Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1875-06-20
NASHVILLE. TENN. SUNDAY, JUNE 20, 1876
ARE WE DEGENERATING?
Moral, Not Physical, Stamina what
is Needed.
~ u,-f- s.

The talk about the degeneracy Of
our people, Of which we periodically
hear a good deal, belongs to class Of
assertion in which people Of little OBJ
servatiOp and too easy generalization
are fond of indulging. One would
need to have before him a vast body of
comparative facts to enable him to
form a decisive and authoritative Opin-
ion on such a question-purely one Of
fact-and those data are not readily at
hand IN quantity sufficient for the pur-
pose. Observation, however, the ex-
perience Of physicians, the Official re-
cords of the enHstments Of the civil
war, the catalogues Of colleges, the
stream Of men and women on Broad
way, and the begies Of children IN the
parks, furnish material for forming a
conclusion, the tendency of which Is
counter 10 that Of those who bemOan
the degeneracy Of the race In America
President EliO. of Harvard uni
versity, in his annual report, gave
facts to show that the muscular deyel-
opment Of the students at that college
had steadily advanced during a series
of years up to the present time. SINH
Tar observations and records have not
been furnished By other colleges, but
the looks of the young athletes who
strip for the boating regattas, indicate
that the muscle and fibre of strong
men are in their possession. The i'm
petus which boating and the training
preparatory to it received from Har-
ward and Yale now about quarter Of
a century ago, has excited among col
lege students all over the country the
ambition Of physical development. The
effect has been palpable in ruddier
health and more vigorous bodies.
The supply Of vigorous men for the
cities from the farms Of the country is
here at the East steadily and rapidly
diminishing 1t is largely eounteract-
ed, however, BY better food and cook
idg than that Of earlier days. The av-
elage diet Of the New England farmer
vas the faithful adjutant Of the devil
Of dyspepsia, and it ragged there as no.
where else IN the world. Within the
last ten or twenty years the diet has
much improved IN his own home, and
been vastly bettered in the homes his
sons have made for themselves IN the
cities. In the West, chills and fever
PLAYED sad havoc with constitutions
fortified by quinine, but as the settle
ments grow older, marshes are filed up,
dead wood removed, drainage intro
duced, and the soil longer turned up
and exposed TO the sun, the "shakes" 3"
grow less prevalent, and we may hope
for less hatchety faces among our
Western brothers, of which the gaunt
visage Of Lincoln was a memorable
type.
More directly striking at the pith Of
the question of degeneracy, we come to
our American women, the mothers Of
our race. No one with large oppOrtu-
mites and competent observation, who
has really studied their physical cOndi-
ton, will find in it, as a whole, any
cause Of dependency for the future of
the American people. They dress
more in accordance with hygienic laws
than formerly, they take more outdoor
exercise, they eat better food, fashion
gives them better opportunities of
keeping the forms nature gave them
notably it no longer rates their beauty
inversely TO the inches In the measure
of their waists. The dissipation of
fashionable city life tell here as every
where else, but no more, except that
our drier climate and those other subtle
and almost indefnable influences which
we know as climatic, perhaps exert a
severer strainon the nerves than is the
case IN England and IN Europe gene
rally. Our unsettled life and stimulat-
ing ambition for wealth and social pc
sition also have their bad effects on
nerves 50 highly strung as are those OF
our people; but the tendency Is toward
greater quiet-spite of Wall street
and as the country grows older, such
sort Of society as we have must tend
to crystalize itself into definite shapes.
If any one feels very desperate about
this American degeneracy, and fears a
lapse into permanent melanchOha on
its account, let him drop his occupa-
tions for day and mingle with the
blooming youngsters IN Central Park.
He will fndl there as fine a lot Of
babies as be would wish to see-babies
who look as if they had the stuff in them
to develop into men and women capa-
bic of keeping this busy country of
ours in the line of progress when We
are gone; and he will be convinced that
our physical degeneracy is a phantasm.
We certainly need, however, greater
moral stamina. The war covered the
land with graves, and 1t also left be-
hind it a troop of haunting spectres of
greed, dishonesty, shoddy, things in
false relations, regulations unearned,
commercial, social, political and even
religious methods whose sure tendency
is to decentralization. The assault on
these monsters is to-day the most press
inrr dufv of the Datriotic Amprican