366 



The Jotrnal of Heredity 



at the expense of .great inequalities, 

 much ]30vcrty, and a low standard of 

 public life. Others prefer a greater 

 equalization of wealth, a juster distribu- 

 tion of life's opportunities, increase in 

 the general intelligence, and achieve- 

 ment in civilization rather than in 

 money making. We hear of many 

 philanthropic measures to better the 

 condition of the poor, but there is no 

 proposal which will be so eflficacious in 

 the elevation of their status as the 

 reduction of their numbers. The prop- 

 aganda now being carried on by the 

 Neo-Mathusians and the Socialists 

 among working people, whatever may 

 be its other social consequences, will 

 raise the economic and social status of 

 those whom every true democrat de- 

 voutly wishes to share in the best that 

 Hfe affords. 



A DIFFERENTIAL DECLINE. 



Another important feature of this 

 whole problem is the probability that 

 the decline in the birth-rate has affected 

 the better stocks more generally than 

 the poorer, with the result that Western 

 nations are now reproducing themselves 

 mainly from the less able. This would 

 gradually shut off the supply of talented 

 men, of geniuses, of men who invent, 

 discover, and create, of men who set 

 new standards and lead to the perform- 

 ance of new duties. This would be to 

 add to race suicide the evils of racial 

 decay and degeneration. By the lavish 

 provision of homes, asylums, and char- 

 itable agencies of all sorts we make it 

 easy for the lazy, the shiftless, the 

 immoral, and the defective to multiply 

 apace; and by the growth of sanitary 

 and medical science we are preserving 

 a larger and larger proportion of those 

 whom nature would pronounce unfit. 



When it comes to a comparison of the 

 different economic classes there are those 

 who hold that differences in rank are due 

 entirely to differences of aljility; then 

 there are those who hold that natural 

 abilities are about equally distributed 

 among all classes. It is frequently 

 argued that the one great misfortune of 

 the poor is their poverty and that acci- 

 dent and good luck have jjlayed a leading 

 r61e in the elevation of those wh(}hai)i)en 

 to be at the top. Undoubtedly there is 



much truth in this; social arrangements 

 are not just; opportunities are far from 

 equal. But in a land where opportuni- 

 ties have been large and moderately well 

 distributed, achievement becomes in a 

 rough way an index of ability, and failure 

 for several generations marks a family 

 as of mediocre blood. In any case the 

 probability that talent is altogether as 

 frequent among the lower classes as 

 among the upper would seem to be small. 

 The social problem with reference to the 

 masses, even though they should be 

 equally talented with the classes, is to 

 so reduce their numbers and enlarge 

 their opportunities that the inherent 

 talent they do possess may become 

 socially creative. At the other end of 

 the social scale the problem is to secure a 

 perpetuation and increase of those with 

 natural ability. 



But the statistics of college graduates 

 indicate that a smaller proportion of 

 them marry than some decades ago, that 

 the age at which they marry is later, and 

 that the number of children has fallen 

 steadily and sharply. It surely cannot 

 be argued that there is no social loss 

 when families who have achieved educa- 

 tion and economic freedom fail to main- 

 tain their places in the social composi- 

 tion. 



On the other hand numerous studies 

 by Eugenics Laboratory and University 

 of London students, by Rowntree, 

 Charles Booth, and others in America 

 and Europe show that the lower the 

 wages, and therefore the natural ability, 

 the larger the family. As one ascends 

 in the economic scale the size of the 

 famil\- diminishes. However much one 

 may be impressed with the obvious in- 

 equalities of modern social arrangements 

 and the undoubted exploitation of those 

 rendered helpless by poverty the evi- 

 dence of such facts as just cited forces- 

 the conviction that there is a tendency 

 for advanced nations to die at the top 

 and to be re])lenished too abundantly 

 from their less able stocks. 



Unless we can somehow find a way tO' 

 make income proportional to inherent 

 ability and the size of the family roughly 

 pro])orti()nal to income our civilization 

 will neither meet the requirements of 

 social justice nor the essential conditions 

 of its own pennanency. Just how this 



