Better Peas, Pigs, People

Some Japanese beetles which got into Princeton's gardens of pedigreed primroses were major news last week to two international learned bodies--the International Congress of Eugenics meeting in Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History and the International Congress of Genetics meeting at Cornell (Ithaca, N. Y.). There are 23,000 primroses in the gardens, whose complete genealogical histories Professor George Harrison Shull sedulously registers. From those histories statisticans deduce laws of heredity which govern primroses, peas, pigs and people. The Japanese beetles were injuring the primroses. Professor Shull obtained a grant-in-aid from the National Research Council to buy some beetle poison.

Another consternating item of last week's news was the summary discharge of Emil Gumbel, statistician visiting the Genetics Congress, from his professorship in the University of Heidelberg. The reported reason: he had offended Heidelberg's patriotic sentiment by declaring that "a turnip is better than a war monument, than a statue adorned by scantily clad ladies." Professor Gumbel denied saying this.

Exciting in themselves were the events of the two congresses--Genetics trying to understand the seeds of all living things, Eugenics trying to improve humankind.

Doom? Eugenists view with alarm the world's future population. From England wrote Major Leonard Darwin, 82, eugenist son of Evolutionist Charles Darwin: "My firm conviction is that if widespread eugenic reforms are not adopted during the next hundred years or so, our Western civilization is inevitably destined to such a slow and gradual decay as that which has been experienced in the past by every great ancient civilization."

Women to the Rescue? Sterilizing or segregating "the socially inadequate" has been the eugenists' favorite preventive of threatened doom. Sages--notably President Henry Fairfield Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History and Dr. Jacob Sanders of Rotterdam--now are urging "gifted" women to come to the world's rescue.

Urged Dr. Sanders: "Women should again be won over to the idea of the large family. Nowadays women prefer fashion to children. We must get rid of the idea of feminism in its old form, according to which woman should be man's equal in every respect, professionally, politically and as regards salary. The theory of this so-called equality of the sexes is absolutely incorrect, not only physiologically and biologically but also socially and politically. Woman is indeed man's equivalent, but they each have their own particular task to perform in the world. The woman's main duty always has been and always will be the family. The university woman must know, understand and feel that marriage and children represent, after all is said and done, the highest ideal."

Dr. Osborn was harder in his biology: "The birth-control propagandists claim to be benefactors of womankind, whose great object is to relieve women of unnecessary suffering and unnecessary burdens. The attempt to relieve womankind of what may be termed the prehistoric and historic burden of the female of the species naturally enlists the sympathy both of the individualists of our time, who are ready to support any measure to give women greater freedom of profession and of action, as well as of the sentimentalists, who do not realize that women's share in the hard struggle for the existence of the race is a very essential element in the advance of womankind."

Every intelligent individual, particularly women, he argued, "should understand these and other simple biological facts as early as the period of adolescence."

To the Rescue of Women. This brought Professor Hermann Joseph Midler (U. of Texas) roaring to the rescue of Woman: "Do male eugenists suffer from the illusion that most intelligent women love to be pregnant and to endure not only the physical disabilities, but also the shame and humiliation, and the difficulties of maintaining a job, that childbirth involves in our society? That they love the frightful ordeal of childbirth, so seldom relieved by competent medical treatment? That they love to spend 40,000 or 50,000 hours washing diapers, getting up in the night, tending colic, meeting in a city flat the little savages' requirements of safe outdoor activity and companionship, stewing soups and milks, acting as household drudges, and either abstaining from the life of the outer world entirely or else staggering under the double burden of a very inferior position outside and work in the home as well?"

He proposed that eugenists wait before issuing their procreative fiats until they all agreed on what kind of individuals society requires. He taunted his colleagues with failing to illustrate their own principle of successful reproduction.

