ECONOMIC FACTORS IN EUGENICS 483 



in-arms and let themselves also be exploited in tlie factory, so as to keep 

 the wolf from the door. Does any society that is callous to such waste 

 of human life deserve to be called civilized? Is this heartless and 

 protracted starvation of infants by depriving them of their natural food 

 much more worthy of a civilized and so-called Christian nation than 

 was the deliberate exposure of infants to a more merciful death by 

 the ancients ? The United States is, alas ! no less guilty of such unde- 

 signed "slaugliter of the innocents" than Europe, possibly even more 

 so, for we do not even provide our women factory workers with a 

 month's maternity insurance, as is done by Austria, Germany and 

 Spain. 



I have no space in the present paper to consider the economic factors 

 of other racial problems; much less to point out in detail what eco- 

 nomic changes I think would aid most in " improving the racial quali- 

 ties of future generations." I can not conclude, however, without 

 stating my conviction that the most thorough-going economic measures 

 are urgently demanded, and at the earliest possible moment, before 

 the rapid degeneration of our people shall have brought us to the 

 danger point. 



Sir Francis Galton must have foreseen the need of economic reform 

 when he said : " The economic burden of raising a family is such as to 

 discourage many, whose qualities should be continued to other genera- 

 tions, and there can he no doubt that it would pay society to furnish 

 ample means for the industry of child raising to those who are espe- 

 cially fitted to engage in it." The philanthropy of even our American 

 millionaires would be hopelessly inadequate to furnish "ample means" 

 to a quarter of the American families, "who are especially fitted to 

 engage in child raising." Only the state, that is the nation, could foster 

 practical eugenics on such a grand scale. There is no doubt whatever 

 that state support of mothers and children would solve the race-suicide 

 problem, and I see no reason to hope that anything else will. As an 

 editorial in The Populae Science Monthly recently said, "Chil- 

 dren are no longer a financial asset to their parents, but they are this 

 to the state and to the world; the state must ultimately pay for their 

 birth and rearing." It is absurd to fear over population in America for 

 centuries to come, since, as Professor Herbert Miller has ably shown 

 in the same journal for December, 1911, the law of diminishing returns 

 is obsolete and "the resources of production show no more signs of 

 exhaustion than the heat of the sun." Finally, as soon as public 

 opinion has been educated sufficiently to appreciate the justice as well 

 as the desirability of such legislation, there seems to be no reason why 

 an intelligent cooperative commonwealth could not or would not prevent 

 the conspicuously unfit from marrying or reproducing at all, discourage 

 the relatively unfit, and encourage the fit, in every way consistent with 

 humanity. 



