I think, then, we ought not, in dealing with poverty, to ignore the possibility that inferiority of hereditary type may be a factor in it. If people who cannot support a family actually have children, I would wish these to have as good a chance as any; but so far as possible I would prevent such people from having children. I favor reforms aimed at reducing the infant death-rate, but think they should be accompanied by other reforms aimed at reducing the birth-rate among those who are unable to maintain the social standards.
Let me suggest an actual problem. It is well known that the birth-rate of the Negroes in the South is very high, so high that if it were not largely offset by a very high infant death-rate, the colored people would soon overwhelm the whites. Apparently, then, if social reforms were rapidly introduced lowering the death-rate of colored children to that of the whites, without other reforms tending to lower their birth-rate, this overwhelming would actually take place. I ask, then, whether, from the white standpoint at least, this one-sided reform would not be worse than none, and whether we might not make a similar mistake by pushing improvements in the care and feeding of infants without at the same time pushing eugenic measures aimed at raising the standard of heredity in the infants born.
No doubt the shifting conditions of our society may bring it to pass that large numbers are living below the social standards from reasons quite apart from natural incapacity. This is evidently the case with immigrants coming from countries of lower standards and often undergoing here exceptional economic and moral pressure. The presumption is that any social inferiority they may exhibit is due to environmental rather than hereditary causes. I suppose the fact that most social workers in America deal largely or wholly with immigrants has much to do with the prevalence among them of the view that the hereditary causes of poverty are unimportant. The greater stress put upon the latter in England may be connected with the different character of English poverty.
The social conditions best for the maintenance of the biological type are neither very harsh nor very easy. We need a real struggle to supply a test of what can make good in life, but the conditions of this struggle should ameliorate with social progress. Any test should conform to the normal conditions of the system for which the test is made; and any social struggle that is on a lower plane is not a good test.
I have heard it asserted that the best types are those that can survive under the worst conditions; but this is patently false. The test of extreme physical hardship in infancy would probably tend to eliminate the higher intellectual capacities. The best types are simply those capable of the best function, and the more nearly we can make good function on a high social level the test of survival the better.
Hardly anything gives rise to more confusion than discussing the “struggle for existence” without a clear understanding of the relativity of all struggle to conditions and standards. When you say, “The struggle for existence is a good thing,” the thoughtless infer that the harsher it is the better. On the other hand, when you say, “The struggle for existence (under misery conditions) is degrading,” the thoughtless of another bias conclude that it ought to be abolished and life made comfortable to all, regardless of achievement. We need a struggle, with standards to arouse exertion and to shut out incompetence; and these standards should be the highest in social requirement, and their enforcement the most humane that we are able to establish. I take it that we are trying to pass from low standards and brutal or haphazard means of enforcement to a higher condition in both respects.
We need to distinguish rather sharply between moderate hardship and a really degrading poverty, or, if you please, between poverty and misery,[[60]] between a state in which social standards can be maintained and one in which they inevitably break down. The latter means general retrogression, and is accompanied by conditions, such as ignorance, disease and vice, which are destructive of biological standards as well as social. The former permits that real but not brutal struggle for existence which is a part of the life of every people and essential as a guarantee against degeneration.
Is it not true that moderate economic hardship acts as a frontier, a fighting-line, where fundamental standards, both biological and social, are maintained, and hardy and humane types of men are developed? There are kinds and degrees of difficulty, sufficient to be exacting but not enough to be destructive, that test and sift and reinvigorate the people who pass through them.
The case of the present immigrant to America is not so different from that of the pioneer as we are apt to think. He also comes from a crowded place to a place of opportunity, and strives by a bold venture to better his condition and enlarge the boundaries of life. Some succeed and some fail; accident, we must admit, plays a great part. Many of the attendant conditions are unfair and demoralizing—as was the case with the pioneers. Nevertheless, the general outcome, even as things go now (and we may hope to make them go much better), is the fostering of vigorous types. The history of those who have been in this country for two or three generations makes this fairly evident.
We need to watch this fighting-line and take care of the wounded—see to it, that is, that those who fall into misery are given a chance to recover, if they are capable of it, and at any rate are not allowed to extend their condition to whole neighborhoods and form infectious misery environments. Unless we can abolish the struggle altogether, which seems neither possible nor desirable, I do not see how we can expect to avoid sporadic misery as a by-product of it; but what we can do is so to standardize the conditions of the struggle and the care of those who fail as to prevent the growth of a self-perpetuating misery class.