Albert Jay Nock

“ We think we have settled the question of child-labor when we have stopped child-labor. But we have not touched the economic side of the matter at all; perhaps it has not occurred to us to think that the matter has an economic side, — one, at all events, that takes issue in such grave and far-reaching consequences as to affect the national life and character of a whole people. But what we have done, in the social and economic view, is to penalize parentage by destroying the economic value of the child. ”

“ We do not bring our children into the world because their labor is a marketable asset,; so we do not enter into the consciousness of a large class of persons who will have children if having them can be made to pay, and if not, then not.
But the class exists and exists in large numbers. Their instinct of parentage is as powerful and respectable as anyone's, but it is perforce regulated by the paramount control of poverty — the bitter poverty that forces them to market every available resource they have. ”

“ We may be poor, but at least we can keep the infancy of our children in view as a luxury — to be paid for sometimes, it may be, scantily and hardly, but somehow to be paid for and enjoyed.
There are many men and women, however, who can not do this, though they would like to do it quite as well as we. It is by no means of free choice that the poor mother sends her child into the pit-mouth of Cornwall or Pennsylvania, or into the factories of Leeds or Lowell. ”

“ Now, to justify my high opinion of this science—and to point a needed moral—I am going to put before you a surprising story
Of all the agencies under social control, the one most completely and obviously under the control of society is the law. Society can make, amend, suspend, or abolish its laws at pleasure. We determine our environmental conditions largely by law. In fact, familiarity with the absolute law-making power of society makes some of us unconsciously assume that statutory law is above everything— that even the laws of Nature have to vacate when the Legislature passes a statute. ”

“ The science of Eugenics is on hand with a cogent reason, — too late.
England's mournful lesson is that you can not have national greatness bottomed on unsound men and women. Maybe our men and women are sound to the core. Maybe they are capable of producing sound descendants to the fortieth generation. Maybe the social agencies operating under our control are beyond improvement, — I do not intend to go beyond the limits of this article in discussing them. But with England's experience before us, there is nothing like certainty, nothing like precaution. ”

“ Nor would I supply a pennyworth of moral support to their masters, those infinitely more pitiful and pitiable persons, the mill-owners and manufacturers who find it in their hearts to exploit child-labor for the sake of a dollar or two. But I wish to point out how clearly the foregoing exhibit of Eugenics s hows the evil that arises when one class of men undertakes — even in the fullness of sincerity and pity — to legislate for another class, about whom they know really very little. ”

“ Eugenics does not seek to invade the province of the Legislature. Eugenics makes suggestions and offers criticisms, — a most severe criticism, for instance, of the new plan of old-age pensions, because clearly the time when the poor parent most needs help is at the other end of his life, when his children are young and dependent. Eugenics suggests the endowment of parentage, especially fit parentage, as an offset against destroying the child's economic value. ”

“ Poor people ought not to have any more children than they can afford to keep; and if the average Bradford family has been cut down from seven children to four or three, so much the better for Bradford and for England. If we can restrain our poor working people from raising large families, from being still further impoverished by the cost of large batches of dependent children, so much the better for us. ”

“ Eugenics makes it possible for them to eliminate error, to avoid collision with the immutable laws of Nature, and then lets them express their knowledge as best they can. Eugenics tries to get the ear of the social reformer and the publicist and warn them that their philanthropic efforts may only penalize parentage, lower the birth rate, promote the reproduction of inferior beings, promote race degeneracy and, finally, race suicide. ”

“ But if England does not know a good thing when she sees it, all the better for us to show that we do. Every school, college, jail, factory, and asylum in the United States is just so much material for a Eugenics laboratory. The amount of money necessary to organize the science is very moderate. Then all that remains is to send over a couple of our best statisticians to be trained by Professor Pearson, and let them go to work. ”

“ The multitude of things pressing for one's attention is very great, and the selective process must let some good go with the bad. But the report of a novelty ought to carry at least some prima facie evidence of its seriousness and value; and the sensational reports of Eugenics that I had read, with their talk about "the right of the child to be well-born," conveyed to me the impression of some kind of fanciful scheme for breeding human beings by prescription. ”

“ For, having had a reporter's glimpse at about all the latest European developments in science, from aeronautics, wireless, and preventive medicine to psychical research, the latest thing in hydraulic jacks and the most improved automatic street-sweeper, I assert my belief that the most important and urgently necessary line of scientific work on earth to-day is being pursued in those wretchedly inadequate quarters in Gower Street. ”

“ Sensitively and obediently, the birth rate of the mining region of Cornwall dropped again, and so did that of the trading towns and county centers like York.
After these, we find the Education Act of 1899 forbidding the employment of children under twelve in any way to interfere with full attendance at school. We find a Factory Act in 1891, again raising the age of child-employment, and restricting the employment of women after child-birth. And the whole birth rate of England responded with a brisk decline. ”

“ The necessary paraphernalia of the science—records, charts, books, crania, biometrical apparatus—overflowed in heaps. One wonders how a nation can be so ungrateful to its proved benefactors as to permit Professor Pearson to go on working under such discouraging and retarding conditions. ”

“ Two things have been worrying England acutely for Several years. First, her birth rate is low and steadily declining. She is raising the specter of race suicide. Some statisticians say that in fifteen years, at the present rate of decline, her native population will be stationary, and she must depend on immigration to keep going. ”

“ Clearly, if you cut off the later members of the family, — if you have two children instead of seven to a family — you are cutting into the exempt class, reducing the relative proportion of sound stock in the community, and greatly increasing the relative proportion of the tuberculous, insane, criminal, and albionotic. ”

“ Something must have taken place in those years to affect the birthrate—in 1867 and 1887 for the mining districts, 1877 for the industrial towns, and 1887 again for the county towns and trading centers like York, which keep shop for a large outlying section.
Furthermore, whatever took place at these times must be something that has remained in force, because the birth rate has never "come back." There is no mere wave of fluctuation. ”

“ Because they penalize parentage, just as ours do. I am not writing this article primarily to tell you England's troubles. I want to show how it will pay us to take heed to these statistical discoveries about the economic bearing of the Factory Acts. Child-labor is a question that is beginning to press upon us. ”

“ Not only does it include the familiar environmental agencies like food, drink, housing, sanitation, occupations, but also the far more subtle factors of heredity that are brought out by a study of censuses, school-reports, Board of Health returns, and the like; tracing out inherited habits, aptitudes, abilities and physical characteristics, as they manifest themselves alike in the normal and abnormal subjects of investigation. ”

“ Second, her population has not the same good physical and mental quality it used to have. The South African war made some disagreeable and shocking revelations of the impairment of the fighting stock. ”