RACE AND PREJUDICE 53

A quotation from Major Darwin's book, Eugenic Reform, may
be added, because no writer claims .greater authority as an official
spokesman of the eugenic movement in Great Britain.

It may be suggested that the award of scholarships would result
in the picking out of the best of each social class; and that by thus
giving advantages to a selected few over their early associates,
they would be made more likely to marry with eugenic con-
sequences. This beneficial effect of scholarships is, however, in my
opinion, likely to be outweighed by influence acting in the
opposite direction. . . . Scholars, certainly form a carefully
selected and valuable group of the community, and if it be true
that on the whole scholarships tend to diminish the fertility of
their recipients, their award must be held to produce eugenic
consequences. To aid a few exceptional persons to mount to the
top of the social ladder by the award of valuable scholarships
would probably be less harmful to the race than to aid a larger
number of persons to climb up a single step by the award of many
minor scholarships. . . . There is, however, yet another side of
this question which has to be taken into account, and that is the
effect of the award of scholarships to members of a lower stratum
on the fertility of potential parents belonging to the higher strata
into which these selected scholars would enter as recruits. The
effect OJL potential parents of any increase in competition from
outside their own social stratum must be to make them feel less
secure in regard to the prospects of any children they might have
in the future, and this feeling of insecurity would tend to make
them less fertile. Hence the award of scholarships tend to produce
infertility not only in the social stratum primarily affected, but
also in all the strata above it. And the only complete remedy for
the harm done by scholarships—and also by educational facilities
generally—in promoting infertility by facilitating the transfer between
classes would be by the introduction of a caste system so rigid as to
prohibit all movement between the different social strata. . . . (Italics
inserted.)

Education is not the only evil against which the missionary
zeal of the eugenic movement is directed. The pastime of decking
out the jackdaws of class prejudice in the peacock feathers of