where there is no contest as to
the established fact that all divorces must be legal
and not ecclesiastical, it is clear that the law does
not recognize religion at all in the matter. While
a religious marriage service may hold in law, a re-
ligious divorce would be illegal, in fact, fraudulent.
It is conceded on all sides then, as we have seen,
that marriage is a matter pertaining strictly to this
world. It affects the happiness or misery of men
and women in their relations with each other, and
not at all in any assumed relation with another life,
or a supposititious duty to a Deity.

This would logically take marriage, as it has al-
ready taken divorce, out of the hands of the clergy,
since religion and its duties are based primarily
and necessarily upon the relations of human be-
ings to another life and to a supernatural or Su-

DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW 209

preme Being. The terms of marriage and divorce
— so far as the public is concerned — are questions
of morals and economics.

That is to say, if there were but one man and one
woman in the worjd it would be for them to say
whether they would be married at all, or — having
been married — whether they would stay married, if
they discovered that the relation was productive of
misery to one or both. They could divorce themselves
at will without injury and without fear. But since
humanity is associated in groups constituting what is
called society or the state, and since under present
conditions men are the chief producers and owners
of wealth and the means of livelihood, the support
of women and children is a matter which affects the
welfare of all so associated, in case the parents sep-
arate. The question of divorce is, therefore, partly
in the field of economics and has to do with the
general welfare. This being the case, law and not
religion rightly regulates its terms. People marry
because they believe that it will promote their hap-
piness to do so. I am talking now of ordinary
people under ordinary circumstances, and not of
those victims of institutions — such as kings and
princesses — who are married for state reasons.
Nor am I writing of those still greater victims
who are taught that it is their "duty" to marry in
order to produce as many of their kind as possible

aiO DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW

in a world already sadly overpopulated by the very
class thus influenced and controlled by greed and
power. That is to say, they are so taught by those
who are benefited by the unintelligent increase of an
ignorant population.

Since marriage is the most important, solemn,
ac^d sacred contract into which two people can en-
ter, and since it affects — or may afiect — others than
themselves, the State requires that it be public,
that the form of contract be legal and that its terms
be respected by both parties, to the end that others
may not be deceived or left helpless.

But if the parties to this contract learn to their
sorrow that the association is productive of misery,
if they grow to loathe each other, if instead of hap-
piness, it results in sorrow or ill health, then surely
the State is not interested in forcing those two peo-
ple to continue in a condition which is opposed to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is
however, concerned in the t^rms of the separation
since these do or may affect others than the two
principals, and since one or both of these, having
entered ^nto a contract (in which the State was a
witness) and now being desirous of terminating said
contract, may be defrauded in a manner which vi-
tally affects society. It can hardly be claimed that
society is benefited by forcing two people to live
in the same house and become the parents of chil-

DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW 211

dren, when these two people have for each other
only loathing or contempt. If it cannot benefit
society, then who is benefited by the forced contin-
uance of the marriage relation? The children? Can
any rational person believe that it is well to rear
children in an atmosphere of hatred, of contention,
of rebellion?

Do not our penal institutions answer this ques-
tion? Are the inmates of these from homes where
harmony reigned? Statistics show plainly that
they are not; and they also show that an enormous
per cent, of them come from the families of those
who are not allowed by their church the relief of
divorce from bonds grown galling. Children con-
ceived by hatred and fear, overpowered by the low-
est grade of passion known to the world (which
cannot be called brutal, because the brutes are not
guilty of it), bred in an atmosphere of contention,
deception, and dread, are fit material for, and sta-
tistics prove that they are the class from which are
recruited the inmates of, the reformatory and penal
institutions.

Is it fair to a child that it be so reared? Is it
not right — is it not the duty of the State to secure,
so far as it may, quite the opposite conditions of
life for its helpless future citizens? Are the highest
and best types of character bred in discord? Is the
State interested in the high character of its future

212 DIVORCE AMD THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW

citizens? Al] these questions and many others are
involved.

But setting aside these most important features I
would like to ask who is benefited by keeping to.
gether those whqm hate has separated? The wife?
Not at all. She is simply degraded below the frail
creatures of the street whom men deride. She be-
comes the helpless instrument of her own degrada-
tion. The woman of the street may own herself,
she may change her life, she may refuse to continue
in the course which has lost her her self-respect. The
unwilling wife is helpless. She^has lost all. She
has no refuge. She is a more degraded slave than
ever felt the lash, for her slavery is one which sears
her soul and will, if she becomes a mother, sear
the bodies and souls of children borne by her un-
willingly.

It can hardly be urged that it could add to the
dignity or honor of womanhood for a tie to be in-
dissoluble which in itself, under such conditions,
is a degradation and an insult. Take for example
a drunken, a dissolute or a brutal husband. Can it
be said to strike at anything dear or noble for woman-
kind that some wife is absolutely freed from such
companionship? That she be no longer forced to
bear his society or even his name? Surely no good
end can be served by the outward continuance of a
tie already broken in fact. No one can be made

DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW 213

better, no one happier. If it is urged that a God
is to be considered, surely such a state of things
could hardly excite his pleasure or admiration. If
marriages are made in heaven those that prove a
misfit — so to speak — can scarcely be claimed by be-
lievers in an all-wise ruler to emanate from there.
Religious people will, I fancy, be the last to
assert that wrong had its source in such a locality;
while people who look upon this question as wholly
outside of sacramental lines will be slow to see
beauty or good in a relation which is a servitude
and a degradation on the one side and a brutal
domination on the other.

How does the question stand then? The wife is
degraded, the children are brutalized — are born with
evil tendencies — a God can hardly be overjoyed;
society is endangered and robbed, is deprived from
its very cradle of its inalienable right to happiness.
Who is left to be considered? The husband?

Would any man worthy the name wish to be the
husband of an unwilling wife? If he has a spark
of honor or manhood in him could such a relation-
ship, held by force, give him happiness? Would it
not be unendurable to him?

If he is so far below the brutes in his relationship
with his mate that he can hold his position only
by force is he a fit father of children? Is the State
interested in reproducing his kind?

214 DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW

It is true that there are several reasons why di-
vorce is far more important to women than to men
— notwithstanding which fact the question is usually
discussed in the Press and Legislature by men only,
the other interested party not being supposed to
have enough at stake to be consulted or heard in
the matter at all. But it is also true that an uncon-
genial marriage deprives a man of all of the best
that is in him; it reduces his home to a mere den
of discomfort and wretchedness; it forces him to
be either a hypocrite at or an absentee from his
own hearthstone and deprives him of the blessedness
and sympathy — the holy tenderness and beaut}' —
that should be the star in the crown of every man
entitled to the name of husband and father.

But he still owns his own body. He cannot be
made an unwilling father of timid, diseased, or
brutalized children ; he is not a financial depend-
ent. For these and other reasons an unhappy mar-
riage can never mean to a man what it must always
mean to a woman.

There is an argument frequently put forward that
divorce is wrong and unfair to the children of those
so separated in case the divorced parties remarry and
other children are added to the family. One great
Prelate asked in his article on this subject : "Can
we look with anything short of horror upon such a
condition of things? Here is a family, we will say,

DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW 215

composed of the children of three divorced fathers —
all by one mother."

This is an extreme and not a pleasing case, we
may admit; but suppose the divorce were by death
would the distinguished Prelate be so shocked? Is
it especially uncommon, indeed, for the most de-
vout men and women to marry three times? Are
"half" brothers and sisters and "step" children a
subject of moral shock to the most rigid religion-
ists? Jesus appeared to approve of a woman mar-
rying seven times. How about a mixed family
there? Does the distinguished Prelate take issue
with his Lord? No, the whole question hinges on
the continuance of the life of the parties separated
or divorced. If one of them dies the mixed family
relation is not counted either a sin or a shame. If
they live and the divorce is granted by law instead
of by nature it is pronounced both.

In whose interest is this distinction maintained?
We have seen that it is not for the honor of the
wife that a loathsome marriage relation be indis-
soluble, that it can lend neither dignity nor happi-
ness to the husband, that it is one of the fruitful
causes of diseased and criminal childhood and that
it is, therefore, necessarily, a menace to society.

Legally, morally, economically, then, it is a mis-
take, and it is productive of great misery. Who
then is benefited? Why is the attempt so strongly

2l6 DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW

made to revise the laws and check the growing lib-
erality in divorce legislation?

Who are the movers in that direction and upon
what do they base their arguments? What is the
final appeal of these combatants? I shall answer
the two last questions first. The orthodox clergy
and their followers, basing their arguments on the
Bible as the final appeal, demand that this reform
go backward. Why?

Because their creeds and tenets have always
claimed that marriage is a sacrament and not a
legal contract, that it is or should be under the con-
trol of the clergy, and that the Bible and St. Paul
say so and so about it. The Catholic Church has,
by keeping control of the marriage of its believers,
made sure of the children — their education — and
therefore insured to itself their future adherence.
It has perpetuated itself and its power by this means.
It is, therefore, not difficult to see why that church
so warmly opposes any movement which can only
result in disaster to its growth and power. Her
communicants are taught that it is their duty to
increase and multiply, and this in spite of the
fact that poverty and crime, want and ignorance
stare in the face a large per cent, of the very class
which it is thus sought to swell. The Catholics
are the most prolific and furnish by far the largest
per cent, of both paupers and criminals of any other

DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW 217

class of the community. With them marriage is
a sacrament; divorce is not allowed, or if allowed,
remarriage is prohibited. Children are born with
astounding frequency of subject mothers to brutal
fathers. They are bred in a constant atmosphere
of contention, bickering, and in short, warfare.
The result is inevitable. Contest — war — brings out
all the worst elements and passions in human na-
ture. This fact is well understood where war is
conducted between large bodies of men; but in
such case there is supposed to be a motive — some
patriotic principle involved to stir and call out,
also, some of the better nature; but in the petty
warfare of the wretched household there is nothing
to redeem life from the basest.

But suppose all this is true, say the advocates of
the forced continuance of the marriage relation;
the Bible — our creeds — teach us to refuse the relief
of divorce, and we are bound at any cost to sustain
the indissolubility of the marriage bond. True, for
those who accept these creeds or the Bible as a fi-
nality; but to those who do not, the State owes a
duty. Church and State are separated in America,
it is claimed. A magistrate can marry a man and
woman, just as he can draw up another contract.
When the State went that far it told the people
that it did not hold marriage as a sacrament. It
then and there took the ground that it was a legal

2l8 DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW

contract, and had no necessary connection with re-
ligious belief or observance. It logically follows,
then, that if the State deals with marriage as a
thing not touched by religious belief or Biblicai
injunction, that the question of divorce — the terms
of the contract — are also quite outside of the prov-
ince of the clergy. This being the case, it appears
as futile and as foolish to discuss this question —
making of it a religious one — from the basis of the
creeds or the Bible, as it would be to discuss the
rate of interest on money or the wages per day
for labor, from the same outlook.

Believers in the finality of Biblical teaching are
at liberty to hold their marriages as indissoluble,
but have no right to insist upon forcing their relig-
ious dogmas upon others, nor to attempt to crys-
talize them into law for those who believe other-
wise. No doubt the Bible gave the best light of
the Jews, in the day in which it was written, on
these and other subjects. We are quite willing
to suppose that the various creeds and usages of
the churches did the same, for the people whom
they represented, but the creeds and the Bible have
nothing whatever to do with the social and eco-
nomic problems of our day, nor with the legal ques-
tions of our time.

The more they are dragged into places where
they do not belong, the more it is discovered that

DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW 219

"revision" is necessary. The old creeds and the
Bible are fast undergoing revision and are recut to
fit the people and the present. It is quite impos-
sible to revise and recut the people and the pres-
ent to fit the old creeds and the literature of the
Jews.

Let us have done with such trifling with the se-
rious problems of the day. It is not at all a ques-
tion of whether St. Paul said or thought this or
that about divorce. It is not at all important what
some dead and gone Potentate said; the question
before us is: What is best for society as it is now?
Indeed it appears to me futile to discuss this sub-
ject at all if it is to be done from a theological
basis. Every fairly intelligent person knows what
the church teaches in the matter. One paragraph
and a half dozen Biblical references with a notable
name appended is all the space necessary to con-
sume. We all know that in substance the Cath-
olic church's answer to the question "Is Divorce
wrong?" is emphatically, "Yes."

We are also aware that that church revises its
opinions more slowly than does any other.

