Applied Eugenics Part 34

But admission to office should always be open to anyone who shows the best ability; and the search for such ability must be much more thorough in the future than it has been in the past.

4. Eugenists are charged with hindering social progress by endeavoring to keep woman in the subordinate position of a domestic animal, by opposing the movement for her emanc.i.p.ation, by limiting her activity to child-bearing and refusing to recognize that she is in every way fitted to take an equal part with man in the world's work. This objection we have answered elsewhere, particularly in our discussion of feminism. We recognize the general equality of the two s.e.xes, but demand a differentiation of function which will correspond to biological s.e.x-specialization. We can not yield in our belief that woman's greatest function is motherhood, but recognition of this should increase, not diminish, the strength of her position in the state.

5. Eugenists are charged with ignoring the fact of economic determinism, the fact that a man's acts are governed by economic conditions. To debate this question would be tedious and unprofitable. While we concede the important role of economic determinism, we can not help feeling that its importance in the eyes of socialists is somewhat fact.i.tious. In the first place, it is obvious that there are differences in the achievements of fellow men. These socialists, having refused to accept the great weight of germinal differences in accounting for the main differences in achievement, have no alternative but to fall back on the theory of economic determinism. Further, socialism is essentially a reform movement; and if one expects to get aid for such a movement, it is essential that one represent the consequences as highly important.

The doctrine of economic determinism of course furnishes ground for glowing accounts of the changes that could be made by economic reform, and therefore fits in well with the needs of the socialist propagandists. When the failure of many nations to make any use of their great resources in coal and water power is remembered; when the fact is recalled that many of the ablest socialist leaders have been the sons of well-to-do intellectuals who were never pinched by poverty; it must be believed that the importance of economic determinism in the socialist mind is caused more by its value for his propaganda purposes than a weighing of the evidence.

Such are, we believe, the chief grounds on which socialists criticise the eugenics movement. All of these criticisms should be stimulating, should lead eugenists to avoid mistakes in program or procedure. But none of them, we believe, is a serious objection to anything which the great body of eugenists proposes to do.

What is to be said on the other side? What faults does the eugenist find with the socialist movement?

For the central principle, the more equitable distribution of wealth, no discussion is necessary. Most students of eugenics would probably a.s.sent to its general desirability, although there is much room for discussion as to what const.i.tutes a really equitable division of wealth. In sound socialist theory, it is to be distributed according to a man's value to society; but the determination of this value is usually made impossible, in socialist practice, by the intrusion of the metaphysical and untenable dogma of equalitarianism.

If one man is by nature as capable as another, and equality of opportunity[176] can be secured for all, it must follow that one man will be worth just as much as another; hence the equitable distribution of wealth would be an equal distribution of wealth, a proposal which some socialists have made. Most of the living leaders of the socialist movement certainly recognize its fallacy, but it seems so far to have been found necessary to lean very far in this direction for the maintenance of socialism as a movement of cla.s.s protest.

Now this idea of the equality of human beings is, in every respect that can be tested, absolutely false, and any movement which depends on it will either be wrecked or, if successful, will wreck the state which it tries to operate. It will mean the penalization of real worth and the endowment of inferiority and incompetence. Eugenists can feel no sympathy for a doctrine which is so completely at variance with the facts of human nature.

But if it is admitted that men differ widely, and always must differ, in ability and worth, then eugenics can be in accord with the socialistic desire for distribution of wealth according to merit, for this will make it possible to favor and help perpetuate the valuable strains in the community and to discourage the inferior strains. T. N. Carver sums up the argument[177] concisely:

"Distribution according to worth, usefulness or service is the system which would most facilitate the progress of human adaptation. It would, in the first place, stimulate each individual by an appeal to his own self-interest, to make himself as useful as possible to the community.

In the second place, it would leave him perfectly free to labor in the service of the community for altruistic reasons, if there was any altruism in his nature. In the third place it would exercise a beneficial selective influence upon the stock or race, because the useful members would survive and perpetuate their kind and the useless and criminal members would be exterminated."

