Darwinism and Race Progress

by John Berry Haycraft

Not only have the richer classes been able to start their children with capital and a better training than their poorer neighbours, but the poorer classes have—and this, too, in comparatively recent times—been actively repressed. We can in this connection recall the fact that before the sixteenth century, English labourers were compelled to receive wages fixed in some cases by law, and in other cases by justices, who were often themselves employers of labour. Their wages were determined chiefly by the price of provisions, and in order to prevent migration with a view to the bettering of their wages, they were confined to the place of their birth by the imposition of very serious punishment, if they left their native places to work elsewhere. It is not sought in any way in these pages to adduce these instances of what we should now call unfair dealing with a view to bringing discredit upon the holders of wealth. We have no reason to suppose that our forefathers were consciously unfair, and there is little doubt that many usages current at the present day will be viewed by our descendants as gross outrages upon the principles of justice as understood by them.

Each generation acts according to its own lights, and if our public conscience is sharpening, and our ideas of right and wrong are becoming clearer and are ruling our actions more emphatically, we must remember that this moral advance is a heritage which, like our intellectual and material possessions, we owe to our ancestors, and we may humbly endeavour that this, the most worthy of all possessions, shall not be lessened as it passes through our hands.

The point that is desired to be emphasised is the want, in civilised communities, of advantages equally distributed to every child born within the community. Without this condition the united effort of the community can never reach its maximum, for much individual power is suppressed, and much incompetency is bolstered up in quite an artificial manner, and competition fails in great measure to bring forward the most capable competitors.

[Modern Democratic Attempts to equalise the Struggle.]

While this is an undoubted fact, it seems pretty certain that latterly a change has come about in the direction which gives more scope for individual attainments irrespective of birth and wealth.

Organised efforts are being made to connect the Board Schools with the universities, so that the children of the poor may, if capable enough, climb at once into the professional classes. In the interests of intellectual effort this is very desirable, for the universities will then draw their students from a larger area, and men possessing brain power will be rescued from mere mechanical pursuits. One can hardly explain, on the assumption of race superiority alone, the wonderful potentiality of the Scottish Lowlands, the birthplace of so many who have been distinguished for personal attainments, for the East Coast Englishman is of the same blood as the Lowlander, and the division between England and Scotland is by no means an ethnological one, it is rather a political division of the old kingdom of Northumberland.

But it may more reasonably be explained by the excellent primary education throughout Scotland, and the link that has long ago been formed between the universities and almost every parish in the country. The best education the country can produce has for many years been within the reach of every thrifty farmer, who, if he has a clever son, can pay the relatively small cost of his education.

England has been hitherto a laggard in her educational system, but education is now at last being brought to the door of the poor as well as of the rich. Primary education has been recast, and the universities and colleges in the great centres of population, and suited to the wants of, and within the means of, the poorer classes, are now being established, and an altogether different set of students are being equipped for the intellectual battle of life, students that are drawn not alone from the ranks of the English gentry, but also from the lower middle and artisan class.

By the institution, amongst other means, of technical schools and colleges, the mechanical arts can now be learnt at little or no expense by the children of the poor, and organised public bounty is replacing occasional private patronage.