It is equally well known to the intelligent read-
er that the variations from the emphatic Yes of the
Catholic church, run the scale in the Protestant
denominations from a moderately firm yes to a dis-
tinctly audible no. Given the denomination and

220 DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW

a slight knowledge of its history — whether it
claims to be infallible and divine, as the
Catholic and Episcopal, or only partly so as the
Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational, or
whether as the Unitarian and Universalist they
claim to be human only — and you are prepared to
state what the adherents of those churches will
hold as to the marriage and divorce questions with-
out resort to long papers or circumlocution. Now,
for the various sects to teach or believe what they
please on this and other subjects is their undoubted
right so long as they do not attempt to control
other people in matters which are outside of the
province of the church, and so long as their own
adherents are satisfied to abide by the decisions of
the communion to which they belong.

The question is, then, what is best for society as
it is and as it is likely to be? What is best for
society as it is now? Who is benefited or who
harmed by the continuance of a loathesome rela-
tionship? Is the State and are the people interested
in refusing to allow two people to correct a mistake
once made? Is it for the good of anyone' to make
mistakes perpetual?

I repeat that it is a question in economics and
morals. It has nothing whatever to do with re-
ligion.

Let us keep our minds clear of rubbish, and

DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW 221

above all let us request that our legislators do not
tamper with a question of such vital importance
to women, in any manner (as is just now proposed)
to crystalize the divorce laws into national form
and application, until women be heard in the mat-
ter, freely and fully, without fear or intimidation.
If it were proposed to make a national law for
railroads without giving a hearing to but one side
of the question; if it were suggested that Congress
pass an educational bill of universal application
without permitting any but its friends to be heard;
if a general measure to control interest on money
were up, and none of the money-lenders were given
a hearing — only borrowers — there would be a great
stir made about the injustice and inequity of such
legislation. But it is deliberately proposed to pass
a national marriage and divorce law, to regulate
the one condition of life which is absolutely vital
to women under present conditions, and to make
this law a part of the national Constitution, with-
out taking the trouble to hear one word from her
on the subject. Let us agitate this question thor-
oughly. Let us discuss it on the basis where it
belongs; where our laws have already put it — the
economic, and moral, and social basis. Let us clear
the track of both sentimentality and superstition.
Let us hear from both sides — from both parties
interested. We do not drag religion into the in-

222 DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW

terstate commerce debate. When a bill comes up
for street-paving, nobody inquires what kind of
stone St. Paul was interested in having put down.
When the Chinese bill is before us, it is not neces-
sary to know what St. Sebastian thought of the laun-
dry business. Their views may have been sound ; but
they do not apply. I repeat, therefore, let us keep
to the subject, keep the subject on the basis where
it belongs, have our conclusions at least blood rel-
atives of our premises, and let us hear from both
sides of the fireplace. And finally, let us discuss
this matter thoroughly but let us keep clear of pass-
ing a national law until both parties to the contract
be heard, not only in the press, but in the legisla-
tive deliberations.

A recent writer of one of the ablest and clearest
papers yet contributed on this subject, in arguing
in favor of an amendment to the Constitution,
which shall make divorce laws uniform, says: "Let
it clearly be shown that Congress can best legislate
in the interests of the wA(?ie people (the italics are
mine) upon the subject, and the people, and their
representatives, the legislative assemblies, can be
trusted to authorize it. " It does not occur to even
this able writer that half of the "whole people"
will have no representation in either the legislative
assemblies nor in Congress, and that on this sub-
ject above all others^ this unrepresented half has

DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAW 223

far more at stake than has the other, and that when
an amendment to the national Constitution is ac-
complished, it is a very much more difficult thing
to correct any blunder it may contain, than it would
be if the blunder were not made a part of that in-
strument.

All men appear to agree that marriage is pre-
eminently woman's "sphere." Certainly under ex-
isting conditions, and under conditions as they are
likely to be for some time to come, it is the one
field open to her — it is her "lot." At present she
has nothing to say as to the laws which control —
as to the terms of this single contract of her life —
the one disposition she is free to make of herself
and still retain her social status and secure sup-
port. It would seem only humane to place no
farther thorns in her path. Until she has a voice
— is represented — the "whole people" cannot amend
the Constitution in respect to marriage and divorce
— in respect to the "one sphere" which all men con-
cede is woman's one peculiar right.

No laws on these subjects — above all others —
should be crystalized into national form and append-
ed to the Constitution until it is done by the help
and with the consent of the half of the people
whom it will most seriously affect.

Reprinted from the Popular Science Monthly

SiCimsuit or ^egoc;

Within the past twenty years the business of life-
insurance has grown with such wonderful rapidity,
and changed so radically in its methods and con-

* Many of the worst features in Life assurance contracts or poli-
cies, mentioned in this essay, have been amended or corrected since
its publication, but there remain enough other conditions of doubt-
ful fairness to the policy holder to, I think, justify including this
essay in this book.

Among these conditions, is the clause, in all Tontine policies, —
and nearly all policies now issued are Tontine in one form or an-
other, — which puts all accumulations on policies derived from
• 'dividends, " premiums, etc. , on lapsed policies etc. , into the hands
of directors or officers of the companies, to do with as they choose,
the policy holder being made, by the terms of his contract or policy,
to agree to accept whatever proportion of surplus there may be
* 'apportioned by the Society" or Company, to his policy, when it
shall have matured. That is, the policy holder is not represented
as against the Company, in the determining of what, if any surplus,
his policy is or should be entitled to. ' 'At the end of the Tontine Pe-
riod,if the person proposed for assurance be then living, and the
policy in force, the policy shall participate in the accumulated sur-
plus, derived from policies on the Free Tontine plan, both existing
and discontinued, as may then be apportioned by the Society .'* (Italics
mine.) This leaves the policy holder absolutely at the mercy of the
Company, or its actuary who is, or may be, the instrument of the
officers of the Company. And it will not do to reply that 'the pol-
icy holders are the Company" for it is well known, at least among
insurance experts, that this is one of the fictions of the business in
its practical management.

In illustration of certain other abuses in the managemen of this
beneficent and important business, I have also included -. brief,
humorous sketch, which touches some of these, a propoi of the
fictions versus the facts.

227

2a8 LAWSUIT OR LEGACY

tracts, that it is to-day as unlike its old self as the
railway-car is unlike the stage-coach.

The old life-insurance contract undertook to define
burglary, riot, and rebellion, and the companies held
themselves free from obligations which they had de-
liberately assumed, if the other party to the contract
did not conform to the rules of conduct laid down un-
der their definition and requirements. Nowhere else
in the history of large business organizations has
the debtor regulated his obligation by the morals
of his creditor and liquidated his debt by acknowl-
edging its existence, and then simply charging
moral obliquity on the part of said creditor as the
reason for not paying it.

If A owes B fifty dollars, and B is known to be
a thief or a murderer, it does not liquidate A's
debt to simply show that fact. But life-insurance
companies have held, and some of them still claim,
the right to so indemnify creditors, and, strange
to say, they have been able to conduct business on
that basis. They have even gone further, and said
that a debt to B*s heirs is forfeited in like man-
ner — thus making the destruction of a man's repu-
tation after his death of pecuniary advantage to the
company. They have been enabled to do this be-
cause many men do not read the insurance contract
which they sign, and hence have no idea of its
complicated and, in many cases, unfair nature. If

Lawsuit or leOacv 2^9

men insisted upon understanding the contract be-
fore they sign it, as they do in other business, the
more unfair features would necessarily disappear
from all insurance contracts.

If I deposit a thousand dollars in a bank, it is
my money — I can withdraw it when I please, sub-
ject, of course, to business rules, which have noth-
ing to do with my standing as a citizen. The bank
has nothing to say in regard to my loyalty or my
honesty in other affairs. My money can not revert
to the bank on outside ethical or moral grounds. But
in life-insurance — a business in which more money
is invested than in banking — the opposite rule has
been, and to some extent still is, in operation.

There are a few companies, it is true, which have
rarely taken advantage of their reserved right to
mulct a family of money actually received, upon the
plea of outside ethical delinquencies of the dead —
which had nothing to do with his length of life —
and there are companies, at the present time,
which have voluntarily eliminated the greater part
of these oppressive regulations and reserved rights
from their forms of contract. But in many of the
companies they still remain in full force, and in
almost all there are improvements of a most im-
portant nature needed even yet.

In other words, while one or two companies have
made their contracts, in large part, what contracts

^^6 tAWSUlT Ok LEGACY

purport to be, a guarantee of good faith — that, if
so much money is paid to them during a stated in-
terval, they will return to the party insured, or to
his heirs, a stated sum at a given time— there are
still many which have not so improved their con-
tracts, and are doing business in the old way, de-
pending for success on the ignorance of their ap-
plicants in regard to the unfair conditions of the
contracts which they sign. A few have left out
most of the thousand and one ifs and ands andpro-
videds of the old regime, and have at last under-
taken to conduct this important and rapidly-grow-
ing business on strictly business principles, and the
results have abundantly attested the wisdom of the
new departure and indicate the advisability of still
more liberal measures. A man may now, if he is
careful and wise with his choice of a company,
insure his life, or, if insured, he may have the te-
merity to die, without a fairly-grounded expectation
of leaving his family a lawsuit for a legacy. He
may also be reasonably sure that he is not placing
his own reputation (after he is unable to defend
it) at the mercy of a powerful corporation intent
upon saving its funds from the inroads of a just
debt. And I question if it is too much to say that,
given enough money, a strong motive, and a pow-
erful corporation, on the one hand, and only a sor-
rowing family upon the other, and no man ever

LAWSUIT OR LEGACY 23I

lived or died whose reputation could not be black-
ened beyond repair, after he was himself unable to
explain or refute seeming irregularities of conduct
or dishonesty of motive. No man's character is
invulnerable, and no man's reputation can afford
the strain or test of such a contest. Millions of dollars
have been withheld from rightful heirs by threats of
an exposure — the more vague the more frightful — of
the unsuspected crimes or misdeeds of the beloved
dead.

Thousands of cases never known to the public
have been "compromised," and hundreds of heart-
aches and unjust suspicions and fears about the
dead, which can never be corrected, are aroused in
sorrowing but loving breasts by this method of do-
ing "business." It is, of course, of the utmost im-
portance that every precaution be taken by life insur-
ance companies to protect against fraud and trickery,
the funds held by them iu trust for others. But
with the agent, the examining physician, the med-
ical directors, and the inspectors all employed by,
and answerable to, the company represented, if
fraud is committed in getting into the company,
one or all of these paid officers must, almost of
necessity, be party to that fraud. With all these
safeguards in the hands of the company, if a man
is accepted as a "good risk," if he pays his premi-
ums, surely his family has the right to expect a

232 LAWSUIT OR LEGACY

legacy and not a lawsuit, nor a "compromise" which
must cast reproach on the dead.

If it were not for the enormous value and benefits
of this method of making provision for his family,
surely no man in his senses would ever have risked
— would not risk to-day — signing a contract which
gives the other interested party not only an abso-
lute fixed sum of his money, year by year, but also
reserves to it the right to investigate and construe his
actions and motives after he is unable to contest
its verdict.

And not only this, but upon the finding of some
slight, wholly immaterial flaw in his statements
(which it failed to find when he was in the hands
of its agents and officers), in some companies he
not only forfeits the right of his heirs to their pur-
chased inheritance, but the company retains his
money which he has paid in besides! This is surely
a dangerous contract for any man to sign. It is
placing a temptation and a power in the hands of a
corporation that it has never yet been in the nature
of corporations not to abuse.

"If any statement in this application is in any
respect untrue, it voids the policy, and all payments
which shall have been made revert to the com-
pany," gives a wide field and doubtful motive of
action when it is remembered that many of the
questions are of such a nature that not one man

LAWSUIT OR LEGACY 233

in a thousand could be absolutely sure that he
knew the correct reply.

"At what age did your grandparents die?" All
four of them. How many men are sure that they
can answer that question correctly? "Of what did
each one die?" You do not know. You have a
general idea. You express it. You pay your pre-
miums ten years. You die (one doctor says of con-
sumption — another says of blood-poison); the com-
pany finds some old person who says your grand-
mother on your father's side died of the same thing,
and there is a rumor that a long-forgotten (or never
known) country cousin also had it.

The company sends a representative to the wid-
ow. * He assures her (and by the very terms of the
contract, signed by the dead husband, he is right
and she is helpless) that they can refuse to pay a
cent; that her husband got his policy by fraud —
although no indication of his physical disorder ap-
peared to any of the numerous officers employed by
the company for its own protection, when he made
his application, and by general reports he was
(and believed himself to be) a sound man.