In so far as socialists rid themselves of their sentimental and Utopian equalitarianism, the eugenist will join them willingly in a demand that the distribution of wealth be made to depend as far as feasible on the value of the individual to society.[178] As to the means by which this distribution can be made, there will of course be differences of opinion, to discuss which would be outside the province of this volume.

Fundamentally, eugenics is anti-individualistic and in so far a socialistic movement, since it seeks a social end involving some degree of individual subordination, and this fact would be more frequently recognized if the movement which claims the name of socialist did not so often allow the wish to believe that a man's environmental change could eliminate natural inequalities to warp its att.i.tude.

CHILD LABOR

It is often alleged that the abolition of child labor would be a great eugenic accomplishment; but as is the case with nearly all such proposals, the actual results are both complex and far-reaching.

The selective effects of child labor obviously operate directly on two generations: (1) the parental generation and (2) the filial generation, the children who are at work. The results of these two forms of selection must be considered separately.

1. On the parental generation. The children who labor mostly come from poor families, where every child up to the age of economic productivity is an economic burden. If the children go to work at an early age, the parents can afford to have more children and probably will, since the children soon become to some extent an a.s.set rather than a liability.

Child labor thus leads to a higher birth-rate of this cla.s.s, abolition of child labor would lead to a lower birth-rate, since the parents could no longer afford to have so many children.

Karl Pearson has found reason to believe that this result can be statistically traced in the birth-rate of English working people,--that a considerable decline in their fecundity, due to voluntary restriction, began after the pa.s.sage of each of the laws which restricted child labor and made children an expense from which no return could be expected.

If the abolition of child labor leads to the production of fewer children in a certain section of the population the value of the result to society, in this phase, will depend on whether or not society wants that strain proportionately increased. If it is an inferior stock, this one effect of the abolition of child labor would be eugenic.

Comparing the families whose children work with those whose children do not, one is likely to conclude that the former are on the average inferior to the latter. If so, child labor is in this one particular aspect dysgenic, and its abolition, leading to a lower birth-rate in this cla.s.s of the population, will be an advantage.

2. On the filial generation. The obvious result of the abolition of child labor will be, as is often and graphically told, to give children a better chance of development. If they are of superior stock, and will be better parents for not having worked as children (a proviso which requires substantiation) the abolition of their labor will be of direct eugenic benefit. Otherwise, its results will be at most indirect; or, possibly, dysgenic, if they are of undesirable stock, and are enabled to survive in greater numbers and reproduce. In necessarily pa.s.sing over the social and economic aspects of the question, we do not wish it thought that we advocate child labor for the purpose of killing off an undesirable stock prematurely. We are only concerned in pointing out that the effects of child labor are many and various.

The effect of its abolition within a single family further depends on whether the children who go to work are superior to those who stay at home. If the strongest and most intelligent children are sent to work and crippled or killed prematurely, while the weaklings and feeble-minded are kept at home, brought up on the earnings of the strong, and enabled to reach maturity and reproduce, then this aspect of child labor is distinctly dysgenic.

The desirability of prohibiting child labor is generally conceded on euthenic grounds, and we conclude that its results will on the whole be eugenic as well, but that they are more complex than is usually recognized.

COMPULSORY EDUCATION

Whether one favors or rejects compulsory education will probably be determined by other arguments than those derived from eugenics; nevertheless there are eugenic aspects of the problem which deserve to be recognized.

One of the effects of compulsory education is similar to that which follows the abolition of child labor--namely, that the child is made a source of expense, not of revenue, to the parent. Not only is the child unable to work, while at school, but to send him to school involves in practice dressing him better than would be necessary if he stayed at home. While it might fit the child to work more gainfully in later years, yet the years of gain are so long postponed that the parent can expect to share in but little of it.

These arguments would not affect the well-to-do parent, or the high-minded parent who was willing or able to make some sacrifice in order that his children might get as good a start as possible. But they may well affect the opposite type of parent, with low efficiency and low ideals.[179] This type of parent, finding that the system of compulsory education made children a liability, not an immediate a.s.set, would thereby be led to reduce the size of his family, just as he seems to have done when child labor was prohibited in England and children ceased to be a source of revenue. Compulsory education has here, then, a eugenic effect, in discouraging the reproduction of parents with the least efficiency and altruism.

