Characterisation, especially ty Letters 625 



Let us then confine our ideas for the present to those districts in which other conditions are 

 also favourable, such as zealous residents of good social position, active and efficient professional 

 and administrative workers, and so forth. 



Money grants might I conceive be made, in a fair and judicious way, to eugenic families, 

 as for example one shilling weekly for each child under 15 years of age. That would amount 

 to £2. 12s. for each child annually, equal to a total sum of £39 for each child. This is a large 

 sum, but not so very large considering that the value at birth of each male child of an Essex 

 labourer was calculated by Dr Parr to be £20, and that the Old Age Pensions cost six 

 shillings weekly. Looking at it from a national point of view the money would be well spent 

 on the whole. There would of course be individual shortcomings, but an excess of individual 

 merits above the present average. 



The obvious remark is that if the money so spent be ultimately remunerative, the scheme 

 could be made self-supporting. But the difficulties of doing this seem insuperable, to say nothing 

 of the hardships of handicapping a youth who has his living to make with a serious debt. The 

 difficulties of debiting [?] arise partly from the variability of the offspring, whom it would be 

 not just to tax alike, and partly to the mobility of the population so that the whereabouts of 

 men could not be followed without a large, costly and inquisitorial bureaucracy. So far as 

 I can foresee, all attempts to recover the money spent for rearing must be abandoned and the 

 charge be borne by the State, that is by the population at large. 



A problem very desirable to solve is the average value to the State of each child, in any 

 large group of them, who are born of parents exceptionally gifted in a specified degree with the 

 qualities that make for civic worth. The hereditary element in the problem is already 



rtained with adequate precision, the difficulty mainly lies in appraising the financial value 

 of civic worth. 



No one who is conversant with English history, can doubt that the immigration of the 

 Huguenots — we need not stop to define the word — was of immense value to our country. If we 

 were agreed as to the number of pounds it was worth on the whole and knew the numbers of 

 immigrants, the average worth of each could be calculated. Thus it would be possible, though 

 not easy, to divide that worth into its components of natural gifts and nurture with fairness. 

 Dealing alone with the former and with its known intensity of hereditary transmission we 

 could arrive at the prairie value of a Huguenot child. Call it x. Then it would he a fair 

 financial transaction for the State to buy such children and to rear and educate them at a total 

 cost of £x each. In default of other data we must try to get some idea of an x value in 

 indirect ways, as by comparing the wages of picked men with those of the average. The crews 

 of Arctic exploring ships are all picked men who are attracted to this work largely no doubt 

 by a spirit of adventure, but to a considerable degree by increased pay. Whenever the attraction 

 is greater, whether in pay or otherwise, there will be more applicants than places for them. 



■ lection comes into play of corresponding degrees of rigour. 



Picked Couples. 



The offspring will be less exceptional on the average than the parents in a definite degree, 

 and we can foretell the distribution of capacity in the children of any large number of parental 

 couples who are all exceptionally gifted in any definite degree. Conversely we can tell what 

 conditions must be fulfilled in order that an influx of persons may be called into existence 

 whose average value is specified, while the distribution of capacity among them will be 

 known. 



It may be possible roughly to estimate the value to the State of such a group of persons 

 proceeding on similar lines to those followed by the late Dr Farr in calculating the value at 

 birth of a male child, son to an Essex labourer, but it is difficult. The problem which it is 

 desirable to solve is : What would be the average money value to the State of each child of a large 

 group of children, the average natural capacity of whose parents was superior to that of their 

 contemporaries, and equal to that of a group picked out of them with a specified rigour of 

 selection 1 Let x be the average value of each of these children, then it would be an advantage 

 for the State to spend any sum not exceeding x in procuring and nurturing it. Tf x were 

 known, it would be easy to consider how much the State might reasonably do. 



p o in 79 