He assures her that they want to be generous
rather than just, and if she will sign a release, or
"compromise," she will be given a small part of
the sum named in the policy. He makes her feel
the necessity of keeping this bargain a secret, lest

234 LAWSUIT OR LEGACY

Other policy holders object to the company paying
anything on the life of one who "attempted a fraud"
upon them! He impresses upon her that in case
of contest she could get absolutely nothing ; that
she is poor, and the company is rich and strong;
and if he fails to arouse her gratitude for his gen-
erosity in offering to pay her anything whatever,
he usually succeeds in intimidating her in her pov-
erty and distress. .A sparrow in the hand is worth
more than an eagle on Mount Washington to a
widow with a hungry family, especially if the ea-
gle has successfully maimed his pursuer in the be-
ginning of the flight.

The company knows this. The widow knows it.
The conclusion is therefore certain before the prem-
ises are stated, and the "compromise" is made or
the claim quietly dropped. It is easy to say that
a man died of some bad habit unknown to his fam-
ily, and his family would rather forego their claim
than drag into light, or into disgrace, the memory
of the loved dead. All this is well understood by
those on the "inside," and by thousands of sad hearts
that dare not speak. Is there no remedy for all
this? Is there no way that a useful and powerful
business can be rid of features which make it both
dangerous and ghoulish?

The recent steps taken by the best companies are
undoubtedly in the right direction^ as those still

LAWSUIT OR LEGACY ^35

using the old forms of contract will sooner or later
learn. But there is room yet for improvement even
in the best forms written to-day. The fairest insur-
ance contract written still has room for improve-
ment.

Is there no way to protect these great corpora-
tions against the frauds of individuals, and at the
same time protect the individual against the frauds
of the corporations?

Must life-insurance contracts be absolutely one-
sided, and that be the side of the strong against
the weak; the guarded against the unguarded;
the living against the dead? It seems to me that
this is wholly unnecessary. A life-insurance com-
pany which has the agents, the doctors, the medical
directors^ and inspectors all on its side can well
afford to offer a fair field — a plain, fair contract —
to its patrons and then pay its debts like any other
debtor when its obligation falls due. If it can not
find out within a year (with all the machinery in
its own hands), and while the man is alive, that he
is a bad risk, it is too late to make the discovery
after he is dead. If the indications are sufficiently
in his favor for them to accept his money from year
to year while he lives, they are sufficiently favor-
able to him for his family to receive the company's
money when he has died.

Life-insurance is too valuable and too necessary

236 tAWSUlT OR LfiGACV

a means of provision for the family for it to be
overlaid with abuses that make many men hesitate
to avail themselves of its benefits; and which put
a power for evil into strong hands, and make temp-
tation to do wrong inevitable and constant.

It is said by some, whose attention has been called
to this important subject, that the form of contract
does not so much matter, since almost any court or
jury will decide a suit against the company, and in
favor of the family, in any event. This is taking it
for granted that the heirs are in position, and are
willing, to bring suit, and risk the reputation of
the dead as well as the financial drain. But, as a
matter of fact, this is not true — nor is it desirable
that it should be. The rights of these corporations
should be as jealously guarded by our courts as the
rights of the individual; and perverted justice is
a dangerous tool to handle. The man who signs
an oppressive contract depending upon a court to
nullify it after he is dead, is clinging to a rope of
sand. The letter of the bond is what the court is
bound to enforce, and every man should be sure
that he signs only such as shall deal fairly with
his heirs on that basis.

The following extract is from the decision of the
Court of Appeals in the famous Dwight case, which
is so recently decided as to most forcibly illustrate
this point:

LAWSUIT OR LEGACY 237

"If an insurance policy in plain and unambiguous
language makes the observance of an apparently
immaterial requirement the condition of a valid
contract, neither courts nor juries have the right to
disregard it or to construct, by implication or other-
wise, a new contract in the place of that deliber-
ately made by the parties. . . Such contracts
are open in construction, . . . but are subject
to it only when, upon the face of the instrument,
it appears that its meaning is doubtful or its lan-
guage ambiguous or uncertain. . .

"An elementary writer says: 'Indeed, the very
idea and purpose of construction imply a previous
uncertainty as to the meaning of a contract, for
when this is clear and unambiguous there is no
room for construction and nothing for construction
to do.'"

For this reason the Court of Appeals cited as the
ground, and the only ground, for its decision
against the widow, the following clause from the
policy of the contesting company:

"This policy is issued, and the same is accepted
by the said assured, upon the following express
conditions and agreements: That the same shall
cease and be null and void and of no effect . . •
If the representations made in the application for
this policy, upon the faith of which this contract
is made, shall be found in any respect untrue. *'

238 LAWSUIT OR LEGACY

Colonel Dwight was in the habit of making large
business ventures. Several times, when he had
done so, he had taken heavy amounts of life insur-
ance, so that in case of the failure of his under-
takings, and his own death before he could regain
his financial feet, his family would not suffer. On
previous occasions he had dropped the greater part
of his insurance as soon as his business ventures
had terminated successfully. This is not an un-
common thing for rich or speculative men to do.

In 1878 Colonel Dwight died, with an insurance
on his life of about {265,000, some of which he had
carried for years; but a large part of it had been
recently taken for the reasons above stated, and as
he had done before under similar circumstances.
Fifty thousand of this sum was in old and new pol-
icies against one company.

This company paid at once, thus giving the wid-
ow means to fight for her claims against the other
companies. In a short time one of the other com-
panies, against which .she had a small claim of
15,000, also paid. The other nineteen companies
contested. The widow employed Senator Conkling,
and the fight has been the hardest, the bitterest,
and the most ghoulish insurance contest ever had
in this country; and finally the companies have won
in the Court of Appeals on a purely technical point,
after having dug Colonel Dwight 's body up several

LAWSUIT OR LEGACY 239

times, in the effort to prove that he was poisoned,
that he hung himself, and that he was not dead at
all! They failed utterly to prove any material cause
of contest ; but they finally won on the ground that,
in answering a question in the application for in-
surance. Colonel Dwight did not state that he had
ever engaged in the liquor business, whereas it had
been known that he had owned a hotel where liquor
was sold.

Now, when it is remembered that at one time
these companies tried to prove that Colonel Dwight
had committed suicide, but that they never had any
grounds upon which to claim that he had died of
intemperance, the purely technical grounds for the
decision of the Court of Appeals is apparent.
Ninety-nine policies out of a hundred could be
contested on such ground as that; and so long as
insurance contracts retain these unreasonable and op-
pressive features, no man can be sure that he is not
leaving a lawsuit and bitter sorrow to his family,
and, worst of all, a blasted reputation for himself,
when he applies for insurance under such a form.

An officer of one of the companies was heard to
boast of the fact, but a few days ago, that his com-
pany had spent nearly ten times the amount of the
claim against it in this Dwight contest ! This is
economy indeed! Whose money was this spent?
The policy-holder's. For what? To defeat one of

240 LAWSUIT OR LEGACY

the policy-holders in a contest for a claim no doubt
as honest as any one of the others will present in
his turn.

But suppose that this was not an honest claim;
suppose that Colonel Dwight was not a "good risk,"
is it not a rather suggestive indication of the value
of the medical examinations by the expert medical
examiners and directors of twenty-one life-insurance
companies? A risk good enough to "pass" some
forty-five doctors employed by, and for the protec-
tion of, the companies is, on the face of it, a good
enough risk to pay. If this is not so, then the com-
panies, and not the public, should be made to bear
the responsibility of the incompetency of their own
officers.

But for the reputation of these medical men, it
is a fortunate fact that the contest did not prove
Colonel Dwight to be an unsafe risk. After his
body was dug up several times, and a number of
autopsies held, and most of him analyzed, they
succeeded in proving that he owned a hotel where
liquor was sold!

But under these forms of contract, the companies
undoubtedly had a legal right to refuse payment up-
on even so absurdly technical a misstatement of "oc-
cupation." It was claimed by his family that his
hotel was a side issue; that he did not think of him-
self as in that business, and that his failure to ^ay,

LAWSUIT OR LEGACY 24 1

because of it, that he was "in any way connected with
the manufacture or sale of spirituous liquors/' was
a natural one under the circumstances. How many
men give, in answering the question as to occupa-
tion in their applications for insurance, all of the
numerous "plants" in which they have an interest
of a financial nature, more or less important? One
man says he is a bookkeeper, but he ma}' possibly,
also, own stock in a mine. His claim could be
contested on that ground. Suppose that he really
thought nothing of his mining-stock when he made
his application and signed his contract? Suppose
that in a short time he was called to see the mine,
went into it, and died of the results of that trip?
His policy would not, if it contained the usual con-
ditions, be worth, in a legal fight, the paper it was
written on.

That companies often waive their reserved right
to contest on such grounds, is used as an argument
to prove the innocent nature of these forfeiture
clauses and other oppressive conditions. But so
long as they hold the legal power to do so, the
temptation to contest will be too great for flesh
and blood, not to say for corporations, to bear
without yielding sometimes. The "Get thee behind
me, Satan," of a fair, plain contract will be the
best safeguard for the heirs in the matter of money,
and for the companies in the matter of morals;

24a LAWSUIT OR LEGACY

while the "economy for the sake of surviving pol-
icy-holders" might be directed, as there is surely
room for believing that it needs to be, into other
and more legitimate channels. Economizing on
debts to dead policy-holders is not a very good
recommendation to living ones, for the companies
which thus lock the wrong stable-door.

The new move toward furnishing fair contracts
is in the right direction, and it now rests with in-
surers — the public— to see that it does not stop short
of fulfilling the promise of still better things in
the future.

POINTS HUMOROUS AND OTHERWISE ABOUT LIFE

INSURANCE.

Printed in Twentiith Century.

I made up my mind to get my life insured. As
I had heard some one say it was not wise to put
all of one's eggs into the same basket, I decided to
apply for a small policy in two of the leading
companies at the same time. I was never seriously
ill in my life, so when I was informed that I had
been "held off'* by the examining physician of one
company who found theoretical traces of diseased
kidneys, I was a good deal astonished. Profes-
sional etiquette prevented the examining physician
of the other company from passing me until this
matter was settled, although he confessed that he

LAWSUIT OR LEGACY 243

could find no such traces himself. In his opinion
my weak spot was my lungs. "But doctor," said
I, "I've got lungs like a bellows. I was stroke oar
at college."

"It doesn't make any difference to our doctor
whether you were stroke oar or a stroke of light-
ning if he discovers that any of your ancestors died
of consumption," remarked the agent, who had lost
his temper. "You ought to have had better sense
than to tell Dr. Pulmonary that your great aunt
coughed before she died. He'd find evidence of
lung trouble in a copper-bottomed boiler if it
wheezed letting off steam. Who examined you
over at the other place? Old Albumen? I'll bet
ten dollars he'd find traces of his pet disorder in a
ham if he examined one."

I was getting a little piqued. I concluded to put
my application in to several other companies and
take the first policy issued. In pursuance of this
idea I was examined by Dr. Palpitation of the M.
of N. Y. company, and he discovered that I was
liable to drop off at any time from heart failure.
He said that he did not wish to alarm me, but I
needed medical care and a very wise and sustained
course of treatment.

At this stage of the proceedings I went to the
only physician I had ever employed for any slight ills
during my past career and had him put me through

244 LAWSUIT OR LEGACY

a thorough and exhaustive physical examination
without disclosing anything of my motive for so
doing. He pronounced me fit for the coming boat
race, which was to be an unusually trying one.

"Any trace of albumen, doctor?" I asked.

"None — not a trace."

"Nothing wrong with my heart or lungs?"

"Look here, boy. If you never die until they
give out, you're going under from old age. I tell
you, you are as sound a man as ever lived. There
is absolutely nothing to hang a suspicion of any
disorder on. For my sake I wish there was," he
added, laughing and slapping his pocket.

The next day I had a call from the doctor who
had examined me for the £. of Y. He said that
heM like to have a second pass at my eyes. He
thought there was a look in one of them that indi-
cated softening of the brain. I laughed.

He remarked that people in the first stages of
that trouble usually took it just that way. It was
a symptom.

"You confounded old fool!" £faid I, losing my
temper. "Are you in earnest? I supposed you
were joking from the first but if you're talking
as good sense as you've got just leave this office.
I—"

He left.

