HEREDITY AND POLITICS 133 



unremunerative expenditure which goes to favour the 

 unfit at the expense of the fit. Hence by it the 

 number of competent men able to earn a living is 

 diminished, while the average wage of those in employ- 

 ment is lowered. 



Much of the unrest in the labour world at present is 

 due to the failure of wages to rise from 1900 onwards 

 in proportion to the increased cost of living, an increase 

 which will probably continue and may accelerate. For 

 part at all events of this failure we may look to the 

 vastly increased unremunerative expenditure which has 

 gone to maintaining and superintending the unfit. 

 Directly, they take from the nation money which would 

 go, one way or another, in increased wages. Indirectly, 

 generation by generation the result is to swell the 

 number of the incompetent, and decrease the average 

 inborn efficiency of the race. 



At one point questions of practical politics touch an 

 even wider problem of race than those which deal with 

 the differences of inborn qualities of various sections 

 of one nation. The effect of the interbreeding between 

 different races is one of the most difficult subjects 

 which the future has to face. Much more knowledge 

 must be acquired before we can deal confidently with 

 it. Yet some tentative conclusions may already be 

 formulated. 1 



Both by experiments with animals and by observa- 

 tions on mankind, new races are found to arise by a 

 lucky cross, and subsequent isolation and inbreeding. 



1 See The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, by H. S. Chamberlain, 

 voL i. p. 269. 



