Race suicide

“ Ever since the dawn of history, and probably for long ages before that, our race has been struggling against this blind insanity of nature. Poor, bewildered Theodore Roosevelt stormed at what he called "race suicide," thinking it was some brand new and terrible modern corruption; but nowhere do we find a primitive tribe, nowhere in history do we find a race which did not seek to save itself from overgrowth and consequent starvation. ”

“ The “population question,” with the endlessly mischievous readjustment it demands, must be eliminated before the great House of Life can be built up on a strong solid human foundation, to lift its soaring pinnacles towards the skies. That is what many bitter experiences are beginning to teach us. In the future we are likely to be much less concerned about “race-suicide,” though we can never be too concerned about race-murder. ”

“ The Eugenists know that much of the talk concerning Race Suicide is not only futile and uncalled for, but is also in a sense misleading and actually dangerous. The real danger of Race Suicide comes not from the decreasing birth-rate, but from the excessive, ignorant, and unscientific bearing and rearing of children by unfit parents. ”

“ In each case even « 15 » where at first quantity was considered of no importance compared with quality, there has been a steady and unmistakable increase in the effective numbers side by side with a gigantic development of those elements of strength or beauty which have been arrived at. Race suicide is a metaphysical phrase not easily open to definition, but two things may be said about it at this stage. Race improvement is utterly inconsistent with any intelligent conception of race suicide. ”

“ But fairness and honest thought should admit freely that so far as is concerned the question of its being a factor toward Race Suicide, we must pronounce a verdict of "Not Guilty" upon Birth Control. On the contrary, the contrary course of teaching and practice, if carried to their full logical conclusion, would inevitably bring the race to such a stage of degeneracy, and retrogression to primitive type, that a fate far worse than suicide would befall the human race. ”

“ In war-time England, in 1917, the birth-rate sank to 17.8, yet the death-rate was at 14 and the increase of the population continued. The more the human race commits this kind of suicide, one is tempted to exclaim, the faster it grows!
It is, however, in the New World—as in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—that we find the most impressive evidence of the real criteria of the growth in population set up for judgment on the racial suicide cranks. Canadian statistics bring out many points instructive even in their variation. ”

“ There is thus a force that prevents degeneration even where the reduction of disease and humanitarian motives tend to permit the survival of the weak. Race suicide does in a generation what disease and brutality would have done in a few years. ”

“ If those persons who raise the cry of "race suicide" in face of the decline of the birthrate really had the knowledge and intelligence to realize the manifold evils which they are invoking they would deserve to be treated as criminals. ”

“ Thus this versatile race, with distinct native ability, is meeting in our cities the same displacement and is resorting to the same race suicide which itself inflicted a generation or two earlier on the native colonial stock. ”

“ Equally obvious must it appear to the cosmopolite of some generation of the future that quality rather than mere numbers must determine the efficiency of any given community. Race suicide will then cease to be a bugbear ”

“ We can't build institutions fast enough to hold the mental cases, nor train doctors enough to care for them. Shifting them into other jobs in other areas doesn't cure, and it no longer even disguises what is happening. At this rate, another ten years will see half the nation going insane. And it's like this all over the world.
"This is race-suicide, Art. Race-suicide through sheer fecundity. Leffingwell is right. The reproductive instinct, unchecked, will overbalance group survival in the end. ”

“ I saw Charley stop and drop several coins into Joe’s outstretched hand, and heard his “Oh, thank you, Charley! I’ll go to your show every time you come back to Pottsville.”
RACE SUICIDE
During the last ten years race suicide has been one of the leading problems of life, and on several occasions I have written my views on this subject. I have not changed my views at all after hearing the many arguments of the old conservative “stand patters” who try to imitate Solomon and the other prolific polygamists of long ago. There is no such a thing as race suicide. ”

“ The changes of rate produced by Race mingling can be studied, not only in countries where the process has been going on for centuries, but also in respect to recent movements of men. When Europeans emigrate, they are found to carry with them to their new home their peculiarities in regard to Suicide: the several races of Germans have a high rate at home, and on examination of the records of a country peopled by emigration, of New York, for instance, we find that the Germans there kill themselves more often than the Anglo-Saxon element, which has in its home a low suicide rate. ”

“ The fact is, that among the slaves of the African race these things are almost wholly unknown. However frequent suicide may have been among those brought from Africa, I can say that in my time I cannot remember to have known or heard of a single instance of deliberate self-destruction, and but of one of suicide at all. ”

“ The end of the human race, if ever it comes, will be due to the human race itself. If the race dies, it will die by suicide. And suicide is a matter of psychology.
Let us examine the possibility of a voluntary euthanasia of the human race. It seems the only sort of suicide that is at all conceivable. Can we imagine a state of things arising in which the leaders will say: “We have lived long enough. Our race has had a glorious history, let it have a glorious end. We cannot and will not bow to the new conditions imposed by Nature. We would rather die and end it all. ”

“ Australia has laid it down as an unalterable policy that the continent shall be a white-man country. How can that policy hold in Australia with a birthrate of 10 and in New Zealand with a birthrate of 9 {35} per thousand? The abounding birthrate of Japan and China demands an outlet. If the men of British race succumb to race-weariness and adhere to the policy of racial suicide, they must give place to those that are not yet weary of life. It will be impossible for any race in the future to hold territories which they cannot occupy, and lands which they cannot replenish or cultivate. ”