If this belief be well founded, it is likely that any measure tending to decrease the cost of schooling for children will tend to diminish this effect of compulsory education. Such measures as the free distribution of text-books, the provision of free lunches at noon, or the extension to school children of a reduced car-fare, make it easier for the selfish or inefficient parent to raise children; they cost him less and therefore he may tend to have more of them. If such were the case, the measures referred to, despite the euthenic considerations, must be cla.s.sified as dysgenic.

In another and quite different way, compulsory education is of service to eugenics. The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of the country are pa.s.sed,--or more accurately, a series of sieves, which will enable the teacher to determine just how far it is profitable to educate each child so that he may lead a life of the greatest possible usefulness to the state and happiness to himself.

Obviously such a function would be inadequately discharged, if the sieve failed to get all the available material; and compulsory education makes it certain that none will be omitted.

It is very desirable that no child escape inspection, because of the importance of discovering every individual of exceptional ability or inability. Since the public educational system has not yet risen to the need of this systematic mental diagnosis, private philanthropy should for the present be alert to get appropriate treatment for the unusually promising individual. In Pittsburgh, a committee of the Civic Club is seeking youths of this type, who might be obliged to leave school prematurely for economic reasons, and is aiding them to appropriate opportunities. Such discriminating selection will probably become much more widespread and we may hope a recognized function of the schools, owing to the great public demonstration of psychometry now being conducted at the cantonments for the mental cla.s.sification of recruits.

Compulsory education is necessary for this selection.

We conclude that compulsory education, as such, is not only of service to eugenics through the selection it makes possible, but may serve in a more unsuspected way by cutting down the birth-rate of inferior families.

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE AND TRAINING

In arguments for vocational guidance and education of youth, one does not often hear eugenics mentioned; yet these measures, if effectively carried out, seem likely to be of real eugenic value.

The need for as perfect a correlation as possible between income and eugenic worth, has been already emphasized. It is evident that if a man gets into the wrong job, a job for which he is not well fitted, he may make a very poor showing in life, while if properly trained in something suited to him, his income would have been considerably greater. It will be a distinct advantage to have superior young people get established earlier, and this can be done if they are directly taught efficiency in what they can do best, the boys being fitted for gainful occupations, and the girls for wifehood and motherhood in addition.

As to the details of vocational guidance, the eugenist is perhaps not ent.i.tled to give much advice; yet it seems likely that a more thorough study of the inheritance of ability would be of value to the educator.

It was pointed out in Chapter IV that inheritance often seems to be highly specialized,--a fact which leads to the inference that the son might often do best in his father's calling or vocation, especially if his mother comes from a family marked by similar capacities. It is difficult to say how far the occupation of the son is, in modern conditions, determined by heredity and how far it is the result of chance, or the need of taking the first job open, the lack of any special qualifications for any particular work, or some similar environmental influence. Miss Perrin investigated 1,550 pairs of fathers and sons in the English _Dictionary of National Biography_ and an equal number in the English _Who's Who_. "It seems clear," she concluded, "that whether we take the present or the long period of the past embraced by the Dictionary, the environmental influences which induce a man in this country to follow his father's occupation must have remained very steady." She found the coefficient of contingency[180] between occupation of father and occupation of son in _Who's Who_ to be .75 and in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ .76. For the inheritance of physical and mental characters, in general, the coefficient would be about .5. She thinks, "therefore, we may say that in the choice of a profession inherited taste counts for about 2/3 and environmental conditions for about 1/3."

An examination of 990 seventh and eighth grade boys in the public schools of St. Paul[181] showed that only 11% of them desired to enter the occupation of their fathers; there was a p.r.o.nounced tendency to choose occupations of a more remunerative or intellectual and less manual sort than that followed by the father. That this preference would always determine the ultimate occupation is not to be expected, as a considerable per cent may fail to show the necessary ability.

