"We regard with disapproval the bloody combats of some savage tribe; we regard with horror the sacrifice of children and prisoners to some idol of a Phenician [sp] Moloch [A god of Ammonites and Phoenicians to whom children were sacrificed.] or Mexican Huitzlio-Potchli [An Aztec god. Child sacrifice.]; we are shocked at the criminal proceedings of the infamous Torquemada [1420-1498. A Spanish Dominican Catholic monk whom Pope Innocent VIII {1432-1492 ad. Pope 1484-1492 ad. A vicious Genoese.} made grand inquisitor in 1487. Under Torquemada's hegemony, countless Jews, suspect witches, and others were tortured and killed in Spain's Inquisition.] with his inquisition glorying in its terrors and tortures in the name of Christ; we are sickened as we read of the religious wars in Europe; we shudder at the horrors of the night of St. Bartholomew [Catholics celebrate their massacre of 50,000 Huguenots under Pope Clement XIII's inquisition and he congratulated Catherine de' Medici who urged Catholics to disembowel Gaspard, Admiral de Coligny, and throw him from his window still alive]; we are appalled by the recent slaughters of the Jews in Russia, by the wholesale massacre of the Christians in Turkey.

"All such atrocities, we say, belong to"

(Our bracketed notes.)

Beware: this is gruesome!

"barbaric ages and are only committed in semi-civilized countries. We flatter ourselves that we are different in this age of enlightenment and civilization. Are we different? Have we changed? Have we a right to fling stones at our older brothers, the savage and the barbarian? We are so used to our life that we do not notice its evils and misery. We can easily see the mote in the eye of our neighbor, but do not notice the beam in our own.

"We are still savage at heart. Our civilization is mere gloss, a thin coating of paint and varnish. Our methods of inflicting pain are more refined than those of the Indian, but no less cruel, while the number of the victims sacrificed to our greed and rapacity may even exceed the numbers fallen by the sword of the barbarian or by the torch of the fanatic. The slums in our cities are foul and filthy,"

"teeming with deadly germs of disease where the mortality of our infants and children in some cases rises to the frightful figure of 204 per thousand!

"The sanitary conditions of our cities are filthy and deadly. They carry in their wake all forms of plagues, pests and diseases, among which tuberculosis is so well known to the laity. 'Tuberculosis,' reads a report of a Tenement House Commission, 'is one of the results of our inhumane tenements; it follows in the train of our inhumane sweatshops. It comes where the hours of labor are long and the wages are small; it afflicts the children who are sent to labor when they should yet be in school.'

"'The Consumers' League,' says Mr. John Graham Brooks, 'long hesitated to lay stress upon these aspects of filth and disease, because of their alarmist and sensational"

"nature, and of the immediate and grave risk to the consumer of the goods manufactured in the sweatshop and the tenement house. If the sweatshop spread diphtheria and scarlet fever, there is the hue and cry before personal danger. But these diseases are the very slightest elements of the real risk to the general good. It is the spoiled human life, with its deadly legacy of enfeebled mind and body, that reacts directly and indirectly on the social whole.' We do not realize that we drift into national degeneracy. We fail to realize that we raise a generation of stunted lives, of physical and nervous wrecks, of mental invalids and moral cripples.

"We boast of our wealth unrivalled by other countries and by former ages. We should remember the great poverty of our masses, the filthy conditions of our wealthy"

"cities, with their loathsome city-slums, in which human beings live, breed and teem like so many worms.

"We spend on barrack and prisons more than we do on schools and colleges. What is the level of a civilization in which the cost of crime and war far exceeds that of the education of its future citizens? We spend on our army and navy a quarter of a billion dollars, which is found to be insufficient, while the 'total money burden of crime amounts in this country to the enormous sum of 600 million dollars a year!'

"The cost of crime alone is so enormous that a representative of the Board of Charities of one of our Eastern states considers 'the entire abolition of all the penal codes and the complete liberty of the criminal class.' Our civilization can boast of the city-slum, the abode of misery"

(Our bold emphasis.)


This is no longer true, fortunately.

Aren't these numbers amazing compared to today? Military spending is up 1000-fold, at least.

Boris' heart would fail were he here to see our profligate waste today.

