Taking the evidence as it comes to him from records of daily experience which are written into the public documents of all countries, [Dr Schlapp] finds unmistakable evidence of deterioration in the human race. This does not mean that men and women to-day are not physically and mentally as well endowed as ever they were, but that there are more abnormal men, women, and children now than at any time since the establishment of the present civilization.

There are more insane, more criminals, more divorced people, and fewer children born to each one thousand of population, and this he traces directly to modern conditions. All civilizations that have gone before have had precisely the same experience that the world is passing through now, and for precisely that reason Dr. Schlapp believes that this civilization will go the way they have gone until the point of exhaustion is reached. Then there will be a resting period, and the human family will begin to advance once more.

The energetic, enterprising woman, he says, is not at all new. The suffragist or suffragette is as old as organized government. When the Grecian Empire was at its highest stages of development its advanced women were clamoring for the right of suffrage, and so it was in Rome before its fall, and Dr. Schlapp, who calls attention to this by way of illustration, has no doubt that the same condition existed in Egypt in some form or other about the time Egypt passed into the darkness.

If I understand the argument correctly, Dr. Schlapp is saying that when a civilization reaches a point where women begin to seek more duties outside the home, it suffers in other ways: fewer children, more divorces, and more insane people. If Dr. Schlapp can show a causal relationship, then it raises more questions: is it better to have a civilization where women are relegated to the home and have no authority but there are more traditional households, or one where women have more freedom, rights, and responsibilities, but there’s a higher number of divorces and fewer kids?

ACTIVITY OF MODERN WOMAN A RACIAL PROBLEM: Dr. Max G. Schlapp, Specialist in Mental Diseases, Believes that Present Conditions Tend Toward Increase in Insanity, Divorce, Race Suicide. (PDF)

From August 13, 1911