we shall be face to face, without possibility of doubt, with bad inheritance as the sole remaining factor in the production of inefficient and antisocial members of the community. A socialist community must recognise the right to work and to maintenance of all its members, Eden Paul points out, but, he adds, a community which allowed this right to all defectives without imposing any restrictions in their perpetuation of themselves would deserve all the evils that would fall upon it. It is quite clear how intolerable the burden of these evils would be. A State that provided an adequate subsistence for all alike, the inefficient as well as the efficient, would encourage a racial degeneration, from excessive multiplication of the unfit, far more dangerous even than that of to-day.[1] Ability to earn the minimum wage, Eden Paul argues in agreement with H. G. Wells, must be the condition of the right to become a parent. “Unless the socialist is a eugenist as well, the socialist state will speedily perish from racial degradation.”
- ↑ This is here and there beginning to be recognised. Thus, not long ago, the Hereford War Pensions Committee resolved not to issue a maternal grant for children born during a prolonged period of treatment allowance. Such a measure of course fails to meet the situation, for it is obvious that, when born, the children must be cared for. But it shows a glimmering recognition of the facts, and the people capable of such a recognition will, in time, come to see that the right way of meeting the situation is, not to neglect the children, but to prevent their conception. Mothers’ Clinics for instruction in such prevention are now being established in England, through the advocacy of Mrs. Margaret Sanger and the actual initiative of Dr. Marie Stopes.
