WHAT MAKES A RACE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 59, 7 September 1914, Page 2

WHAT MAKES A RACE

FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION DR. DAVENPORT ON HEREDITY. It was both a sign of the interest taken in eugenics nowadays and a tribute to the reputation of a distinguished visitor that an audience of nearly a thousand gathered at the Town Hall on Saturday night to hear an address by Dr. C. B. j Davenport; of America, on the eugenics and its relation to the study of heredity. Dr. Davenport is Director of the Department of Experimental Evolution, a branch of the Carnegie Institute which is doing so much by research in science. He is regarded as one of the foremost authorities in the world on the subject of eugenics and heredity, and the richness of his knowledge was well displayed in a lecture which threw for most of the audience a flood of new light on the subject. The chairman was Mr. G. Hogben, Inspector-General of Schools. Dr. Davenport first explained the general method by which the department of which Iks' was the director pursued its researches. The centre was Coldstream Harbour, Long Island, not far from New York, and in the various institutions — '■ penitentiaries, asylums, abnshouses — of the adjacent States they had trained investigators enquiring carefully into such cases as offered scope for study. They endeavoured to trace back the pedigree of these degenerates and criminals, and learn all that was possible about them. If was hoped eventually to have this kind of research earned out on an enormous scale throughout the world. Lately tlie method had been extended from State institutions, where the study might be said to be "Kakogenics" lather than "Eugenics," to the inhabitants of a small town iv Connecticut, where the population had hardly changed in two hundred years. Not only were the people there' studied, but also those of their relations who had left the town and were in a new environment. It was all intensely interesting. Then the lecturer gave a lucid account of the Mendelian theory of heredity, and how research and experiment had proved its correctness. Tho point the average man should remember about the heredity was that children did not get their traits from their parents; they were racial traits coming down through generations. It was impossible to detect any essential difference in the reproductive cells even by the most powerful microscope, but they were, nevertheless, inherent there. Dr. Davenport then explained the theory by diagrams on the screen, and showed what remarkable confirmation there was of it by actual pedigrees. It was shown that colour-blindness, for instance, appeared only in the male members of a family, but was always inherited through female members. A particularly interesting case was that of Hunt'ington's chorea, a peculiar disease like St. Vitus's dance, but practically unknown in Australasia. It was proved that the cases in America were derived from three brothers who had come over to America about the time of the War of Independence. This disease, which invai'iably carried the patient to the mental hospital to end his days, was absolutely hereditary, and the members of the family — particularly the women — were now ceasing to» marry. Particularly impressive was Dr Dayexposition of the menace of feeble-mindedness and moral degeneracy. He showed by pedigrees of families how these traits were transmitted •-from generation to generation and cumbered the State with a host of worthless people. The feeble-minded tended to increase through lack of moral control at a far 'greater rate than the normal citizen, and the whole problem was one that States must tackle. In some States of America they had passed laws for the sterilisation of these degenrates, but, as a rule, tho law was a dead letter. In Indiana, however, operations had been performed on some hundreds of persons, and in California something had been done. Alien immigration was a great problem before the United (states. When it was realised that in 16 generations from a thousand parents — graduates of the great Universities, there were only 50 offspring, and that from a similar number of Rumanian immigrants there would be 200,000 descendants in the same time, the danger was manifest. As instances of hereditary traits Dr. Davenport gave nomadism — the call to the wandering life — and dipsomania. These had been proved to be hereditary On the other hand, good qualities were hereditary also. The Perry and Piogers families in the United States, had, for instance, given to their country eight or ten naval officers of the highest rank, and there were other instances. If both parents had marked musical ability, it. would in all probability be transmitted. So, too, with other qualities, but the determiners had to be on both sides of the house for anything like certainty. In conclusion, said Dr. Davenport, the object of was to ensure that offspring should have at least as good social conditions as their parents^ The greatest blessing they could confer on their offspring was to preserve for them the purity and strength and vigour of the national blood. So when the final struggle camo between nations it would always be the vigour of intellect and physical and moral capacity that would in the long run tell. The nation which, had these developed in the highest degree, and in the greatest number of people, would survive. (Applause.) On the motion of Professor H. B. Kirk, a very nearty vote of thanks was accorded the lecturer.