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3 J. Soc. F. 414 (1924-1925)
Eugenics and the Social Good

handle is hein.journals/josf3 and id is 424 raw text is: The JOURNAL Of SOCIAL FORCES EUGENICS AND THE SOCIAL GOOD WARREN S. THOMPSON OF LATE eugenics is attracting a great deal of attention and is probably due to attract more in the near future. Not only are the biologists becoming more and more sure that breeding from certain groups in the population tends to produce sub-standard groups in perpe- tuity, but they are also able to point to much evi- dence indicating that the families in these sub- standard groups often are larger than in the normal groups of the population. Especially is there evidence showing that the professional and business classes as a whole are not reproducing while the sub-standard groups and the immigrants are increasing rather rapidly. It seems natural, therefore, that the biologists should call attention to these facts and urge these upper class people to raise larger families. It is perhaps natural also that many biologists should look upon the processes of natural selection as being nullified by present day social conditions and assume that what appears to be true regarding the relative rates of increase of people in the lowest and high- est economic classes is true of the inferior and superior generally. In arriving at this position, however, two as- sumptions are made which are not proved and which are open to serious question. They are: (a) that natural selection is nullified by the ad- vent of modern charity and medicine, thus en- abling the sub-standard population to multiply with little or no hindrance, and (b) that the superior people in a population can be identified with those who are economically most successful. These together with the belief that the only way to improve mankind's conditions is to breed from the better stock, as thus defined, constitute the three underlying assumptions of the present eugenics vogue. It is only fair to say, however, thaf although most biologists are urging very strongly the claims of eugenics to the first place among the means of improving national and race life, yet they are not the most vociferous advocates of eugenics at the present time nor are they those who need the most careful watching. The group which is now pushing eugenics to the fore as the one great need of our social order is the group which may be called for convenience the intelligence testers. They believe they have developed new and accu- rate methods for separating the superior and in- ferior classes of the population from one another. They purport to tell us easily and with great ac- curacy who is fit and who is not fit to contribute to the population. To show that these three propositions are as- sumptions either palpably false or that are not yet supported by a sufficient body of fact to make them worthy of being made the basis of a great social movement will be the burden of this paper. The belief that breeding from the superior stock among men is the only way to improve the conditions of human living probably owes its origin to the doctrine of the non-inheritance of acquired characters. It has seemed to many bi- ologists that if acquired characters are not in- herited, it must inevitably follow that human nature could only be changed by changing the inborn traits of people. Such a view is based upon a complete misconception of what human nature is and how it came to its present develop- ment. Suffice it to say that human nature as we know it in everyday life is by no means a pure product of heredity. Social psychology has shown beyond peradventure that human nature is the product of the interaction of the two comple- mentary factors human heredity and environ- ment. These two factors are not antagonistic or mutually exclusive, but complementary and their product is as much (but no more) a product of the one as of the other. This is all that need be said here on this matter. A failure to appreciate this fact merely means that one has missed the point of the recent developments in social psy- chology. Space will not permit of discussing adequately the proposition that natural selection is no longer operative. We may stop to ask, however, what groups do not propagate at all and what groups have the highest death rates ? If we answer these questions with all the facts at hand, we will see that natural selection is still killing off the sub- standard people in the population more rapidly than the normal people. E.g. prostitutes and habitual criminals and tramps probably seldom

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