66 WHAT IS EUGENICS? 



making for success. These include honesty, industry, per- 

 severance, sobriety, intelligence, good-fellowship, strength, 

 and good health. Looking to the mass of mankind, the 

 man who wins his way into a better position generally 

 possesses a considerable balance of good qualities. 



Good jobs are, it is true, often obtained by favouritism. 

 Much good work is ill paid. And men often fail from want 

 of training or opportunity. These are all evils against 

 which we must fight, and they are evils which will diminish 

 with any real advance in civilization. A continuous 

 deterioration in the inborn qualities of the people would, 

 however, be certain in time to show itself in a decline in our 

 civilization, and thus put an end to all such hopes. 



Here again it may be asked. If the differential birth-rate 

 is really producing such harmful effects, why are they not 

 clearly visible ? The reason is that the causes of the harm 

 now being done have been at work for only a comparatively 

 short time, and that the changes for the worse are being 

 produced only very slowly. A century ago there was much 

 less movement up and down between the social classes ; the 

 barriers between them being then much harder to siu'mount. 

 In recent years great efforts have been made, by the award 

 of scholarships and in other ways, to pick out the best even 

 in the poorest districts, so as to help them to win high 

 wages. The families of the artizan and middle classes were 

 larger half a century ago than they are at present ; whilst 

 in the poorest quarters children were then dying with 

 terrible frequency. The smaller families now being 

 produced by those doing well-paid work leave more vacancies 

 which can be filled from outside ; and to fill them more 

 persons are available because of the diminished death-rate 

 amongst the poor. We are faced with a new and formidable 

 condition of things ; so new that it is not surprising that no 

 signs of the damage being done are yet clearly visible. 



If we look far enough into the past, the warnings we 

 may thus obtain are clear enough; for wherever civiliza- 

 tion has become very luxurious, it has begun to go down- 

 hill. One early sign of this deterioration has been the 