He reported to his company that I was in a more

LAWSUIT OR LEGACY 24S

advanced stage of the disorder than he had at first
feared. I had arrived at the unnecessarily irritable
condition. Of course my case was settled with that
company. Professional etiquette again stepped in,
and the doctor for the M. B. of C. took another whack
at my liver. He said that the organ was badly
enlarged and he'd hold me off for one year to see
if it would return to its normal proportions. Ac-
cording to his diagnosis fully nine-tenths of the
population of New York were carrying around livers
that were enough to tire out an ox. He could tell
a big livered man as far as he could see him, and
he pointed out five who passed while he was talk-
ing.

He said that enlargment of the liver was getting
to be a very real danger to the population of all of
the chief cities, and if the cause was not soon dis-
covered by the medical profession and a reducing
process, so to speak, clapped on to the metropol-
itan liver, life insurance companies would have to
keep a mighty sharp eye on all applicants, or the
death rates would wreck the most prosperous of
them in pretty short order.

I was led to infer from the way he poked and
prodded around me and measured and sounded that
my liver was rather badly sagged at one side and
that the other lobe was swelled up like a bladder.
It seems as if a person would notice a thing like

246 LAWSUIT OR LEGACY

that himself, but the doctor said that as like as not
I'd never have discovered it at all if he had not —
fortunately for me — been called in to examine me.

He said that he never prescribed for men, he is
required to examine for insurance, but he told me
to take a certain remedy for the next three months
and then report to him. Meantime his company
would "hold me off."

"We won't reject you outright," he explained
"because this thing may be only temporary — may
not be organic — and it wouldn't be a fair thing to
your heirs to decline you outright, because that
would most likely prevent you from ever getting
life insurance anywhere in the future."

That was a new idea to me and gave me a good
deal of a scare.

It occurred to me that the future of a man's
family — where it depended on the insurance money
of its head — was subject to considerable uncertainty
from the various fads of the doctors.

Here I was in danger of being rejected — pro-
nounced an unsound risk — by four separate and
distinct companies for four separate and distinct
ailments of which my own doctor could find not the
least trace and I could feel not the faintest twinge.

If any one of them decided positively against me
the future of my family was nil — so far as insurance
went, for the examining physician of no other com-

LAWSUIT OR LEGACY 247

pan}' would be bold enough or sufficiently lacking
in "professional courtesy" to pronounce in my favor,
whether he could find anything wrong with me him-
self or not. I began to realize that what I had so
far looked upon as rather a good joke might be
serious after alL

It occurred to me, too, that it would be a good
deal more far reaching than I had supposed.

If Old Pulmonary — as the agent called him —
stuck to his theory of my lungs, not only I, but my
children, would be unable to get insurance. It
would establish a family history — a "heredity" —
hard to get rid of. My little joke in speaking of
the fact that my aunt had been said to cough be-
fore she died, together with Dr. Pulmonary's abil-
ity to scent lung trouble in the breathing apparatus
of a porous plaster, might lead to a serious com-
plication not only for me but for my children. I
concluded to make a clean breast of it. I did not
quite dare tell Dr. Pulmonary that I had been de-
liberately guying the profession — and in fact that
was not my first intention — but I asked if he did not
think it a little odd that no two of them had held
me off for the same reason and that each one had
found indications of the particular disorder for
which he had a special leaning. He pricked up his
ears at once and asked all about the others. I told
him that one had found albumen, another enlarged

248 ' LAWSUIT OR LEGACY

liver, and the third was afraid of heart failure or
softening of the brain, and one was still waiting,
because he could find no trouble — on account of
professional etiquette — before reporting at all.

"Meantime my own doctor — the one who has
known me from childhood — pronounces me fit for a
scull race," said I a little drily.

"Does your physician know of these examina-
tions?" he inquired.

"No, he doesn't," I responded rather hotly this
time, "or no doubt he'd have discovered that I
had inflammatory rheumatism and gangrene. He
is a good deal of a professional ethic man, him-
self. "

The doctor turned and walked into his private
room, promising to overhaul the papers again and
talk with his subordinate.

I hunted up the agent who had first called upon
me and complained that this sort of nonsense had
gone about as far as I wanted it to go. "That old
donkey at the head of your medical department up-
holds the idiotic report of the 3^oung gosling that
first examined me here, notwithstanding the fact
that he says himself that he can't find the first
trace of the trouble. Now, if insurance companies
employ impecunious young physicians with little
experience, because they can get them cheap, and
then insist upon it that professional etiquette for-

LAWSUIT OR LEGACY 249

bids any other examiner from correcting their blun-
ders, it seems to me — "

The agent had been looking about carefully to
be sure that no one overheard.

At this point he said:

"Sh! Don't talk so loud. You see young Car-
diac, who had you first, passed a man a short while
ago who died in about six months and it was dis-
covered that he had only a part of one lung and
had been that way for years. The referee — Old
Pulmonary is our referee, you know — gave him a
pretty bad scare, and he's afraid to pass anybody
at all since. 'Fraid he'll lose his place. All the
agents are mad about it. Manage to hold their men^
over for examination until he leaves the office and
then take *em to another one of the examiners.
He'll refuse every body now for a while — or hold
him off. Fully one-half the men he examined last
month were rejected outright or held over. I
didn't know it when I took you to him or I'd have
taken you to some one else to be examined."

"That would be all very well," said I, "if it
wasn't for the absurdity of what the doctors are
pleased to call professional etiquette, which pre-
vents any other examiner for any other company
from finding a man so held or rejected, sound. In
the first place nearly all the big companies refuse
to allow any but an 'old school' or 'regular' alio-

250 LAWSUIT OR LEGACY

pathic physician to examine a man. Then if that
examiner has a fad, or makes a mistake, they are
all banded together to sustain him in it and not to
correct it, even if they can't find the first symptom
of a disease about him. I tell you it is not only
outrageous to the man and his family, but the re-
sult will be that men who know it will refuse to place
themselves in any such danger. They won't want
a family record of hereditary diseases made and
put on file to stare them and their descendants in
the face just for the sake of professional etiquette
toward some young M. D., who just as like as not
got his place from the fact that he married a daugh-
ter of a director of the company and had to be
supported some way and hadn' t the skill to do it in
an open field in his profession. Men are not going to
stand it. It will injure them, and it is bound to react
on the company too. I'd never have applied at all if
I'd known of it in time. What business has a com-
pany to ask whether an applicant has or has not
been rejected by another company? If their own
examiner can't find anything wrong with him, isn't
that enough? This thing of the doctors of all the
companies combining to keep a record against a
man is outrageous. Why can't a company depend
on the capacity of its own medical staff? If it wants
any other information of a medical nature, why
isn't the applicant's own family physician quite

LAWSUIT OR LEGACY 25 1

enough? I consider the thing a good deal of an
outrage, and the company that omits from its pa-
pers the sort of questions that result in this absurd
and opressive professional etiquette folderol, is
going to be the company of the future. Intelli-
gent men know too well the chaotic state of med-
ical science to be willing to risk it. Why, good
Lord, man, that softening of the brain — paresis —
idiot over at the E. of Y. can, and no doubt will,
give me a record that may cling to me and my fam-
ily in a way that might, in many a business or other
contingency, cause the very greatest hardship." I
looked up and saw that the medical referee who
had really indicated that he meant to reconsider
my case was standing where he had heard me.

His face was a study* He was angry clear
through. He would have (in a medical journal or
debate) taken issue with, and proved the utter in-
capacity of nine-tenths of the profession, but to have
a layman criticise their action when it might mean
even life or death to him and his was more than
the doctor's adherence to professional etiquette
could bear.

My friend, the agent, saw his face.

"ril bet you four dollars, John, that you not
only won't get a policy here now but that no other
company will pass you," said he under his breath.
"The old man is on the war path. "

252 LAWSUIT OR LEGACY

That was eight months ago and I'm "held ofi"
in eleven companies now. I was never sick in my
life. Pm as sound in person and in heredity as any
man who ever lived, but I am at the mercy of that
absurdest of all covers for personal incapacity —
professional etiquette — combined with the unrea-
sonable fact that insurance companies require an
applicant to tell their examiners just what piece of
idiotic prejudice has been launched at him by the
doctor of every other company, so that they can all
hold together and fit his case to the reports, and
not the reports to the facts in his case as they find
them.

Meantime, Jack Howard, who died last week,
poor fellow, was accepted by five of them because
the first examiner who got hold of him, not being
a kidney fiend but having his whole mind on lung
trouble — and Jack had splendid lungs — didn't dis-
cover that he was in the last stages of Bright's
disease. His family made ^27,000 out of profes-
sional etiquette, and mine — when I die — will most
likely lose that much, together with a reputation
for a sound heredity which may affect the insurers
to the third and fourth generation of them that love
truth and tell that their father was rejected by all
the leading life insurance companies for pulmonary
trouble, heart disease, kidney affection, paresis,
and enlargement of the liver. Meantime the first

LAWSUIT OR LEGACY 253

good company that shows enough sense and sufficient
confidence in its own medical men to omit that
sort of questions from its form of examination is
going to get me — and a good many others like me.

Common ^tnBt in ^urjetg

Reprinted from Harper's Monthly Magazine

Common ^tnst in ^ux^tx^

There are certain forms of expression which once
heard fit themselves into the mind so firmly, and
re-appear in one connection or another so frequently,
that one scarcely recognizes the fact even when one
changes a word or two in order to make the original
idea fit the case in point. So when I stood watch-
ing the ingenious method by which the trainers of
the English fox-hounds induced each dog to per-
form his own surgical operations after a hunt, I re-
marked, with no recognition of the plagiarism from
Dr. Holmes, "Every dog his own doctor."

"No," replied the trainer, with a fine sense of
distinction which I had not before observed — "no;
I am the doctor; the dogs are the surgeons. I pre-
scribe; they perform the operation. They do that
part far better than I could; but they wouldn't do
it in time to save the pain and trouble of a much
more serious operation that they could not perform,
if I did not set them at it in time, and keep them
at work until all danger of inflammation is past."

It was after a hunt. The dogs — splendid blooded

fellows, a great pack of over sixty of them — had

gotten many thorns and briers in their feet. They

255r

258 COMMON- SENSE IN SURGERY

came back limping, foot-sore, and with troubled
eyes that looked up piteously for relief from their
pain. They were very hungry too, after the long
chase; but "No doctor will allow a patient to eat
just before a surgical operation,'* remarked the
trainer, dryly. "Now watch."

He threw open a door leading into an outer room
of the splendid Hunt Club Kennel, and gave the
word of command.

There was a rush, and the entire pack burst
through the wide entrance. Then every dog lay
suddenly down, and began with great vigor to lick
his feet.

Why? Simply because in rushing through that
door they had waded through a wide, shallow
trough or sink of pretty warm soup. This basin
was sunk in the stone floor, and reached entirely
across the door, and was too wide to jump over,
even had it been visible from the outside, which it
was not.

The dogs had plunged into it before they knew
it was there, and were instantly out of its rather un-
comfortable heat.

Each dog worked at his feet with vigor. He
was hungry. The soup was good; but dogs object
to soup on their feet. This process was continued
and repeated until it was thought that all thorns
and briers and pebbles had been licked and picked

COMMON -SENSE IN SURGERY 259

from the crippled feet. Then the dogs were fed
and put to bed — or allowed to He down and sleep
— in their fresh straw-filled bunks.

"A doctor and a surgeon may be the same per-
son," remarked the philosophical trainer, oracularly,
"but they seldom are. If you whine — as the dogs
do when their feet hurt after a hunt — or if you limp
or complain, a doctor guesses what is the matter
with you. Then he guesses what will cure j'ou.
If both guesses are rights you are in luck, and he is
a skilful diagnostician. In nine cases out of ten he
is giving you something harmless, while he is taking
a second and a third look at you (at your expense,
of course) to guess over after himself."

His medical pessimism and his surgical opti-
mism amused and entertained me, and I encouraged
him to go on.

