standards in a population lead to fewer children suggests a valuable means of reducing the birth-rate of the inferior. Raise their low standards of living and they will reduce their own fertility voluntarily (the birth control movement furnishing them with the possibility). All educational work in the slums therefore is likely to have a valuable though indirect eugenic outcome. The poor foreign-speaking areas in large cities, where immigrants live huddled together in squalor, should be broken up. As these people are given new ideas of comfort, and as their children are educated in American ways of living, there is every reason to expect a decline in their birth-rate, similar to that which has taken place among the native-born during the past generation.
This elevation of standards in the lower classes will be accomplished without any particular exertion from eugenists; there are many agencies at work in this field, although they rarely realize the result of their work which we have just pointed out.
But to effect a discriminating change in the standards of the more intelligent and better educated classes calls for a real effort on the part of all those who have the welfare of society at heart. The difficulties are great enough and the obstacles are evident enough; it is more encouraging to look at the other side, and to see evidences that the public is awakening. The events of every month show that the ideals of eugenics are filtering through the public mind more rapidly than some of us, a decade ago, felt justified in expecting. There is a growing recognition of the danger of bad breeding; a growing recognition in some quarters at least of the need for more children from the superior part of the population; a growing outcry against the excessive standards of luxury that are making