REDUCTION OF FECUNDITY OF SOCIALLY INADEQUATE 365 



Eugenics Review, therefore, continue to form the most important part of 

 the activities of the London Society. 



The chief problems with which we have to deal are those concerned with 

 negative eugenics, and it must, unfortunately, be recognized that little prog- 

 ress has yet been made in the solution of the problem of the reduction in 

 the fertility of the undesirable elements in our populations. It is, on the 

 contrary, a commonplace that birth control has so far acted dysgenically, 

 by reducing the fertility of the better-endowed strains, while leaving rela- 

 tively unchanged the birth rate of those who are less fit for parentage. The 

 eugenist regards a differential birth rate as racially harmful, but he is some- 

 times apt to create class-prejudice by an unqualified assumption that the 

 poor are necessarily less well endowed from a racial point of view than the 

 well-to-do. An investigation which our Society has set on foot as to the 

 existence of what was described by the recent Mental Deficiency Committee 

 as the "Social Problem Group" is of some importance in this connection. 

 The existence of such a group has long been realized by eugenists and soci- 

 ologists, but the existence among us of a definite race of chronic paupers, a 

 race parasitic upon the community, breeding in and through successive 

 generations, and only to a small extent recruited either from the ranks of un- 

 skilled labourers, or by the sufferers from the fluctuations of employment, 

 was, perhaps, first noted and investigated by Mr. E. J. Lidbetter, who for 

 many years has conducted a study of this group in a Poor Law area in East 

 London. The report of the Departmental Committee on Mental Deficiency 

 in 1929 thus defined the group in question: 



Let us assume that we could segregate as a separate community all the families in this 

 country containing mental defectives of the primary amentia type. We should find that 

 we had collected among them a most interesting social group. It would include, as every- 

 one who has extensive practical experience of social service would readily admit, a much 

 larger proportion of insane persons, epileptics, paupers, criminals (especially recidivists), 

 unemployables, habitual slum-dwellers, prostitutes, inebriates and other social inefficients 

 than would a group of families not containing mental defectives. The overwhelming 

 majority of the families thus collected will belong to that section of the community, which 

 we propose to term the "social problem" or "subnormal" group. This group comprises 

 approximately the lowest 10 per cent in the social scale of most communities. 



Of this group the report further stated that its anti-social characteristics 

 are the result, mainly, of inferior heredity, and that its fertility is higher 

 than that of any other social element. It is this group which the Society is 

 now investigating. Our General Secretary is about to edit a collection of 

 contributions by authorities with special knowledge of the sub-groups of the 

 Social Problem Group, in which an answer will be sought to the question as 