"Now with a surgeon it is different. Surgery is
an exact science. Before I took this position I
was a surgeon's assistant in a hospital. In some
places we are called trained nurses. . In our place
we were called surgeons' assistants. That's why I
make such a distinction between doctors and sur-
geons. Pve seen the two work side by side so long.
I've seen some of the funniest mistakes made, and
I've seen mistakes that were not funny. I've seen
post-mortem examinations that would have made a
surgeon ashamed that he had ever been born^ looked

26o COMMON-SENSE IN SURGERY

upon by the doctor who treated the case as not at
all strange ; didn't stagger him a bit in his own
opinion of himself and his scientific knowledge
next time. I remember one case. It was a Japanese
boy. He was as solid as a little ox, but he told Dr.
G — that he'd been taking a homoeopathic pre-
scription for a cold. That was enough for Dr. G — .
A red rag in the van of a bovine animal is nothing
to the word 'homoeopathy' to Dr. G — . Hydropathy
gives him fits, and eclecticism almost lays him
out. Not long ago he sat on a jury which sent to
prison a man who had failed in a case of 'mind
cure.* That gave deep delight to his 'regular'
soul. Well, Dr. G — questioned the little Jap, who
could not speak good English, and had the national
inclination to agree with whatever you say. Ever
been in Japan? No? Well, they are a droll lot.
Always strive to agree with all you say or suggest.

"'Did you ever spit blood?* asked Dr. G — , by-
and-by, after he could find nothing else wrong ex-
cept the little ,cold for which the homoeopathic
physician was treating the boy.

'Once,' replied that youthful victim.
'Aha! we are getting at the root of this matter
now,' said Dr. G — . 'Now tell me truly. Be care-
ful! Did you spit much blood?'

"'Yes, sir; a good deal.'

"The doctor sniffed. He always knew that a

t<

•<

II r

II

COMMON-SENSE IN SURGERY 26 1

homoeopathic humbug could not diagnose a case,
and would be likely to get just about as near the
facts as a light cold would come to tuberculosis.

"*How long did this last?' he inquired of the
smiling boy.

'I think — it seems to me — '

*A half -hour?' queried the doctor; 'twenty min-
utes?'

"'I think so. Yes, sir. About half an hour —
twenty minutes/ responded the obliging youth.

"I heard that talk. Common-sense told me the
boy's lungs were all right; but it was none of my
business, and so I watched him treated, off and on,
for lung trouble for over a month before I got a
chance to ask him any questions. Then I asked,
incidentally:

"'What made you spit that blood that time, Gihi?'

"'I didn't know I ought to swallow him,' he re-
plied, wide-eyed and anxious. 'Dentist pull tooth
He say to me, "Spit blood here." I do like he tell
me. Your doctor sayver' bad for lungs, spit blood.
Next time I swallow him.'

"I helped another practitioner, in good and reg-
ular standing, to examine a man's heart. He
found a pretty bad wheeze in the left side. I had
to nurse that man. He had been on a bat, and all
on earth that ailed him was that spree, but he got
treated for heart trouble. It scared the man almost
to death.

262 COMMON-SENSE IN SURGERY

"Pd learned how a heart should sound, so one
day I tried his. He was in bed then, and it sounded
all right, so when the doctor came in, I took him
aside, and told him that I didn't want to interfere,
but that man was scared about to death over his
heart, and it seemed to me it was all right — sounded
like other hearts — and his pulse was all right too.
The doctor was mad as a March Kare, though he
had told mc to make two or three tests, and keep
the record for him against the time of his next
visit. Well, to make a long matter short, the final
discovery was— the man don't know it yet, and he
is going around in dread of dropping off any min-
ute with heart failure— that at the first examination
the man had removed only his coat and vest, and
his new suspender on his starched shirt had made
the squeak. That is a cold fact, and that man paid
over eighty dollars for the treatment he had for his
heart, or rather, for his suspender."

I was so interested in the drollery of this ex-
nurse, and in his scorn for one branch of a profes-
sion, while he entertained almost a superstitious
awe and admiration for surgery per se^ that I de-
cided upon my return to New York to visit a great
surgeon, and ask him to allow me to see an opera-
tion that would fairly represent the advance-guard
so to speak, the upward reach of the profession as
it is to day.

COMMON-SENSE IN SURGERY 263

We all know the physician who follows his pro-
fession strictly and solely as a means of support.
Most of us also happily know something of one or
more medical men who are a credit to humanity,
in that they subordinate their ability to extort money
from suffering to their desire to relieve pain, even
though such relief conduces not to their own finan-
cial opulence. Very few of us who are not close
students of the medical profession realize, I think,
some of the magnificent developments not only of
surgery, but of the character of the surgeon. We
are led to think of them as rather hard and brutal
men. The side of their work and nature that means
tenderness and devotion to the relief of those who,
but for the skilled and brave surgeon, must die or
suffer for life, is seldom laid before us. The quiet,
sweet, and simple devotion of such men does not
reach the public ear.

The operation of which I learned, and which is the
first of its kind on record, was so strange, so great, and
so far-reaching in its suggestion and promise that it
seemed to me it could not fail to interest and in-
spire the general reader, who never sees a medical
or surgical journal, and who would not read it if he
did.

Can you think of an operation that would create
a mind? Can you conceive of the meaning to hu-
manity of a discovery that would transform a con-

264 COMMON-SENSE IN SURGERY

genital imbecile into a rational being? Such an
operation was the one I was privileged to see.

The patient was a child about one year old; of
good parentage and of healthy bodily growth, aside
from the fact that its skull was that of a new-born
child, and it had hardened and solidified into that
shape and size. The "soft spot" was not there, and
the sutures or seams of the skull had grown fast
and solid, so that the brain within was cramped and
compressed by its unyielding bony covering.

The body could grow — did grow — but the poor
little compressed brain, the director of the intelli-
gent and voluntary actions of the body, was kept
at its first estate. Even worse than this, its strug-
gle with its bony cage made a pressure which caused
distortion and aimless or unmeaning movement —
the arm and leg turned in, in that helpless, pa-
thetic way that tells of imbecility. In short, the
baby was a physically healthy imbecile — the most
pathetic object on this sad earth. Upon examina-
tion, the surgeon, a gentle, sweet-natured man,
whose enthusiasm for his profession — for the relief
of suffering — makes him the object of devotion of
many to whom he has given life and health, and
the inspirer and final appeal for many a brother
practitioner, discovered what he believed to be the
trouble. Led by that most uncommon of all things,
common sense, he believed that this little victim of

COMMON-SENSE IN SURGERY 265

nature's mistake might be changed from a condi-
tion far worse than death to one of comfort for itself,
and to those who now looked upon it only in an-
guish of soul.

After explaining to the parents and the surgeons
who had come to witness the wonderful experiment
(for, after all, at this stage it was but an experi-
ment based upon common-sense) that it might fail;
after a modest and simple statement of his reason
for undertaking so dangerous an operation, with no
precedent before him; after explaining that the
parents fully understood that not to try it meant
hopeless idiocy, and that the trial might mean death
— he began the work. I shall try to tell what it
was in language that is not scientific, and may seem
to those accustomed to surgical terms inadequate
and unlearned; but to those who are not technical
medical students I believe the less technical lan-
guage will be far clearer.

The child's skull was laid bare in front. Two
tracks were cut from a little above the base (or
top) of the nose up and over to the back of the head.
One of these tracks was cut on each side, the sur-
geon explained, because it would give equal expan-
sion to the two sides of the brain, and because it
would cause death to cut through the middle of
the top of the head, where lies "the superior lon-
gitudinal sinus." He left, therefore, the solid track

266 COMMON-SENSE IN SURGERY

of bone through the middle, and cut two grooves or
tracks through the bone, one on either side, where
nature (when she does not make a mistake) leaves
soft or yielding edges, by means of which the nor-
mal skull expands to fit the needs of the brain
within.

The trench made displaced, or cut away, one-quar-
ter of an inch of solid bone all the way from near the
base of the nose to the back part of the head. In the
middle of the top of the head on each side a cross*wise
cut was made, and one inch of bone divided. An-
other cut was made on either side, slanting toward
the ears. This was one inch and a half long. The
surgeon then tenderly inserted his forefinger, pressed
the internal mass loose from the bones where it
adhered, and pushed the bones wider apart. This
process widened the trenches to one inch.

The wound was now dressed with the wonderfully
effective new aseptics, and the flesh and skin closed
over. The operation had taken an hour and a half.
There was little bleeding. The baby was, of course,
unconscious during the entire time. Oh, the bless-
ings of anaesthetics! And now comes the wonderful
result of this bold and radical but tender and hu-
mane operation.

The baby rallied well. In three days it showed
improved intelligence. In eight days this improve-
ment was marked. From a creature that sat list-

COMMON-SENSE IN SURGERY 267

less, deformed, and unmindful of all about it, it
began to "take notice," like other children. From
an "it," it had been transformed into a "he." It
had been given personality. It ate and slept fairly

WjBll.

On the tenth day the wound was exposed and
dressed. It had healed, or "united by first inten-
tion," as the doctors say; and again one can but
exclaim, "Oh, those wonderful aseptic dressings!"
It had united without suppuration. It was a clean
wound, cleanly healing.

One month after the operation the feet and hands
had straightened out, and lost their jerky, aimless
movements. The child is now a child. It acts and
thinks like other children, laughs and cooes and
makes glad the hearts of those who love it.

Not like other children of its age, perhaps, for it
has several months yet to "catch up," but the last
report, in one of the leading medical journals, said:

"One month after the operation the change in
its condition was surprising and gratifying. The
deformities in the extremities had entirely disap-
peared, and there was evidently a remarkable in-
crease in intelligence. It noticed those about it,
took hold of objects offered it, laughed, and be-
haved much as children of ordinary development at
six or eight months. The pupils were no longer
widely dilated, but appeared normal. It eats and
sleeps well, and is in general greatly improved as
a result of the operation."

268 C0MMOK-SENS£ IN SURGERY

If in one month the little imprisoned brain was
able to "catch up" six or eight months, we may
surely believe that the remaining four or five
months which it lost» because nature sealed the
little thinking-machine firmly in too small a casket,
will be wiped away also, and the little victim of
nature's mistake be given full and normal oppor-
tunity through the skill and genius of man."*"

Could anything be more wonderful? Could any
operation open to the future of the race wider pos-
sibilities and offer more brilliant hope? I may
quote here farther from the same medical journal
the report of Dr. Wyeth, himself :

"The operation differs from any yet done. Lanne-
longue, Keen, and others cut a trench about a quar-
ter of an inch in width, and on one side, at a single
operation. It seemed to me if the brain was penned
in by premature ossification • of the cranial bones,
these should be torn loose and permanently lifted,
thus allowing a thorough expansion. Should only
temporary benefit be secured, the operation should be
repeated. Experience alone can demonstrate whether
the expansion of the brain will be able to spread the
cranial bones to such an extent that it may reach
even an ordinary development. The condition of
these patients is so hopeless and deplorable that,
in my opinion, very great risk is justifiable in any
surgical interference which offers even a hope of
amelioration."

*It has now been several years since the operation, and the
child is like other children. — H. H. G.

COMMON-SENSE IN SURGERY 269

Is not that common-sense in surgery?

Thus the race is quietly achieving mastery over
the blind forces of nature, and the steady hand of
science, coupled with tenderness and sincerity, is
pushing back some of the worst horrors of life,
and throwing a flood of light and hope into the
future! It makes one's step lighter and one's face
happier only to think of these marvellous achieve-
ments and victories. A new impulse of hope and
happiness dawns upon life. I owed this new in-
spiration to my pessimistic acquaintance — he of
the Hunt Club Kennel — and the introduction he
gave me to the rudiments of applied surgery. It
was indeed a long sweep from the one operation to
the other.

My first and second glimpses of the operating-
room were surely the two extremes, and yet when
I suggested this to Dr. Wyeth, the great and gen-
tle surgeon who performed this operation, he
smilingly replied that, after all; either or both— in-
deed, all of it — was simply common-sense in surgery.

^erebifs: 36 (^cquireb Character or Conbifion

^ransmiftifif e ?

Reprinted from The Anna,

^ere^ifs: 30 (^cquiteb Character or Condition

ttanBtnittifStt ?

It has been well said by Herbert Spencer, and more
recently by Professor Osborn, the able biologist of Co-
lumbia College, that the question involved in the discus-
sion of heredity is not a temporary issue and that its solu-
tion will affect all future thought. Whether or not
acquired character is transmitted to children is the most
important question that confronts the human race ; for it
is upon the character of the race that depends and will
depend the condition of the race.

No school of scientists questions the fact of heredity ;

but there is a warm and greatly misunderstood contest

over the exact method used by nature in the transmission.

