While there is some truth in this view, it exaggerates the evil by ignoring the fact that good qualities frequently go together in an individual. The man of Transvaal who is by force of circumstances kept from a naval career is likely to distinguish himself as a successful colonist, and perhaps enrich the world even more than if he had been brought up in a maritime state and become a naval commander. It may be that his inherited talent fitted him to be a better naval commander than anything else; if so, it probably also fitted him to be better at many other things, than are the majority of men. "Intrinsically good traits have also good correlatives," physical, mental and moral.
F. A. Woods has brought together the best evidence of this, in his studies of the royal families of Europe. If the dozen best generals were selected from the men he has studied, they would of course surpass the average man enormously in military skill; but, as he points out, they would also surpass the average man to a very high degree as poets,—or doubtless as cooks or lawyers, had they given any time to those occupations.[182]
The above considerations lead to two suggestions for vocational guidance: (i) it is desirable to ascertain and make use of the child's inherited capacities as far as possible; but (2) it must not be supposed that every child inherits the ability to do one thing only, and will waste his life if he does not happen to get a chance to do that thing. It is easy to suppose that the man who makes a failure as a paperhanger might, if he had had the opportunity, have been a great electrical engineer; it is easy to cite a few cases, such as that of General U. S. Grant, which seem to lend some color to the theory, but statistical evidence would indicate it is not the rule. If a man makes a failure as a paperhanger, it is at least possible that he would have made a failure of very many things that he might try; and if a man makes a brilliant success as a paperhanger, or railway engineer, or school teacher, or chemist, he is a useful citizen who would probably have gained a fair measure of success in any one of several occupations that he might have taken up but not in all.
To sum up: vocational guidance and training are likely to be of much service to eugenics. They may derive direct help from heredity; and their exponents may also learn that a man who is really good in one thing is likely to be good in many things, and that a man who fails in one thing would not necessarily achieve success if he were put in some other career. One of their greatest services will probably be to put a lot of boys into skilled trades, for which they are adapted and where they will succeed, and thus prevent them from yielding to the desire for a more genteel clerical occupation, in which they will not do more than earn a bare living. This will assist in bringing about the high correlation between merit and income which is so much to be desired.
THE MINIMUM WAGE
Legal enactment of a minimum wage is often urged as a measure that would promote social welfare and race betterment. By minimum wage is to be understood, according to its advocates, not the wage that will support a single man, but one that will support a man, wife, and three or four children. In the United States, the sum necessary for this purpose can hardly be estimated at less than $2.50 a day.
A living wage is certainly desirable for every man, but the idea of giving every man a wage sufficient to support a family can not be considered eugenic. In the first place, it interferes with the adjustment of wages to ability, on the necessity of which we have often insisted. In the second place, it is not desirable that society should make it possible for every man to support a wife and three children; in many cases it is desirable that it be made impossible for him to do so. Eugenically, teaching methods of birth control to the married unskilled laborer is a sounder way of solving his problems, than subsidizing him so he can support a large family.
It must be frankly recognized that poverty is in many ways eugenic in its effect, and that with the spread of birth control among people below the poverty line, it is certain to be still more eugenic than at present. It represents an effective, even though a cruel, method of keeping down the net birth-rate of people who for one reason or another are not economically efficient; and the element of cruelty, involved in high infant mortality, will be largely mitigated by birth control. Free competition may be tempered to the extent of furnishing every man enough charity to feed him, if he requires charity for that purpose; and to feed his family, if he already has one; but charity which will allow him to increase his family, if he is too inefficient to support it by his own exertions, is rarely a benefit eugenically.
The minimum wage is admittedly not an attempt to pay a man what he is worth. It is an attempt to make it possible for every man, no matter what his economic or social value, to support a family. Therefore, in so far as it would encourage men of inferior quality to have or increase families, it is unquestionably dysgenic.