SEX AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 229 



These considerations show clearly, I think, that 

 those who are most influential in the control of the 

 destinies of our people should, on the one hand, 

 encourage and stimulate them to leave the ranks of 

 unskilled labor, and to enter those of skilled produc- 

 tion, while, on the other, they teach them the im- 

 mense importance of being able to regulate the size 

 of their families. These two aims, when once their 

 combined influence is understood, must prove po- 

 tent measures of elevation for the lowest classes. It 

 may be objected that it is impracticable materially 

 to facilitate the entry of the unskilled laborer into 

 the class of the skilled workman. The more careful 

 examination of this question is one which must be 

 postponed to a later chapter, and the subject may 

 be dismissed for the present with the remark that 

 the contention just now that the unskilled can be 

 developed in order to swell the ranks of the skilled 

 is based on the proposition that increased produc- 

 tion of wealth per capita is certain to follow the 

 wider extension of those scientific methods of pro- 

 duction which modern inventiveness has placed in 

 our hands. The only real obstacle to the realiza- 

 tion of a greater per capita income, following an 

 advance in skill, is the extensive exploitation of la- 

 bor by capital, which, in the absence of intelligent 

 legislation, might result in the diversion from the 

 skilled workman of a larger portion of the increment 

 dependent on his skill than could be considered fair. 



The regulation of population is a still more compli- 