Now so far as the general public is concerned, so far as

the sociological features of the case go, so far as personal

conduct is involved, it does not matter a straw's weight

whether the theory of heredity held by Lamarck and

Darwin, or the one advanced recently by Weismann, be

correct,

273

274 HEREDITY.

It matters not whether your drunkenness, for example,
is transmitted to your child directly as plain drunken-
ness, or whether it descends to him as a merely weak-
ened and undermined '^germ plasm'' which ^* will tend
to inebriety, insanity, imbecility '* or what not. It mat-
ters not a farthing's worth, from the point of view of the
laity, whether the transmission is direct, via ^' pangene-
sis," or whether it is indirect, via a, weakened and viti-
ated "germ plasm" as per Weismann, or whether the
exact method and process may not still lie in the un-
solved problems of the laboratory. Whichever or what-
ever the exact process may be (which interests the
scientist only), the facts and results are before us and
concern each of us more vitally than does the question of
what we shall eat or what we shall drink or wherewithal
we shall be clothed. It is all the more unfortunate,
therefore, that even an untested scientific theory cannot
be advanced without the ignorant, the half-educated and
the vicious taking it in some distorted form as a basis of
action. Indeed it would seem to be wise, if one is about
to make a scientific suggestion of importance, to take the
precaution to say in advance that you don't mean it —
for the benefit of that large class of intellectual batra-
chians who hop to the conclusion that you said some-
thing totally different from your intent.

Because a surgeon niight say to you that he knows a

HEREDITY. 375

boy who carries a bullet about in his brain and that the
youth appears to be no worse for it in either body or
mind, it would not be safe to imply that he proposes to
teach you that it would be a particularly judicious thing
for you to attempt to convert your skull into a cartridge
box.

Because Weismann asserts and attempts to prove that
nature's method of hereditary transmission precludes (for
example) the possibility of producing a race of short-
tailed cats from Tom and Tabby from whose caudal ap-
pendages a few inches have been artificially subtracted,
some of his followers exclaim in glee : ''It does not
make the least difference in the world what we do or re-
frain from doing in one lifetime. Our children do not
receive the results ; we cannot transmit to them our vices
or our virtues. We cannot taint their blood by our ill
conduct nor purify it by our clean living. The ' germ
plasm ' from which they came is and has been immortal ;
we are simply its transmitters — ' not its creators. Our
children were created and their characters and natures
determined centuries before we were bom. We are in
no sense responsible for what they may be ; germ plasm
is eternal ; we are exempt from responsibility to posterity.
Long live Weismann 1 "

Now this is about the sort of thing that is springing up
on every side as a result of the new discussion as to how

%j6 HBRBDITY.

we are to account for the facts of heredity. One some-
times hears, also, from these half-informed jubilators that
^* Weismann does not believe in heredity ; that old
theory is quite exploded." The fact is that Weismann is
particularly strong in his belief in heredity — so strong
as to give almost no weight to any possible process of
intervention in its original workings. He simply holds
that the transmission of ^* acquired character " is not
proven, and he doubts the fact of these '^acquired"
transmissions. In his illustrations he deals chiefly (when
in the higher animals) with mutilations, and in the
human race shows that the most proficient linguist does
not produce children who can read without being
taught I

Of course there are many and varied points in his
theory of heredity with which only the biologist is capa-
ble of dealing. But as I intimated at first, the Lamarck-
Darwin- Weismann controversy, so far as the sociological
aspect of the question is involved, does not touch us. It
belongs to the laboratory — to the Aow and not to the yaci
of transmission. But since the opposite impression has
taken root in even some thoughtful minds, it is well to
meet it in a direct and easily grasped form. There is a
simple and direct method ; I undertook it. I went to a
number of well-known biologists and physicians and
asked these questions ; —

HBtlBDtTV. 277

1. Are there any diseases known to you, which you
are absolutely certain are contracted by individuals whose
ancestors did not have them, which diseases you can
trace as to time and place of contraction, and which are
of a nature to produce physical and mental changes that
are recognizable in the child as due to the parent's con-
dition ?

2. Have you ever had such cases under your own
care ?

3. Have you a record of cases where the children of
your patients received the effects of the disease of the
parent in a manner that would show that *^ acquired
character or condition " is transmittible ?

4. Is this true in a kind of disorder which would
produce in the child a change of structure or condition to
profound as to change its character and run it in a chan-
nel distinctly the result of the *' acquirement " of the
parent?

I thought it best to go to specialists in brain and nerve
disorders and to those who had had large hospital or
asylum experiences. One of these, Dr. Henry Smith
Williams, ex-medical superintendent of Randall's Island,
where the city of New York sends its imbecile and epi-
leptic children, and where many hundreds of these came
under his care, replied that there could be no doubt of
the fact that such '^ acquired " characters or conditions

ayS HBRBDITY.

are transmitted. One case which he gave me, however,
from his private practice will illustrate the point most
clearly. B., a healthy man with no hereditary taint of
the kind, acquired syphilis at a given time and in a known
way. Before this time he was the father of one daughter.
Several years later another daughter was born to him.
The first girl is and has always been absolutely free from
any and all taint. The other one has all the inherited
marks of her father's *' acquired character" and condi-
tion, which even went the length in her of producing the
recognized change in the form of the teeth due to this
disease. Now for all practical purposes it does not
matter in the faintest degree whether that transmission
was in accordance with pangenesis or by means of a
vitiated environment of the " germ plasm." The fact is
the appalling thing for the reader to face. And I give
this case only because it was one of a vast number of
similar ones which came to me in reply to my questions
addressed to different practitioners and specialists.

Among other places I went to the head of a maternity
hospital. This is what I got there : *' If Weismann or
any of his followers doubts for one second the distinct,
absolute, unmistakable transmission of acquired disease
of a kind to modify ' character ' both mental and physical
— if they doubt its results on humanity — they have
never given even a slight study to the hospital side of life.

HEREDITY. 279

I can give you hundreds of cases where there is no escape
from the proof that the children are born with the taint
of an ' acquired character ' from which they cannot free
themselves. Sometimes it is shown in one form, some-
times in another, but it is as unmistakable as the color of
the eyes or the number of the toes. To deny it is to deny
all experience. I am not a biologist and I do not under-
take to explain how it is done, but I will undertake to
prove that it is done to the satisfaction of the most scep-
tical. Come in this ward. There is a child whose par-
ents were robust, healthy, strong country folk until " —
and then followed the history of the parents who had
"acquired" the " character" which they transmitted —
which had made the mental, moral and physical cripple
in the ward before me. " Now here is what they trans-
mitted. Do you fancy that if that half idiot should ever
have children they will be ' whole ' ? No argument but
vision is needed here. That child's condition is the
result of acquired character. Its children and its chil-
dren's children will carry the acquirement — for we are
not wise enough yet to eliminate even such as that from
among active propagators of the race ! If it were possi-
ble (which, thank Heaven, is not likely) that the other
parent of this half imbecile's children would be of a sane
and lofty type there might be a modification upward
again in the progeny, but even then we would not soon

28o HBRBDITY.

lose the direct, undeniable, patent ^ acquirement ' which
you see here."

It was the same story from each and every practi-
tioner. The hospital and asylum experts, the specialists
in diseases of mind or body which were due to direct ac-
quirement (such as drunkenness, syphilis and acquired
epilepsy) , were particularly strong in their contempt for
even the theory that acquired character and condition are
not transmittible. One laughingly said : *' 1*11 grant that
if I cut off a man's leg or a few of his fingers, his chil-
dren will not be likely to be deformed because of that
operation. This is not a permeating constitutional con-
dition, it is a mere local mutilation. But if I were to
take out a part of his brain so as to produce ['' ac-
quired"] epilepsy upon him I believe his children will
be affected, and if he is a bad syphilitic [acquired] I know
his children will be. Mind you, I don't say exactly what
they will have, and they may not all have the same thing,
but I do say that their ' germ plasm ' or whatever they
come from, will carry the results of the acquired condi-
tion and character." *

* " Brown- Sequard observed that injury to the central or peripheral
nervous system (spinal cord, oblongata, peduncle, corpora quadrigem-
ina, sciatic nerve) of guinea pigs produced epilepsy, and this condition
even became hereditary. Westphal made guinea pigs epileptic by re-
peated blows on the skull, and this condition also became hereditary." —
" Manual of Human Physiology," by L. Landou, translated with addi-
tions by W. Sterling. 1885.

Dr. L. Putzell, in his " Treatise on the Common Forms of Functional

HERBDITY. a8l

So I beg of you to remember that while the fact and
law of heredity is as certain as death itself, its course of
action, its variability of operation, is as the March winds.
To say that the constitutions of your children will be de-
termined in great part by the condition of your body and
mind is but to utter a truism ; but to say exactly how —
in what given channel this effect will flow — is not, in
the present state of biological knowledge, possible.

For the sake of illustration it is usually the part of wis-
dom to give the most probable trend of a given disorder ;
but to assert dogmatically that the son of a lunatic will
be insane or that the daughter of a woman of the street
will live as her mother did, is quite as unsafe as to say
that a fall from a fourth-story window on to an iron door
would be certain death. You must not forget that you
may^ if you want to take the chances, drop an infant out
of a fourth-story window on to an iron door with no bad
results to the infant (door not heard from), for I have
known that to happen ; you may sleep with a bad case
of small-pox and not take it — as I once did ; you may
shoot a ball into a boy's head, taking in with it several
pieces of bone, you may extract the bone and leave the

Nervous Diseases/' 1880, after describing the methods by which Brown-
Sequard produced epilepsy traumatically in guinea pigs, says : " Brown-
Sequard also made the curious observation that the young of guinea
pigs who had been made epileptic in this manner, may develop the
disease spontaneously. These experiments have been verified by Schiff,
Westphal and numerous other observers."

283 HEREDITY.

ball there and the boy appear to be as good as new after-
ward ; you may live all your life long with a roue and
your children not be inmates of hospital, lunatic asylum
or prison. All these things have been done, but it is not
the part of wisdom to infer that for this reason either one
of them would be a safe or desirable course of action ;
for in this world it behooves us to deal — when we are
attempting to study nature — with the law of probability.
The accidents, the exceptions, will take care of them-
selves.

Notwithstanding this fact it will not be exactly fair to
me for you to report that I say that every single one of
Jane Smith's children will have fits and fall in the fire
before they are twenty-one because she or their father is
an epileptic. Perhaps one or two of those children may
die in infancy, instead, or go insane — or to Congress;
one may have hydrocephalus, and another be a moral
idiot and astonish the natives because "His parents were
such upright people." One may simply have a generally
weak constitution — and another may win the American
cup for wrestling; but the chances are that confirmed
epilepsy (or what not) of the parent is going to " tell "
in one form or another in the children. What I say of
epilepsy is equally true of syphilis. This latter is so
true that it can be readily told by the teeth of the chil-
dren of a seriously infected case. That will strike the

HBRBDITV. 283

average '' unprofessional " reader as impossible, yet it is
well known to biologists, medical men and many den-
tists, so that a great many wholly innocent people who
sit in a dentist's chair reveal more private family history
than could be drawn from them with stronger instru-
ments than mere forceps.

I have been asked to write this paper because at the
present time there is a tendency to discredit some of the
well-known and easily proven facts of heredity, as a re-
sult of certain statements supposed to have been made by
the recent school of biologists headed by Weismann. But
in the hands of the laity much that Weismann did say is
misunderstood and misstated and much that he never
said is inferred. To professional biologists the loose in-
ferences from Weismann's suggestions and speculations
are absurd, and to experienced medical men and experts
in the lines of practice indicated above, the arguments
are beneath discussion. It is in this particular line of
practice that proof is easy and abundant, where the ^' ac-
quired" nature of the modified "character" is readily
traced and the transmission (or heredity) susceptible of
proof beyond controversy.

It is for this reason that the illustrations are all taken
from this field of investigation. If they were taken from
consumption, tuberculosis or any of the various ordinary
" transmittible " disorders, the cheerful opponent would

284 HBRBDITY.

assert (and no one could disprove if he held to the *^ germ
plasm" theory back far enough) that the "tendency"
had been inherent in the plasm since the days of
" Adam " — that it was not an " acquired " character or
condition which was transmitted. But with artificially
produced epilepsy (either by accident or purposely as in
the cases of Brown-Sequard's guinea pigs) or in the
other so frequent and so frightful disorder mentioned
above, it is a simple matter to trace the " acquirement"
as well as the transmission. But when a new light
arises in the literary or scientific world there are always
many persons ready to spring forth with the declaration
that they agree with the new point of view without first
taking the precaution to ascertain what the recent theory
really is. " Oh, I agree with him, the old theory is
quite dead," greets the ear, and the placid pupils of the
rising light so warp and distort the real opinion of the
master as to make of him an absurdity. This has been
markedly true of Weismann and his theory of heredity.

