We conclude that it is:
1. Because it is spreading at the expense of polygamy even where not favored by legal interference. The change is most evident in China.
2. In monogamy, sexual selection puts a premium on valuable traits of character, rather than on mere personal beauty or ability to acquire wealth; and
3. The greatest amount of happiness is produced by a monogamous system, since in a polygamous society so many men must remain unmarried and so many women are dissatisfied with having to share their mates with others.
Assuming this, then adaptation to the condition of monogamous society represents race progress. Such a race profits if those who do not comply with its conditions make a deficient racial contribution. It follows then that sexual immorality is eugenic in its result for the species and that if all sexual immorality should cease, an important means of race progress might be lost. An illustration is the case of the Negro in America, whose failure to increase more rapidly in number is largely attributable to the widespread sterility resulting from venereal infection.[185] Should venereal diseases be eliminated, that race might be expected to increase in numbers very much faster than the whites.
It may be felt by some that this position would have an immoral effect upon youth if widely accepted. This need not be feared. On the contrary, we believe that one of the most powerful factors in ethical culture is pride due to the consciousness of being one who is fit and worthy.
The traditional view of sexual morality has been to ignore the selectional aspect here discussed and to stress the alleged deterioration of the germ-plasm by the direct action of the toxins of syphilis. The evidence relied upon to demonstrate this action seems to be vitiated by the possibility that there was, instead, a transmitted infection of the progeny. This "racial poison" action, since it is so highly improbable from analogy, can not be credited until it has been demonstrated in cases where the parents have been indubitably cured.
Is it necessary, then, to retain sexual immorality in order to achieve race progress? No, because it is only one of many factors contributing to race progress. Society can mitigate this as well as alcoholism, disease, infant mortality—all powerful selective factors—without harm, provided increased efficiency of other selective factors is ensured, such as the segregation of defectives, more effective sexual selection, a better correlation of income and ability, and a more eugenic distribution of family limitation.
TRADES UNIONISM
A dysgenic feature often found in trades unionism will easily be understood after our discussion of the minimum wage. The union tends to standardize wages; it tends to fix a wage in a given industry, and demand that nearly all workers in that classification be paid that wage. It cannot be denied that some of these workers are much more capable than others. Artificial interference with a more exact adjustment of wages to ability therefore penalizes the better workmen and subsidizes the worse ones. Economic pressure is thereby put on the better men to have fewer children, and with the worse men encourages more children, than would be the case if their incomes more nearly represented their real worth. Payment according to the product, with prizes and bonuses so much opposed by the unions, is more in accord with the principles of eugenics.