The scope of eugenics / [H.J. Laski].

  • Harold Laski
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The scope of eugenics / [H.J. Laski]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Extreme emphasis must be laid on the danger of breeding from the unfit at the expense of the fit. Statistical proof of this is ready to hand. In the first place, it is necessary always to bear in mind that half of one generation is produced by a quarter of its predecessor. If this is the case, it is surely of importance that marriages should be selective. If only a small proportion of parents are mentally or physically unfit to take the burden of re¬ production upon themselves, the danger of their doing so is ob¬ vious. The Royal Commission on the Feeble-minded calculated that more than 200,000 mentally defective persons are at large in England. It is impossible, therefore, to exaggerate the danger of the marriage of even a tithe of that number. The fitter classes of the community produce families that are not only much smaller, on the average, than the families of the degenerates, but, further, much smaller than the families produced thirty years ago. Sidney Webb has calculated that the average number of offspring among English intellectuals is 1*5. That result is hardly to be explained by Herbert Spencer’s hypothesis that individuation varies inversely to genesis. Karl Pearson, in a long and complex statistical en¬ quiry, could find no particular quality associated with fecundity; and it is probable that voluntary restriction on the part of the parents largely accounts for this result. Mr. Webb has further calculated that in certain friendly societies, in the twenty-four years from 1880 to 1904, the birth-rate fell from 2,472 to 1,105 per ten thousand members. Mr. Whetham, taking consecutively 143 entries from “Who’s Who,” where the men and women have proved themselves able to a degree above the average, found that whereas before 1870 the number of children to a fertile marriage was 5.2, after 1870 it fell to 3.08. Mr. Powys, in a brilliant memoir published in “ Biometrika,” estimated that the average number of children in the families of the professional classes of New South Wales is 3.3. The birth-rate among the families of American graduates, according to the authorities of Harvard University, is 2. Now let us turn to the pathological stocks. The birth-rate among the London mentally defective per family is 7; in Manchester it is 6*3. Dr. Goring has estimated that the fertility in criminal stocks is 6’6; in English deaf-mutes it is 6'2 ; among albinos it is as high as 5*9. In the families which use the schools for the feeble-minded, the average number of offspring is 7*3. The only conclusion to which these statistics point is that the unfit stock is, increasing at the expense of the fit. The general opinion of en¬ quirers seems to be that the transmission of desirable qualities is not being adequately maintained , Natural selection works by the elimination of those who are in any way unfit to cope with their environment; and its aim is the evolution of a higher type. It is,
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