In ordinary cases of scientific discussion the miscon-
ceptions of the laity would soon adjust themselves and
little or no harm would be done meantime ; but in such
a problem as the present ult more is involved than ap-
pears upon the surface. The ethicsCl and moral results —
not to mention the physical — of a reckless mistranslation
or misconception of a scientific theory of this nature can-

HEREDITY. 285

not be readily estimated, nor can it be confined to one
generation. It is pathetic to realize that many fairly
well-educated and well-meaning people, who would pro-
tect with their lives the children they give to the world
and shield them against all possible physical, moral or
mental distortion, mutilation or deformity, will stamp
upon those children far worse mutilations and distortions
(and even physical disorders) through and because of a
half-understood version of " the new theory of heredity."
Therefore I repeat that so far as the public is concerned,
so far as the sociological features of the problem of he-
redity are involved, so far as the new theory relates to
conduct and to physical and mental condition and their
transmission, this controversy belongs to the laboratory —
to the how and not to the fact of hereditary transmission,
as I trust the above illustrations (which might be multi-
plied a thousand times) will serve to show.

(Bn}>itonmtni : Can gerebifg fie (Sloiifieb?

Reprinted from Tke Arena,

<Eni>irontnent : Can ^^erebi^ fie (globifieb?

But heredity is not the whole story, any more than the
foundation is the whole house.

Several times when I have spoken or written upon the
basic principle of heredity, I have been met by questions
like this: " Then you must think it is hopeless. With
these awful facts and illustrations of the power and per«
sistence of heredity befoYe us, we must recognize that we
are doomed before we are born, must we not? If there
is, as you say, no escape from our heredity and its power
and influence, what is the use of trying ? Why not let
go and just drift on the tide of inherited conditions ? If
these conditions are unfortunate for us, why not just ac-
cept the tragedy ; if favorable, drift in the sunlight that
our ancestors turned upon us, and let the world wag as
it will ? — we are not responsible." I confess that each
time this sort of reasoning comes to me it finds me in a
state of surprise that it is possible for thoughtful people
— and naturally those are the ones interested in reading
or talking upon the subject — I confess it surprises me

I 289

290 BNVIRONMBNT.

anew each time to find that it is possible for such people
to reason so inadequately and to see with but one eye.

It is undoubtedly true that, do what we will, labor as
we may, heredity has established beyond the possibility
of doubt that an apple cannot be cultivated into a peach.
Once an apple always an apple. That is the power of
heredity. That is the foundation of the house. But
there is another story. Plant your apple tree in hard
and rugged soil; give it too little light and too much
rain ; let some one hack its bark with a knife from time
to time ; when the boys climb the tree let them strain
and break it ; let Bridget throw all sorts of liquids about
its roots, — in short, let it take '^ pot luck" on a barren
farm with Ignorance for an owner and Shiftlessness for
his wife, and the best apple tree in the world will not re-
main so for many years. The apples will not degener-
ate into potatoes, however ; heredity will attend to this.
But they will become hard and knotty and sour and
feeble and few as to apples; environment will see to
that.

Now suppose you had sold that farm to Intelligence
and given him for a wife Observation or Thrift. Sup-
pose that they had dug and fertilized and nourished and
pruned that tree (I do not mean after it had been ruined,
but from the start) . It is quite true that you need never
expect it to bear Malaga grapes. Heredity will still

ENVIRONMENT. 29I

hold its own, and the kind of fruit was determined at
birth (if I may be permitted the form of speech), but
very much of the quality of the fruit will depend upon
the conditions under which it grew — the environment.
So while it is true that our heredity is as certain as the
eternal hills, and, as a famous biologist recently said in
my hearing, dates back of the foundation of the Sierra
Nevada mountain range, so that each of us carries within
us mementos of an age when language was not and, as he
humorously said, '^ Man has in his anatomy a collection
of antiques — we are full of reminiscences ** ; still it is
equally true that the power of environment, the conditions
under which we develop or restrict our inherited tenden-
cies, will determine in large part whether heredity shall
be our slave-driver or our companion in the race for life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Let me illustrate in another way. Suppose that you
are born from a family which has for its heritage a his-
tory of many and early deaths from consumption. Sup-
pose that you have discovered that the tendency is strong
within yourself. Is it for that reason absolutely neces-
sary that you buy a coffin-plate to-morrow and proceed
to die with lung trouble ? By no means. Knowing your
inherited weakness you guard with jealous care the
health you have, and it may be that your intelligent con-
sideration may secure to you, in spite of your undoubted

292 ENVIRONMENT.

inheritance, the threescore years and ten; while your
robust neighbor, with lungs like a bellows and the inher-
itance from a race of athletes, may succumb to the
March winds which he braved and you did not. Maybe
" quick consumption " will carry him off while you re-
main to mourn his loss, and quite possibly leave with
your posterity a growing tendency toward strong
lungs.

I know a man in New York City who had what is
called a '* family history " of consumption, who was re-
jected on that account by every life insurance company
in this country thirty years ago. Well, that frightened
him within an inch of his life ; but with that inch he set
to work to build his house ^^ facing the other way," as he
expressed it to me when I met him ten years ago, when
he was, as he still is, a hale, hearty old gentleman. He
is not and never could have been exactly robust ; but he
is as well, as happy and as content as the average man
who has not inherited his unfortunate potentiality. It is
true that nothing but intelligent and wise care all these
years, nothing but his temperate and judicious life, could
have compassed this end. I use the word temperate in
its general sense. So far as I know he has not denied
himself any of the best of life, which he has been amply
able to secure ; but he has at all times kept his house
" facing the other way." His hereditary threat, while it

BNVmONMENT. 293

has not driven him with a lash, has, it is true, lived in
the back yard — which it does and will and must with us
all, no matter what our environment or wisdom may
be ; but we need not foolishly throw open the windows,
swing back the doors and invite it to take possession,
while our own individuality moves down into the coal
cellar.

I have taken as illustrations in both of these papers in-
herited disease and its developments, but this is done
only for convenience and because it will explain more
full}', clearly and easily to most people what is meant.
That our heredity is equally strong and certain in its
mental and moral potentialities and tendencies is also
true.* It is likewise true that the environment — the
conditions under which we develop, curb or direct our
natural tendencies — has a great and modifying rdle to
play.

It is sometimes asked, if children were changed in the
cradle, and those of fortunate parentage carried to the
slums to be nurtured and taught and those from the slums

^

* " Alienists hold, in general, that a large proportion of mental dis-
eases are the result of degeneracy; that is, they are the offspring of
drunken, insane, syphilitic and consumptive parents, and suffer from
the action of heredity." — Dr. Ar^ur McDonald^ 2ivXhot of "Crim-
inology."

'* To one at all familiar with the external aspect of Insanity in its
various forms, it seems incredible that its physical nature was not
sooner realized. Had the laws of heredity been earlier understood, it
would have been seen that mental derangements, like physical diseases
and tendencies, were transmitted." — Prof, Edward S, Morse.

294 BNVIRONMBNT.

placed in the cradles of luxury, would not all trace of
mental, moral and physical heredity of a fortunate type
disappear from the darlings of Murray Hill in their
adopted environment of squalor and vice ; and would not
the haggard and half-starved, ill-nurtured waifs of Mul-
berry Bend blossom as the rose in strength and virtue in
their new environment of luxury and of wholesome and
healthful surroundings? Just here a digression seems
necessary ; for while I have no doubt that the change
(even on the terms usually implied) would work won-
ders in both sets of infants, still it is to be remembered
that for such a test to tell anything of real value to
science, the exchange would need to be made upon an-
other basis from that which is generally used as an argu-
ment, because it is incorrectly assumed that the children
of luxury (as a rule) are born with clean and lofty hered-
ity. This is, alas, so far from the case that it is almost a
truism that " the highest and the lowest" (meaning the
richest and the poorest) are " nearest together in action
and farthest apart in appearance, only." They both fre-
quently give to their children tainted mental, moral and
physical natures with which to contend. The self-indul-
gence of the young men of the " upper classes" leaves
a burned-out, undermined and tainted physical heredity
almost a certainty for their children, while the ethical tone
of such men — their moral fibre — is higher only in ap-

BNVIRONMBNT. 295

pearance and the ability to do secretly that which puts the
tough of Mulberry Bend in the penitentiary because he
has not the gold to gild his vices and to dazzle the eyes of
society. The exchanged children, therefore, would not be
so totally different in inherited qualities, after all. They
would have alike a tainted ancestry. Their physical
natures are the hotbeds of vices or diseases that are to be
developed or curbed according as environment shall de-
termine. But the foundation in both cases — the ground
— both mental, moral and physical, is sowed down and
harrowed in with the tainted heredity. The mother in
both instances, as a rule, is but an aimless puppet who
dances to the tune played by her male owner — a mere
weak transmitter or adjunct of and for and to his scale of
life. Therefore to point to the fact that to change these
classes of infants in the cradle is to exchange (by means
of their environment only) their mature development,
also, from that of a Wall Street magnate to a Sing Sing
convict, tells nothing whatever against the power and
force of heredity. It tells only what is always claimed
for fortunate or unfortunate environment — that

'* It gilds the straitened forehead of the fool,^^
or that

" Through tattered clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furred gowns hide all ; plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks ;
Arm it with rags, a pigmy^s straw doth pierce it.^

296 »NVIRONMftNT.

Let US start fair. Let us understand that no environ-
ment can create what is not within the individuality —
that heredity has fixed this ; but that environment does
and must act as the one tremendous and vital power
to develop or to control the inheritance which parents
stamp upon their children. Notwithstanding, you are
personally responsible for the trend, the added power
and development you give to much that you inherit.
You are personally responsible to the coming generation
for the fight it will have to make and for the strength
you transmit to it to make that fight. Many a father and
mother transmitted to their ^' fallen " daughter the weak-
ness and the tendency to commit the acts which they and
their fellows whine about afterward as *^ tarnishing the
family honor." If they had tied her hand and foot and
cast her into the midst of the waves of the sea expecting
her to save herself they would be no more truly responsi-
ble for her death, be it moral or physical.

And let me emphasize here that I do not attribute all
of the moral and physical disasters of the race to the
fathers of the race. By no means. I believe with all
my heart that the mothers have to answer for their full
share of the vice, sorrow and suffering of humanity.
Woman has not, perhaps, been such an active agent, and
much of the wrong she has done to her children has been
compassed, through what have been regarded as her very

ftNVlRONMfiNT. 297

virtues — her sweetest qualities — submission, compliance,
self-abnegation I In so far as the mothers of the race
have been weakly subservient, in that far have they a
terrible score against them in the transmission of the
qualities which has made the race too weak to do the
best that it knew — too cowardly to be honest even with
its own soul.

I do not believe that the sexes, in a normal state, would
differ materially in moral tone. Why ? Simply because
throughout all nature there is no line of demarcation be-
tween the sexes on moral grounds. The male and the
female differ in qualities, but neither is " better," " purer "
nor " wiser " than the other — dividing them on the basis
of sex alone. I do not believe that women are (under
natural and equal conditions) better or purer than men,
as is so often claimed. I do not believe that men are
(under natural and equal conditions) wiser and abler
than women. These are all artificially built up condi-
tions, and they have fixed upon the race a very large
share of its sorrow, its crime, its insanity, its disease and
its despair. They have weakened woman and brutalized
man. Children have been bom from two parents, one of
whom is weakly self-effacing and trivial, narrow in out-
look and petty in interests — a. dependant, and therefore
servile ; while the other parent is unclean, unjust, self-
assertive and willing to demand more than he is willing

298 BNVIRONMBNT.

to give. These conditions have morally perverted the
race so that it will continue long to need those evidences
against, instead of for, civilization — almshouses, insane
as}lum8, reformatories and prisons.

It is usual to point with vast pride to the immense
sums of money we spend year by year to support such
charitable and eleemosynary institutions, instead of real-
izing, in humiliation and shame, that what we need to
do, and what we can do, in great part, is to lock the sta-
ble door before the horse is stolen ; that what we need to
do, and what we can do, in large measure, is to regulate
conditions and heredity so that we may congratulate our-
selves in pointing to the small sums of money needed year
by year to care for the unfortunate victims of inherited
weakness or vice. We don't want our country covered
with magnificently equipped hospitals, asylums, poor-
houses and prisons. What we want is intelligent and
wise parentage which shall depopulate eleemosynary,
charitable and penal institutions. We don't want to con-
tinue to boast of a tremendous and increasing population
of sick or weak minds encased in sick or weak bodies —
half-matured, ill-born, mental, moral and physical weak-
lings who drag out a few wretched years in some retreat
and then miserably perish.

