Homo-Culture; Or, The Improvement of Offspring Through Wiser GenerationHolbrook, M. L. (Martin Luther)
Philosophy
Homo-Culture; Or, The Improvement of Offspring Through Wiser Generation
Holbrook, M. L. (Martin Luther)
Eugenics; Heredity
"I was in charge of the Massachusetts State Reform School for several
years, when every inmate (there were between three and four hundred) was
born before the Civil War--during the time of the great anti-slavery
agitation, which did so much to educate the moral sense of the people.
"I was again in charge of the same institution _when every inmate was
born during, or soon after the war, when the mothers were reading,
talking and dreaming of battles, and of husbands, fathers or brothers
who had gone to the war_.
"_I found as great a difference in the character of those inmates born
before and after the Civil War as exists between a civilized and a
savage nation._
"_Those under my care the second time were much more difficult to
control, more quarrelsome and defiant, less willing to work or study.
The crimes for which they were sentenced were as different as their
characters._
"It was not uncommon for them to be sentenced for breaking and entering
with deadly weapons.
"This difference was not confined to inmates of reform schools, but it
was manifest throughout all classes.
"After the war crimes increased rapidly. In Boston garroting was common,
and was only checked by Judge Russell sentencing all such subjects to
the full extent of the law.
"Before the close of the Civil War the State Prison at Charlestown,
under Mr. Gideon Haynes, was, according to Dr. D. C. Wines, D. D., the
model prison of the United States. Since that time it has been almost
impossible to maintain proper discipline, owing, no doubt, to the more
desperate character of the inmates.
"Let us try to trace these effects back to their causes, and prove, if
possible, that whatsoever a man (or nation) soweth, that shall it also
reap."
But there are other ways in which war militates against the noblest
motherhood. Camp life is a school for vice and prostitution. In Camp
Chickamauga, which is a sample of them all, during the war with Spain on
account of Cuba, the amount and baseness of the prostitution by the
soldiers, with both black and white women, exceeded description. In a
single day forty-one cases of specific disease applied to the physicians
at the hospitals for treatment. These things were not reported in the
daily papers; they were too vile. The place was a hot-bed of vice,
rather than a school of virtue and patriotism. In all European armies it
is the same. In times of peace, soldiers from the highest to the lowest
in rank, insist that facility shall be allowed them for the
gratification of their passional natures. The officers, not being
permitted to marry unless they or their wives have a certain income,
keep their mistresses, and not a female servant near a camp is safe. The
immoral influences here generated spread throughout society, lower the
standard of morals among both men and women in private life, and
jeopardize the interests of children born or unborn, morally and
intellectually, as well as physically.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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