Bonus. If states paid $50 a month to parents of good heredity when their third child reaches its fifth birthday, and $10 or more a month for each additional child. Such bonuses would give eugenists a powerful economic advocate for their cause. --Dr. Renato Kehl of Rio de Janeiro. He also advocated high inheritance taxes for families of few children, large reductions for big families.

Hale Immigrants. Let there be a free migration of eugenically hale individuals, urged Dr. D. F. Ramos of Havana. Each nation may decide what genetic factors it considers essential and examine immigrants for those factors. If an immigrant's child shows any bad characteristics, that child may be deported. If one of the child's parents is native born, the hybrid child has the just privilege of trying to prove that the bad inheritance originated locally, was not imported. In such case the child may continue to live where he was born. Weighty approver of Dr. Ramos' suggestion is the Pan-American Conference of Eugenics & Homiculture.

Acidic Girls, Bicarbonate Boys. Through Dr. Sanders (see above) Dr. F. Unterberger of Koenigsberg sent word that if women drink great quantities of bicarbonate of soda, they will bear only sons. A lactic acid diet produces only girls. Dr. Unterberger verified his theory with 78 daughter-surfeited German women. All but one bore sons. The exception had broken her alkaline regime. Six cows fed lactic acid each produced a female calf.

Model U. S. Male. In the halls of the American Museum of Natural History the eugenists set up a vast educational exhibit which will last until Sept. 22. Charts prepared by Dr. Harry Hamilton Langhlin of the Carnegie Institution outlined the genealogies of Presidents Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt. The Washington line had 26 men of note during 179 years. Lincoln's had twelve important men in 186 years; Roosevelt's 44 in 309 years. Lincoln's stock crossed with that of Daniel Boone. Meticulously Dr. Laughlin recorded that Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, was Mrs. Lucy Hanks Sparrow's natural child. Other charts indicate that most people who have taken out U. S. patents, and hence are presumably inventive, have been of French descent. Next come Swedish, Dutch, Danish, German descendants. Men get baldheadedness, like hemophilia, only through their mothers, who always are unaffected. Women also transmit wanderlust.

Outstanding in the exhibition is the plaster composite of what 100,000 U. S. soldiers looked like when the War ended. No husky was that average U. S. male, according to the conglomerate of his physical measurements. He was of slight build, flat-chested, inclined to paunchiness, obviously a worker at a sedentary occupation.

Worst Species from which to get genetics data is Man. But it is all-important to test out the laws of heredity on man. Dr. Charles Benedict Davenport, director of Cold Spring Harbor Genetics Station and president of last week's Eugenics Congress, recognized in various social strata a means of observing heredity at work. Useful groups are naval families "whose social interrelations are such that the young men and women are brought early into contact." Other intermarrying social stratifications: college communities, politicians and statesmen who sojourn with their families in legislative capitals; artists who tend to live in colonies; the deaf who can talk only with those who know the sign language; exiled missionaries; "farm and valley communities in this country with their high incidence of feeble-mindedness."

Important Genetics Problems. Every living thing contains one or more cells. Every cell contains microscopic bodies called chromosomes. Every chromosome contains utterly invisible, nonetheless individual units called genes. The natures and combinations of the genes and chromosomes in the germ cells of parents determine what sort of offspring they will have. In this conception of heredity, with which Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan of California Institute of Technology had a great deal to do, genetics has given itself a mechanistic picture of what goes on in the germ cells.* What are the future problems of genetics? Dr. Morgan as president of the Genetics Congress asked himself. His answers:

1) How do genes grow and duplicate themselves, physically and physiologically?

2) Exactly what happens, in terms of physics, when the chromosomes of parental cells merge?

3) Precisely how do genes affect the whole cell and determine the characteristics of the whole body?

4) What chemico-physical changes occur when a gene becomes altered?

5) How can we best apply our knowledge of genetics to horticulture and animal husbandry?

*Published just before the international congresses met was Dr. Morgan's Scientific Basis oj Evolution.--Norton ($3.50).

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