If the interpretation which we have given is correct, the conclusion is
inevitable that child mortality is primarily a problem of eugenics, and
that all other factors are secondary. There is found to be no warrant
for the statement so often repeated in one form or another, that "the
fundamental cause of the excessive rate of infant mortality in
industrial communities is poverty, inadequate incomes, and low standards
of living."[194] Royalty and its princely relatives are not
characterized by a low standard of living, and yet the child mortality
among them is very high--somewhere around 400 per 1,000, in cases where
a parent died young. If poverty is responsible in the one case, it must
be in the other--which is absurd. Or else the logical absurdity is
involved of inventing one cause to explain an effect to-day and a wholly
different cause to explain the same effect to-morrow. This is
unjustifiable in any case, and it is particularly so when the single
cause that explains both cases is so evident. If weak heredity causes
high mortality in the royal families, why, similarly, can not weak
heredity cause high infant mortality in the industrial communities? We
believe it does account for much of it, and that the inadequate income
and low standard of living are largely the consequences of inferior
heredity, mental as well as physical.
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