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.
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