While inherited tastes and apt.i.tude for some calling probably should carry a good deal of weight in vocational guidance, we can not share the exaggerated view which some sociologists hold about the great waste of ability through the existence of round pegs in square holes. This att.i.tude is often expressed in such words as those of E. B. Woods: "Ability receives its reward only when it is presented with the opportunities of a fairly favorable environment, _its_ peculiarly indispensable sort of environment. Naval commanders are not likely to be developed in the Transvaal, nor literary men and artists in the soft coal fields of western Pennsylvania. For ten men who succeed as investigators, inventors, or diplomatists, there may be and probably are in some communities fifty more who would succeed better under the same circ.u.mstances."

While there is some truth in this view, it exaggerates the evil by ignoring the fact that good qualities frequently go together in an individual. The man of Transvaal who is by force of circ.u.mstances kept from a naval career is likely to distinguish himself as a successful colonist, and perhaps enrich the world even more than if he had been brought up in a maritime state and become a naval commander. It may be that his inherited talent fitted him to be a better naval commander than anything else; if so, it probably also fitted him to be better at many other things, than are the majority of men. "Intrinsically good traits have also good correlatives," physical, mental and moral.

F. A. Woods has brought together the best evidence of this, in his studies of the royal families of Europe. If the dozen best generals were selected from the men he has studied, they would of course surpa.s.s the average man enormously in military skill; but, as he points out, they would also surpa.s.s the average man to a very high degree as poets,--or doubtless as cooks or lawyers, had they given any time to those occupations.[182]

The above considerations lead to two suggestions for vocational guidance: (i) it is desirable to ascertain and make use of the child's inherited capacities as far as possible; but (2) it must not be supposed that every child inherits the ability to do one thing only, and will waste his life if he does not happen to get a chance to do that thing.

It is easy to suppose that the man who makes a failure as a paperhanger might, if he had had the opportunity, have been a great electrical engineer; it is easy to cite a few cases, such as that of General U. S.

Grant, which seem to lend some color to the theory, but statistical evidence would indicate it is not the rule. If a man makes a failure as a paperhanger, it is at least possible that he would have made a failure of very many things that he might try; and if a man makes a brilliant success as a paperhanger, or railway engineer, or school teacher, or chemist, he is a useful citizen who would probably have gained a fair measure of success in any one of several occupations that he might have taken up but not in all.

To sum up: vocational guidance and training are likely to be of much service to eugenics. They may derive direct help from heredity; and their exponents may also learn that a man who is really good in one thing is likely to be good in many things, and that a man who fails in one thing would not necessarily achieve success if he were put in some other career. One of their greatest services will probably be to put a lot of boys into skilled trades, for which they are adapted and where they will succeed, and thus prevent them from yielding to the desire for a more genteel clerical occupation, in which they will not do more than earn a bare living. This will a.s.sist in bringing about the high correlation between merit and income which is so much to be desired.

THE MINIMUM WAGE

Legal enactment of a minimum wage is often urged as a measure that would promote social welfare and race betterment. By minimum wage is to be understood, according to its advocates, not the wage that will support a single man, but one that will support a man, wife, and three or four children. In the United States, the sum necessary for this purpose can hardly be estimated at less than $2.50 a day.

A living wage is certainly desirable for every man, but the idea of giving every man a wage sufficient to support a family can not be considered eugenic. In the first place, it interferes with the adjustment of wages to ability, on the necessity of which we have often insisted. In the second place, it is not desirable that society should make it possible for every man to support a wife and three children; in many cases it is desirable that it be made impossible for him to do so.

Eugenically, teaching methods of birth control to the married unskilled laborer is a sounder way of solving his problems, than subsidizing him so he can support a large family.

It must be frankly recognized that poverty is in many ways eugenic in its effect, and that with the spread of birth control among people below the poverty line, it is certain to be still more eugenic than at present. It represents an effective, even though a cruel, method of keeping down the net birth-rate of people who for one reason or another are not economically efficient; and the element of cruelty, involved in high infant mortality, will be largely mitigated by birth control. Free compet.i.tion may be tempered to the extent of furnishing every man enough charity to feed him, if he requires charity for that purpose; and to feed his family, if he already has one; but charity which will allow him to increase his family, if he is too inefficient to support it by his own exertions, is rarely a benefit eugenically.