140 H. J. MULLER 



racy, or artisanship, or has been borne upward through some temporary 

 irregularity of the current. But cases like the latter grow fewer and fewer 

 as our organization of society approaches its climax. 



It is true that the universal dissemination of scientific birth control 

 technique would tend to eliminate the production of unwanted children, 

 and to this extent it would bring reproduction under the direction of reason. 

 It is to be welcomed whole-heartedly, as a most important biological inven- 

 tion that increases the potential control of man over natural forces. It will 

 help to fend off a part of the intolerable misery that would otherwise 

 afflict innumerable individual cases, although we must remember that the 

 economic screws will eventually be forced down again as tightly as they can 

 be anyhow, any relaxation of the pressure from beneath being responded to 

 by a compensatory increase of pressure from above. That is, when the 

 burden of family care diminishes, wages will be decreased still more, so that 

 birth control provides no remedy for the faults of our economic system. 

 Moreover, it must be admitted that birth control, by itself, would certainly 

 not suffice to meet the major needs of eugenics. Not only is it illegitimate 

 to assume that those now unenlightened, whose reproduction would be 

 reduced by the spread of birth control technique, are genetically inferior, 

 in respect to the traits most valuable for a well ordered society, but, in 

 technically advanced countries like ours, in which the birth rate as a whole 

 is low, the mere reduction in reproduction rate of any section of the popu- 

 lation would be eugenically inadequate. Even more vital, from a biological 

 standpoint, is an actual increase of those having the more valuable genes, 

 and it is the obtaining of this increase that is prevented by economic pres- 

 sure, and by social pressure having an economic basis. 



In addition to the financial load involved in having children, we must 

 consider the direct burden imposed on the mother. Do male eugenists 

 suffer from the illusion that most intelligent women love to be pregnant and 

 to endure not only the physical disabilities but also the shame and humilia- 

 tion, and the difficulties of maintaining a job, that pregnancy involves in 

 our society. That they love the frightful ordeal of childbirth, so seldom 

 relieved by competent medical treatment? That they love to spend forty 

 or fifty thousand hours washing diapers, getting up in the night, tending 

 colic, meeting in a city flat the little savages' just demands for safe outdoor 

 play and companionship, stewing soups and milks, acting as household 

 drudge and either abstaining from the life of the outer world entirely or else 

 staggering under the double burden of a very inferior position outside and 

 work in the home as well? It would be physically possible through organ- 

 ized social services of various types, accompanied by a revolution in our 



