CARE OF INFERIOR STOCKS 293 



comfortably situated would have to be contented with 

 positions somewhat inferior, on the average, to those 

 of their parents. This is precisely the condition of 

 affairs most desirable from the point of view of race- 

 improvement and from that of national efficiency, 

 since any given position would thus be recruited from a 

 better and not from a worse class than the one which 

 previously occupied it. The individual may be par- 

 doned if this is not what he desires to happen in the 

 case of his own children. 



National education and the proposed feeding and 

 care of the children of inferior stocks at the cost of the 

 State are measures which will have certain definite 

 effects upon the relative birth-rates of different classes. 



It is proposed to do all this at the expense of the 

 fitter stock, which is thus rendered still less capable 

 of raising, as well as still less disposed to raise, large 

 families of healthy children. Such measures can only 

 be justified by making at the same time every possible 

 effort to correct these dangerous differences in the 

 incidence of the birth-rate. Legislation in these two 

 directions ought to go hand in hand. Indeed, the 

 improvement in the supply of children ought for every 

 reason to precede the improvement in the care and 

 education of children ; for if the State cares for the 

 children, it has a right to insist that the supply of 

 children shall be the best possible, and this is far from 

 being the case at present. 



Remedies for the existing condition of things have 

 been proposed by would-be philanthropists from Plato 

 downwards. But against all suggestions for running 



