Part 34 (1/2)

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.