Darwinism and Race Progress

by John Berry Haycraft

This is brought about in many ways, but by none more effectively than by the amassing and transmission of property. Instead of living a hand-to-mouth existence, all communities have very naturally instituted what is known as personal property; they have permitted individuals to acquire and transmit large quantities of food or clothing, etc., or that which can be converted into this, namely money. By lending this property to those who are in need of it, and by exacting a percentage increase in payment of this loan, wealth may yield in perpetuity a sufficiency to support without further expenditure of labour. By the earning, with physical or mental labour, of wealth, and by the increments produced by the loan of wealth, this wealth has accumulated in certain families and in certain classes, and this power is handed down from generation to generation. In order to obtain wealth in any quantity, great physical skill or mental training is, as a rule, required, and this is only to be obtained for a child by the expenditure of wealth on the parent’s part. The wealthier families in a community have therefore either sufficient wealth to support their children in idleness, or, at any rate, they can put them in such positions as will enable them to produce wealth for themselves. The children of those families who possess little wealth are from the first at a disadvantage, and only those with very exceptional powers can possibly succeed in a struggle against their more fortunate neighbours.

[Property is not always acquired by the Most Capable.]

But if riches and power had always remained in the hands of the most capable, and if these had always married women of capacity, then riches and power would be where they would be of most advantage; but this has certainly not been the case. As already remarked, the awards of land and wealth at the time of the conquest were given to those of the conquering side who had showed most prowess in war and intrigue, at the expense of equally capable men amongst the vanquished. England thus received a nobility who were practically on an equality with her common people, but who, on account of previous contact with the wonderfully organising power of the Romish Church, and with the more civilised communities of the South, had acquired the art of organised warfare, and thereby the necessary subordination of the many to the few, lessons that the races living in England had not had the chance of learning. In more recent times wealth and consequent power, acquired by manufacture and trade, have likewise fallen to the share of the incapable as well as to the capable, to the exclusion of the greater number of individuals belonging to both classes. Those who lived on the seacoast where to the south and east the construction of harbourage was possible, profited by the development of the trade which at one time arose in those districts; while later on, and after the establishment of colonies to the west, in the States and Canada, those who lived in the coast district to the west profited in their turn by western trade. Individuals holding land of value to the agriculturist alone, and in its turn yielding great return, have found themselves penniless on account of the importation, at low prices, of agricultural produce. Others holding land containing certain mineral wealth have found themselves greatly increased in riches, and everyone in the district has profited by the find. It does not follow, therefore, that because A has acquired wealth and B has not, that A is even a better acquirer of wealth than B, let alone other qualities in which B may have an advantage. It might follow, and would follow in most cases, that A and B would determine their equality or inequality, were they placed under similar conditions. But as we have seen, their conditions seldom are similar; indeed, to a great extent, wealth acquisition is a lottery. While it cannot be granted that every man who acquires wealth is clever at acquiring it, it must at the same time be admitted that a fair proportion of those who succeed are above the average intelligence.

[Property Holders Less Capable than Property Acquirers.]

But the chances that the children of such a man will also be clever in acquiring wealth are again diminished by the chances that his wife will be deficient in that very quality. We do not know exactly what part the father, or what part the mother contributes to the making of the progeny, and this very fact indicates strongly that they each give much alike; were there any marked differences between their contributions these would have been observed, for we have so many chances in everyday life for the study of such problems. We may conclude, therefore, that an average child depends for its faculties as much upon the mother as upon the father. Now, even if we put on one side the probabilities of the choice of a mate having rather opposing qualities than otherwise—for we are attracted in marriage to our unlikes rather than to our likes—the chances are that the wife of the man who has acquired wealth will not have more than average capacity. According to this view, the children born of the marriage will, on an average, have less than the father’s capacity, supposing him to be a capable man.

We see, then, that the chances of finding capable men and women—innate capacity is, of course, referred to—among families inheriting wealth and position, are less than the chances of finding these qualities among those who have themselves acquired wealth, and also that it is indeed probable that the average capacity of wealth-holders is only slightly above that of the average of the whole community. That there is a slight difference we must allow, for capacity has its own value, and the ranks of the rich are continually being recruited by capables, while at the same time the ranks of the poor are being recruited by incapables.

While this is the case the sifting referred to is very incomplete, and we find in every class every range of intellectual capacity, from that of the idiot to the man capable of giving a permanent impulse to thought and action.

[The Poor Child is scratched against the Rich Child.]

The riches of the well-to-do give their children—who, as we have seen, are not necessarily the most capable—an immense pull in life’s competition with the sons of the poor, with the result that, certainly in the great majority of cases, the poor man’s child is beaten. Putting on one side the question of the father’s personal influence in the way of obtaining advantageous positions for his children, who generally have an opening in his profession or line of business, the rich man is able to equip them with an expensive education which is essential to their getting on in the world. A vigorous personality always counts for much, but training is essential, and training has until quite recently only been obtainable by the well-to-do classes. The English universities and public schools had until lately become the monopoly of the upper and professional classes, to the exclusion, even among these classes, of many who differed in creed from the majority of the community. The doors of every profession were barred except to those who possessed capital, and the children of the poor were frequently unable to obtain even the elements of book knowledge, except in Scotland, where primary education had the start of England by three hundred years. The fact that as many as 41 per cent. of persons married in 1839 were unable to write their own names, illustrates how enormously a large mass of the community must have been handicapped by their want of training.