What is eugenics? / by Leonard Darwin.

  • Leonard Darwin
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: What is eugenics? / by Leonard Darwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    93/100 (page 83)
    FINANCIAL AIDS TO PARENTHOOD 83 the State of such a system, if widely adopted, would be so great that rigid precautions would have to be taken to ensure that no public expenditure was wasted in an attempt to push young people higher up the educational ladder than they are capable of mounting. Any increase of taxation would, moreover, make the taxpayers feel poorer; and it would, therefore, for an indefinite period, reduce the size of the families of some of the best stocks. Expenditure on education must not be increased without limit. Taxation should always be kept at a moderate level, and should be changed as little as possible. All these methods of increasing the size of families by lessening the strain on parents, thus making it easier for them to live up to the standard of their class, should as far as possible be made applicable to aU well-paid workmen, artizans, professional and business men. This would cer¬ tainly help to maintain the quality of our nation in the future. But it would only be a help. Unjustifiable social ambition is the main cause of the small families of persons of good stock. Success in the field of eugenics wiU mainly depend on the moral aspirations and the sense of patriotism of the mass of the people being aroused in the right directions.