e gainfully in later
years, yet the years of gain are so long postponed that the parent can
expect to share in but little of it.

These arguments would not affect the well-to-do parent, or the
high-minded parent who was willing or able to make some sacrifice in
order that his children might get as good a start as possible. But they
may well affect the opposite type of parent, with low efficiency and low
ideals.[179] This type of parent, finding that the system of compulsory
education made children a liability, not an immediate asset, would
thereby be led to reduce the size of his family, just as he seems to
have done when child labor was prohibited in England and children ceased
to be a source of revenue. Compulsory education has here, then, a
eugenic effect, in discouraging the reproduction of parents with the
least efficiency and altruism.

If this belief be well founded, it is likely that any measure tending to
decrease the cost of schooling for children will tend to diminish this
effect of compulsory education. Such measures as the free distribution
of text-books, the provision of free lunches at noon, or the extension
to school children of a reduced car-fare, make it easier for the selfish
or inefficient parent to raise children; they cost him less and
therefore he may tend to have more of them. If such were the case, the
measures referred to, despite the euthenic considerations, must be
classified as dysgenic.

In another and quite different way, compulsory education is of service
to eugenics. The educational system should be a sieve, through which all
the children of the country are passed,--or more accurately, a series of
sieves, which will enable the teacher to determine just how far it is
profitable to educate each child so that he may lead a life of the
greatest possible usefulness to the state and happiness to himself.
Obviously such a function would be inadequately discharged, if the
sieve failed to get all the available material; and compulsory education
makes it certain that none will be omitted.

It is very desirable that no child escape inspection, because of the
importance of discovering every individual of exceptional ability or
inability. Since the public educational system has not yet risen to the
need of this systematic mental diagnosis, private philanthropy should
for the present be alert to get appropriate treatment for the unusually
promising individual. In Pittsburgh, a committee of the Civ