We want men and women on this continent who shall
be well and intelligent and free and wise enough to see

BNVmONMBNT. 299

that not numbers but quality in population will solve the
questions that perplex the souls of men. We want par-
ents who are wise and self-controlled enough to refuse to
curse the world and their own helpless children with
vitiated lives, and who, if they cannot give whole, clean,
fine children to the world, will refuse to give it any.
Nothing but a low, perverted and weak moral and ethi-
cal sense makes possible the need of an argument on this
subject. It is self-evident the moment one stops to ask
himself a few simple and primitive questions : '^ Am I
willing to buy my own comfort and pleasure at the ex-
pense of those who are helpless ? Am I willing to be a
moral and physical pauper preying upon the rights of my
children ? Am I willing to be a thief and misappropri-
ate their physical, mental and moral heritage? Am I
willing to be a murderer and taint with slow poison their
lives before they get them ? Am I willing to do this by
giving to them a weak and dependant and silly mother
and a father who is less than the best he can be — who
arrogates to himself the prerogative of dictator who has
no account to render ? "

All these questions apply to the health of the nation
and to what it shall be in the future. When we speak
of the health of a nation, we are so given to thinking of
the physical condition, only, of its citizens that the more
comprehensive thought of their mental, moral, ethical

I

300 ttNVIRONM^MT.

and business health is likely to escape our minds. In-
deed, I fancy that few persons realize that even in the
matter of business ethics and general moral outlook (in-
cluding the nation's political policy, of course) heredity
cuts a very wide swath. But it is true that national
business morals are as distinctive from generation to gen-
eration as are the physical characteristics, well-being or
mental qualities of the different peoples. Some one will
say, " True, but all this is due to difference of environ-
ment," — forgetting that the special features of our en-
vironment itself (outside of climate and soil) are due
primarily to the hereditary habits and bias of a people.
Natural selection, per se^ ceased to have full force the
moment man reached the stage when he was able to con-
trol artificial means of protection or power. . The ** fit-
test " ceased to be so upon the basis of inborn quality.
Artificial means — from the use of a sharp stone to over-
come a stronger (or "fitter") antagonist, on up to the
skilful application of money where it will do the most
good — took the place of primary*' natural selection,"
and the *' fittest" to survive in the mental, moral, physi-
cal, financial or political arena became he who could
command the artificial means of guiding and controlling
the natural forces of primary " selection." The "tough"
lives in the " slums " primarily because his parents did.
He inherited his social and ethical outlook as well as his

ENVIRONMENT. 3OI

physical form, and the mould in which his thoughts have
run was fashioned by nature and secondarily fixed by an
environment or surrounding which also came to him as a
part of his inheritance.

Heredity and environment act and react upon each
other with the regularity and inevitability of succession
of night and day. Neither tells the whole story ; together
they make up the sum of life ; and yet it is true that the
first half — the part or foundation upon which all else is
based and upon which all else must depend — has been
taken into account so little in the conduct and scheme of
human affairs that total ignorance of its very principle
has been looked upon as a charming attribute of the
young mothers upon whose weak or undeveloped shoul-
ders rest the responsibility, the welfare, the shame or the
glory, the very sanity and capacity, of the generations
that are to come I

s

i

I
i

From the press of the Arena Publishing Company,

wm0^^^^^^*^^^t^

^^iChe Hit of the year/'

Helen H.
Gardener

Chicago Times

The Literary Hit
«f the Season

Rockford (111.)
Republican

e

Price y paper ^ $o cents; clothe $1.25.

AN UNOFFICIAL PATRIOT.

Have you read Helen H. Gardener^s new war story, "An
Unofficial Patriot"? No? Then read what competent
critics say of this remarkable historical story of the Civil
War.

** Helen H. Gardener has made for herself within a very few
years an enviable fame for the strength and sincerity of her
writing on some of the most important phases of modern social
questions. Her most recent novel, now published under the title
of * An Unofficial Patriot/ is no less deserving of praise. As an
artistic piece of character study this book is possessed^ of supe-
rior qusdities. There is nothing in it to offend the traditions of
an honest man, north or south. It is written with an evident
knowledge of the circumstances and surroundings such as might
have made the story a very fact, and, more than all, it is written
with an assured sympathy for humanity and a recognition of
right and wrong wherever found. As to the literary merit of
the book and its strength as a character study, as has been said
heretofore, it is a superior work. The study of Griffith Daven-
port, the dergyman, and of his true friend, ' Lengthy ' Patterson,
IS one to win favor from every reader. There are dramatic
scenes in their association that thrill and touch the heart.
Davenport's two visits to President Lincoln are other scenes
worthy of note for the same quality, and they show an apprecia-
tion of the feeling and motive of the president more than histori-
cal in its sympathy. Mrs. Gardener may well be proud of her
success in the field of fiction."

" Helen Gardener's new novel, * An Unofficial Patriot,' which
is just out, will probably be the most popular and salable novel
since ' Robert Elsmere.' It is by far the most finished and
ambitious book yet produced by the gifted author and well de-
serves a permanent place in literature. .

"The plot of the story itself guarantees the present sale. It
is * something new under the sun ' and strikes new sensations,
new situations, new conditions. To be sure it is a war story, and
war stories are old and hackneyed. But there has been no sucn
war story as this written. It gives a situation new in fiction and
tells the story of the war from a standpoint which gives the booK
priceless value as a sociological study and as supplemental

^""""Se plot is very strong and is all the more Jo when the
reader leains that it is true. The story is an absolutely true one
and is almost entirely a piece of bislory written in form of tic
tion, with names and minor incidents altered.'

For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid^

Arena Publishing Co,, Boston, Mass.

From the press of the Arena Publishing Company,

^^^^^*^*^^

Helen H* i6ar6ener'$ Essays an6 Short Stories-

Helen H.
Gardener

Helen H.
Gardener

A Remarkable
Book. It marks
an epoch in the
trend of Social
Thought

A Collection of
stirring, unusual
Stories, dealing
with unhack-
neyed themes in
a masterly way

.

Price^ clothe $i.oo; papery 50 cents.

A THOUGHTLESS YES.

A collection of short stories in which field this brilliant
writer is especisQly suggestive and successful. These
stories have gone through several editions, and with the
continual expansion of Mrs. Gardener^s £ame as the author
of "Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?" ** An Unofficial
Patriot " and other books of world-wide repute, they find
new and delighted readers and admirers. The opinions
of the press give the book a ve^ high place as a work of
genuine literary art.

Marked by a quaint philosophy, shrewd, sometimes pungent
reflection, each one possesses enough purely literary merit to
make its way and hold its own. " The Lady of the Club" is
indeed a terrible study of social abuses and problems, and most
of the others suggest more in the same direction.

— New York Tribune,

Will do considerable to stir up thought and breed a " divine
discontent" with vested wrong and intrenched justice. The
stories are written in a bright, vivacious style.

— Boston Transcript,

III * hi ■» ^ I H ^^II W

Price y cloth y $1.00; paper ^ 50 cents,

FACTS AND FICTIONS OF LIFE.

A Collection of Sparkling and Thoughtfiil Essays on the
Vital Questions of Life, that should awaken the conscience
in every man not dead to a sense of all moral obligation,
and spur every woman to stand steadfast and strong and
demand in the marriage relation a manhood that shall be
as clear and unpolluted as womanhood.

But Helen Gardener is at her best in the most difficult liter-
ary channel, that of the essayist. She says more in fewer words
than any writer of the day, and learned savants pause to drink
in the ideas that she has drawn from the fountain of common
sense. Her work, '* Facts and Fictions of Life," has reached a
large sale, and is now being translated into German, French and
Russian and two Oriental lauguages. These essays deal with
the most delicate and least understood problems of life, in a
clear, modest and uncompromising manner, and consist of
twelve papers read at the World's Fair Congresses by the
author, who was listened to with breathless silence by the
largest audiences of the Congresses, and after each paper she
received most enthusiastic ovations.

— Louisville Courier yournal.

For sale by all newsdealers^ or sent postpaid by

Arena Publishing Co.^ Boston^ Mass,

From the pr^ss of the Arena Publishing Company.

Cuio Pouierful Isfouels on the 3¥loral $tan6ar6.

Helen H.
Gardener

m.

Helen H.
Gardener

1

Price y cloth y $i.oo ; paper ^ 50 cents.

IS THIS YOUR SON, flY LORD?

It is the opinion of some of the best contemporary
critics that this is the most powerful American novel
written in this feneration. It is the fearless protest of a
high spiritual faature against the hideous brutality of an
unchristian social code. It is a terrible exposd of conven-
tional immorality and hypocrisy. Every high-minded
woman who desires the true progression of her sex will
want to touch the inspiriting power of this book.

No braver voice was ever raised, no clearer note was ever
struck, for woman's honor and childhood's purity. — The Van-
guard^ Chicago.

A novel of power, and one which will stir up a breeze unless
certain hypocritical classes are wiser than they usually are. —
Chicago Times.

It comes very close to any college man who has kept his eyes
open. When we finish we may say, not, " Is This Your Son,
My Lord ? " but " Is it I ? " — Nassau Literary Magazine^
Princeton.

Is a remarkable book — a daring arraignment of ''society"
and the public conscience of what we are wont to call an
advanced and refined Christian civilization, for the widely dif-
ferent standards by which the " powers that be " measure the
morality, virtue and respectability of men and women. They
are alike human beings, and members of the same human fam-
ily ; through what alchemy, then, dbes vice in one lose its
viciouiness in the other ? — Detroit Sunday Tribune.

Price, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents.
PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER?

"The civil and canon law," writes Mrs. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, "state and church alike, make the mothers of the
race a helpless, ostracized class, pariahs of a corrupt civilization.
In Helen Gardener's stories I see the promise of such a work of
fiction that shall paint the awful facts of woman's position in
living colors that all must see and feel. Those who know the
sad facts of woman's life, so carefully veiled from society at
large, will not consider the pictures in this story overdrawn.
Some critics say that everyone knows and condemns these
facts in our social life, and that we do not need fiction to inten-
sify the public disgust. But to keep our sons and daughters
innocent, we must warn them of the dangers that beset
them. Ignorance under no circumstances ensures safety.
Honor protected by knowledge is safer than innocence pro-
tected by ignorance."

For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid by

Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass.

Senator Intrigfue and Inspector Noseby,

By Frances Campbell Sparhawk,

Author of "A Wedding Tangle," "Onoqua," "A Chronicle of
ConquetV *' Little Polly Blatchley/' etc.

A NOVEL THAT IS ATTRACTING WIDE ATTENTION

OPINIONS OK W»I>I^-KNO>?VN PERSONS.

*'I have read the stoiy with the deepest interest," writes the widely-
known artist and philanthropist, Mr. Herbert Welsh. ** I think it vivid,
strong and true. I am much delighted with it, and I think it illustrates well
and attractively an evil which every effort should be exerted to overthrow."

The Hon. Theodore Roosevelt says: "I began to read the story as
toon as I received it, from a sense of duty. After the first half dozen pages I
went on and finished it because I so thoroughly enjoyed it, and so thoroughly
believe in it. I think the story excellent. It made me both sad and indig-
nant to think that such things are possible, and I think the publication will
do great good."

Rev. Edward G. Porter, literary critic, writes of the story : ** It de-
serves to be widely read; it is in all respects an excellent piece of work. The
characters are well drawn, the style generally easy and forcible. The occa-
sional bold touches are in order, especially when a strong character is portrayed.
The conviction of the reader as to the writer's sincerity makes the story
painfully interesting."

Rev. Daniel Dorchester, D. D., says : "I have found it true to life and
very Uvely. I have seen many such things and people as it describes."

" I have read ' Senator Intrigue and Inspector Noseby ' with unflagging
interest to the end," says Rev. Edward A. Horton, President Unitarian
School Society. ''The writer has a happy wky of shifting the scene and
varying the incidents so that the story runs on without monotony."

.^1.

Bound in Cloth. Price SI.OO.

For sale by all Booksellen, or sont postpaid on receipt of price by Publfshers.

RED LETTER PUBLISHING COMPANY,

P. O. BOX 2G46, BOSTON.