We agree with him that society borne ills may be partially corrected by 'better' parental and institutional education, but some ills are borne on genetics, and we are seeing massive and rapid changes now in n-somias on chromosome 23 and less so on chromosome 21. Still, he is right, society must find a way to deal with this.

"and crime, the gift of our modern industrial progress, wealth and prosperity.

"Professor James and myself were over once on a visit to a charitable institution for mentally defective. With his clear eye for the incongruities and absurdities of life, Professor James remarked to me that idiots and imbeciles were given the comforts, in fact, the luxuries of life, while healthy children, able boys and girls, had to struggle for a livelihood. [Boris' references to "Professor James" are to William James, philosopher and psychologist. James mentored both Boris and William James Sidis (named for William James). William James was WJS' godfather. Boris dedicated his 1904 book, Multiple Personality, to William James thus, "Who has drawn my attention to the vast and important domain of abnormal mental life, who has inspired me with love for the study of the 'varieties' of human experience, who has given me sympathy and hearty support in many an hour of trial, this work is affectionately dedicated."] Children under fourteen work in factories, work at a wage of about twenty-five cents a day, and, according to the labor bureau, the daily wage of the factory children of the South is often as low as fifteen cents and sometimes falls to nine cents. In many of our colleges many a student has to live on the verge of starvation, freeze in a summer overcoat the whole winter and warm his room by burning newspapers in"

"the grate. We are charitable and help our mediocrities, imbeciles and idiots, while we neglect our talent and genius. We have a blind faith that genius, like murder, will out. We know of successful talent, but we do not know of the great amount of unsuccessful talent and genius that has gone to waste. We favor imbecility and slight genius.

"One of the physicians of the institution overheard our conversation and attempted to justify his work by an argument commonly advanced and uncritically accepted — 'Our civilization, our Christian civilization values human life.' Does our civilization really value human life? The infant mortality of the slums of our large cities and the factory work of our young children do not seem to justify such a claim.

"The loss of life on our railways is as"

"large as one caused by a national war. Thus the number of persons killed on American railways ending June 30, 1900, was about 22,000, while the mortality of British forces, including death from disease, during three years of the South African war amounted to 22,000. In 1901, one out of every 400 railway employees was killed and one out of every 26 was injured. In 1902, 2,969 employees were killed and 50,524 were injured.

"Commenting on the statistics of railway accidents, Mr. John Graham Brooks says: 'One has to read and re-read these figures before their [gruesome] [PDR corrected "grewsome" spelling, 3May2000] significance is in the least clear. If we add the mining, iron and lumbering industries, — portions of which are more dangerous than the railroad, — some conception is possible of the mutilated life due to machinery as it is now run.' It may"

(Our bold emphasis. Our bracketed notes.)
By comparison, consider today's (1996-1998 CDC, et al.) "gruesome" death statistics:

Total US deaths/year:- Abortion:---------------- Heart disease:---------- Cancer:------------------ Smoking:---------------- Brain vascular:---------- Pulmonary:-------------- All accidents:----------- HIV:--------------------- Guns:-------------------- All other:----------------

4 million 1.4 million 760 thousand 560 thousand 400 thousand 170 thousand 110 thousand 100 thousand 32 thousand << 22 thousand 446 thousand

While socialists fight with all their 'courage' and might HIV and gun deaths, they encourage more abortion, while telling their constituents, "We are doing it for the children." Did I say "keel-up," on page 18? Doug.

"also be of interest to learn that, according to the calculation made by a representative of one of the insurance companies, more than a million and a half are annually killed and injured in the United States alone.

"The waste of human life is in fact greater than in any previous age. Saul [11^th century bc. First king of Israel. In Mt. Gilboa battle, committed suicide to avoid capture by Philistines. Succeeded by David.] hath slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands.' Think of our modern warfare, with its infernal machines of carnage, mowing down more men in a day than the warlike Assyrians and Romans with their crude bows, arrows and catapults, could destroy in a century. And is not our country, our civilized Christian society, with its high valuation of human life, keeping on increasing its army and navy, and perfecting deadly weapons of slaughter and carnage? What about the justice dealt out by Judge Lynch? [Re: Captain William Lynch's 1780 'law' to deal effectively and vigilante style with serious offenders ("villains") of public interests.] From"