ring the families whose children work with those whose children do
not, one is likely to conclude that the former are on the average
inferior to the latter. If so, child labor is in this one particular
aspect dysgenic, and its abolition, leading to a lower birth-rate in
this class of the population, will be an advantage.

2. On the filial generation. The obvious result of the abolition of
child labor will be, as is often and graphically told, to give children
a better chance of development. If they are of superior stock, and will
be better parents for not having worked as children (a proviso which
requires substantiation) the abolition of their labor will be of direct
eugenic benefit. Otherwise, its results will be at most indirect; or,
possibly, dysgenic, if they are of undesirable stock, and are enabled to
survive in greater numbers and reproduce. In necessarily passing over
the social and economic aspects of the question, we do not wish it
thought that we advocate child labor for the purpose of killing off an
undesirable stock prematurely. We are only concerned in pointing out
that the effects of child labor are many and various.

The effect of its abolition within a single family further depends on
whether the children who go to work are superior to those who stay at
home. If the strongest and most intelligent children are sent to work
and crippled or killed prematurely, while the weaklings and
feeble-minded are kept at home, brought up on the earnings of the
strong, and enabled to reach maturity and reproduce, then this aspect of
child labor is distinctly dysgenic.

The desirability of prohibiting child labor is generally conceded on
euthenic grounds, and we conclude that its results will on the whole be
eugenic as well, but that they are more complex than is usually
recognized.

COMPULSORY EDUCATION

Whether one favors or rejects compulsory education will probably be
determined by other arguments than those derived from eugenics;
nevertheless there are eugenic aspects of the problem which deserve to
be recognized.

One of the effects of compulsory education is similar to that which
follows the abolition of child labor--namely, that the child is made a
source of expense, not of revenue, to the parent. Not only is the child
unable to work, while at school, but to send him to school involves in
practice dressing him better than would be necessary if he stayed at
home. While it might fit the child to work mor