“ On himself he passes sentence of death: it is the tradition of the family, the secret vow of self-destruction handed down through ages from father to son. But he must have aid: in these days it is difficult for a man to commit the suicidal act without detection—and if madness is a disgrace to the race, equally so is suicide. Besides, the family is to be enriched by the insurances on his life, and is thereby to be allied with royal blood; but the money will be lost if the suicide be detected. ”

“ Sociological writers have pointed to the steady increase in suicide as one of the most alarming characteristics of modern civilised life, inasmuch as it seems to indicate a biological deterioration of the race. Probably this is so in Europe, where religious and ethical teachings set so high a value on life that the man who deprives himself of it of his own accord is commonly regarded as either a criminal or a lunatic; but we must beware of supposing that if suicide indicates biological decay in England or Saxony it has the same indication among the populations of the Far East. ”

“ To do so is to encourage the race to commit political suicide; and the race that is willing to commit political suicide is the race that will be driven to the wall, that will be the football of every other race within the Republic. ”

“ I have seen Indians living on their bare and meager reservations, with no jobs, with an unemployment rate of 80 percent, and with so little hope for the future, so little hope for the future that for young people, for young men and women in their teens, the greatest cause of death amongst them is suicide.
That they end their lives by killing themselves - I don't think that we have to accept that - for the first American, for this minority here in the United States. ”

“ In its racial aspect, why is the suicide rate of Japan eight times that of Portugal, and the rate of American whites eight or ten times that of full-blooded American blacks? Why do the Slavs of Bohemia kill themselves at the rate of 158 per million, while the Slavs of Russia commit suicide at the rate of only 31 per million? Why do emigrants, going to a new country, carry their national suicide rates with them, and maintain such rates, with little or no alteration, long after their environment has completely changed? ”

“ Those who commit suicide are buried in different places from others, as it is supposed that they will not be allowed to mix in the “Seven-storied Sabayau,” or Paradise, with such of their fellow-countrymen as come by their death in a natural manner, or through the influence of the spirits.
Black is the sign of mourning among the Indians of North America, as among us; but among these savage populations grief is manifested by other signs than the gloomy colour of the dress. The Crows cut part of their hair on the death of a relation. ”

“ His theory of the mutilation of soul with body could not be brought more vividly into view than in that ugly story of the West Indian planter, whose slaves began to seek in suicide at once relief from present misery and restoration to their native land; but the white man was too cunning for them, he cut off the heads and hands of the corpses, and the survivors saw that not even death could save them from a master who could maim their very souls in the next world. [697] The same rude and primitive belief continues among nations risen far higher in intellectual rank. ”

“ Nor do I remember, upon any occasion whatever, to have seen an African shed a tear, though they beg for mercy with the greatest earnestness when ordered to be flogged for offences which they are conscious deserve to be punished; but if they think their punishment unmerited, immediate suicide is too often the fatal consequence, especially amongst the Coromantyn negroes, who frequently, during the act of flagellation, throw back their heads in the neck, and [270] swallow their tongue, which choaks them upon the spot, when they drop dead in the presence of their masters. ”

“ It is a crime that awakens the intensest abhorrence and tempts mankind to kill the criminal on first sight.
But this charge thus brought against the Negro and as constantly reiterated by his enemies, is plainly enough not merely a charge against the individual culprit, as would be the case with an individual of any other race, but it is in large measure a charge constructively against the coloured people as such. It throws over every man of colour a mantle of odium, and sets upon him a mark of popular hate, more distressing than the mark set upon the first murderer. ”

“ But that really grand system of legalized self-murder which was for ages the privilege of all who felt wounded in their honor, gives the Japanese a horrible pre-eminence in the Hara-kiri, and crime though we call it, there was much to admire in the stately heroism of those orderly suicides, notable for their fine appreciation of the dignity of Death, their reverent courtesy to his awful terrors, and sublime scorn for pain of body. From their infancy they looked forward to suicide as a terrible probability, the great event for which through the intervening years they had to prepare themselves. ”

“ Only those who know how the negro cleaves to all the dear, familiar things of life, how fond he is of warmth and friiendliness, can conceive the physical and mental shock that this introduction to new conditions meant to them. To people of our own race it could have meant death. But these wonderful folk appear to have withstood the trials of their deportation in a marvelous way. ”

“ The very churchyard was denied them, and their mortal remains were deposited by the roadside, where only the suicide or the murderer found a grave; while, should a white man be seen to take one of them, even the most respectable among the class, by the hand, in the way of social intimacy, that white man would be scouted from all ranks of society for his indecorous behaviour. ”

“ I have found no evidence whatever to support this supposition.
The elementry instinct of self-preservation is no stronger in the Native than in the white man. Suicide is not at all uncommon among the Bantu. I have seen many instances of Natives who have shown a calm and philosophical disregard of death where life has seemed no longer desirable. ”

“ When the negroes see that resistance is no longer of avail, they frequently prefer suicide, unless prevented, to slavery; and thus it often occurs that a father rips up the abdomen of his wife, then of his children, and lastly murders himself, to avoid falling alive into the hands of the enemy. Others endeavour to escape captivity by secreting themselves in caverns, where they pass many days without food ”

“ This shows plainly that the Southern states with the largest Negro contingent do not show any higher death rate than the Northern states where the Negro is not a considerable factor. There is no evidence, certainly none brought forward by the author, to show that the death rate of the Negro in the country at large is much in excess of that of the whites. “In the rural districts the mortality of the Negro is not excessive; it is in the cities and towns where he is brought into close contact with the evils and vices of civilization that he dies so rapidly.” ”