"Then I should think you'd have all creation on your hands at once."
"And depopulate the other nations? They had something to say about that! You see this worked all sorts of ways. In the first place, when we got all the worst and lowest people, that left an average of better ones at home—people who could learn more quickly. When we proved what good stuff human nature was, rightly treated, they all took heart of grace and began to improve their own. Then, as our superior attractions steadily drew off 'the lower classes,' that raised the value of those who remained. They were better paid, better thought of at home. As more and more people came to us, the other nations got rather alarmed, and began to establish counter attractions—to keep their folks at home. Also, many other nations had some better things than we did, you remember. And finally most people love their own country better than any other, no matter how good. No, the balance of population is not seriously altered."
"Still, with such an influx of low-grade people you must have a Malthusian torrent of increasing population on your hands."
Again that odd listening look, her head a little on one side.
"I have to keep remembering," she said. "Have to recall what people wrote and said and thought in the past generation. The idea was that people had to increase like rabbits, and would eat up the food supply, so wars and pestilences and all manner of cruel conditions were necessary to 'keep down the population.' Wasn't that it?"
"You are twenty years out, my dear!" I rejoiced to assure her. "We had largely passed that, and were beginning to worry about the decreasing birth rate—among the more intelligent. It was only the lowest grade that kept on 'like rabbits' as you say. But it's that sort you seem to have been filling in with. I should think it would have materially lowered the average. Or have you, in this new 'forcing system,' made decent people out of scrubs?"
"That's exactly what we've done; we've improved the people and lowered the birthrate at one stroke!"
"They were beginning to talk eugenics when I left."
"This is not eugenics—we have made great advances in that, of course; but the chief factor in this change is a common biological law—'individuation is in inverse proportion to reproduction,' you know. We individualize the women—develop their personal power, their human characteristics—and they don't have so many children."
"I don't see how that helps unless you have eliminated the brutality of men."