From the point of view of quality it has been pointed out that there are two factors which now tend to impoverish the race. They might be distinguished and arbitrarily named as ‘Dysgenic’ and ‘Economic’ respectively.
The dysgenic factor may be propounded as follows: Though the Birth-rate in England has fallen from 36 per 1000 in 1877 to 20 per 1000 or less to-day, this decrease has not been accompanied by a decrease in the population, since the Death-rate has dropped correspondingly. This has taken place by reason of the complete suspension, if not the actual reversal, in civilized countries to-day of the principle of Natural Selection, operative amongst animals and primitive peoples.
There are three outstanding reasons to which this suspension is attributable. They are the advances in sanitation and medical science, the increase in humanitarianism, and the method of obtaining votes which prevails in democratic countries.
The advances in sanitation and medical science made in the last 60 years have resulted in an enormous reduction of infant mortality in large towns, and also in an average prolongation of life. Epidemics of smallpox, cholera, typhus, diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc., which took such a heavy toll in the past, are now effectively controlled by the existing system of isolation hospitals, and of efficient public health supervision. To-day it is possible for the medical student to traverse his six laborious years of training without seeing a single case of typhoid fever—a disease which in the times of his elders used to be one of the commonplaces of a hospital. These improvements in sanitation, the progress made in aseptic surgery, in prophylactic medicine, and in the general treatment of disease, have been largely responsible for the lowering of the death-rate already mentioned.
The increase of humanitarianism in civilized countries has resulted in the creation of an enormous number of philanthropic institutions and charity organizations, through the channels of which much relief is brought to the impoverished classes. This spirit now makes it difficult for those endowed with a superfluity, or even a sufficiency of wealth, to contemplate with indifference the misery and degradation of less fortunately placed fellow human beings.
And lastly, since the entry to power of any given political party is conditioned by the acquisition by that party of a sufficient number of votes, given by a mainly proletarian electorate, it follows that politics are likely to be framed in such a way as to commend themselves to such an electorate. It would seem unfair to omit this fact from consideration, though it has been over-emphasized by a school of political cynics who deny the participation of humanitarian feelings in politics (outside the realm of speech-making), and who attribute to political expediency an excessive if not an exclusive rôle in improving the lot of the very poor.
In virtue, then, of these factors it would nowadays be very difficult for any individual, however worthless, actually to starve, and many people of defective stock and bad physique who, in the ordinary course of nature would perish, are now artificially kept alive to perpetuate their kind.
The ‘economic’ factor tending to produce deterioration in the race, presupposes the dysgenic.