The necessity for a national eugenic curvey / by J.F. Tocher.

  • Tocher, J. F. (James Fowler), 1864-1945
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The necessity for a national eugenic curvey / by J.F. Tocher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    have a bearing on those who are living to-day in the land, and particularly if there are evident facts, leading us to suspect that, although conditions of life are vastly improved, there is a startling and probably increasing proportion of unfit, evidently saved from destitution and worse by the kind hand of a benevolent State. Foremost and most important among the evident facts which ought to lead eugenists to direct public opinion to this state of matters, we must class those disclosed by Professor Pearson and his co-workers in the Galton Laboratory and elsewhere. As interested onlookers, we cannot but be profoundly impressed by the great volume and sometimes startling nature of the results. Their publication cannot fail to influence social leaders through¬ out Europe and America, to accelerate the formation of public opinion in favour of eugenic principles and to stimulate the movement in favour of the collection of further data—national data. It is as an advocate of an organised general collection of data and, in particular, of an organised National Survey, that I pen these lines. We cannot, all of us, hope to attain the standard of training necessary to make a reasoned, thorough and sound analysis of facts bearing on the national weal. We may hope to follow at a certain distance, and we shall be fortunate if we succeed in grasping fully the meaning of the striking deductions as they are, from time to time, cast upon a still somewhat deaf public ear. We know all national progress is and must be slow. But we can always seek to induce friends to impart information and we can, at our leisure, collect facts ourselves. Our difficulty may sometimes be just what to collect. That in the main must, I think, be suggested to us by the man who has the problem to solve. There must be, and there is, a bond of sympathy between those who dissect and those who look with interested eyes on the operation of dissection and who can often furnish the materials. But I go much further than merely to suggest a continuance of leisurely collection of facts. Private individual effort, after all, cannot supply figures representing the entire nation and covering the whole field. I therefore go further and advance the idea of an organised national survey on definite eugenic lines. In other words, I should like to see carried out, as complementary to
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