Eugenics and Society 21 always appeared whose interests were bound up with the success of the group. The members of this class were therefore bound to encourage submissiveness and industry in the cultivators of the soil: and although much in fact was accomplished by purely environmental means, such as religion and law, there must again have been a selective effort, so that the level of inherent docility would tend to rise in the peasant class. Thus in the long run, agriculture must have markedly increased the selective value of tendencies making for the humdrum hardworking human virtues, and in its secondary effects, as in the birth of the merchant class and in other ways, have encouraged foresight and calculation. Class differences in environment may also be selective. It seems to be established that the inhabitants of our industrial towns are on the average smaller and darker than those of the rural and small-town population.* It may well be that there is a selection against tall and therefore rapidly-growing types on account of the unfavourable diet and living conditions of the slum dweller, since slow growth makes less demands upon a low supply of vitamins: and that tall stature is on the whole correlated with fair complexion. But whatever the cause, the fact remains, and can only be due to selection of some sort. A recent report of the Industrial Health Research Board [dagger] points out that in the early part of the industrial era, the demand in factories was for men of good physique irrespective of build, while appearance or presence counted for more in shops and offices. This may have laid the basis for the observed fact that manual workers average shorter than blackcoated workers, but are stronger. It is quite likely that with the recent introduction of more automatic machinery, which does not demand strength, the type of selection will alter, and the factory workers come to lose their better physique. The same report mentions that a fairly large sample of unemployed, contrasted with a large sample of employed men, were slightly less tall and distinctly less strong. These were mainly men who would be taken on, so that selection seems definitely to have been at work here. This brings up the large and important question of the selective effort of the class system as a whole in an industrial capitalist society. As many writers have pointed out, in so far as there is any ladder of opportunity by which men may rise or sink in the social scale, there must be some selective action. With the passage of time, more failures will accumulate in the lower strata, while the upper strata will collect a higher percentage of successful types. This would be good eugenically speaking [italics]if[end italics] success were synonymous with ultimate biological and human values, or even partially correlated with them; [italics]and if[end italics] the upper strata were reproducing faster than the lower. However, we know that reproduction shows the reverse trend, and it is by no means certain that the equation of success with desirable qualities is anything more than a naïve rationalization. Before, however, we discuss this further, let us look at some other effects of our pattern of class-system. Once we begin to reflect, we see that certain qualities are more favoured, often much more favoured, in some classes than in others. For instance, initiative and independence have less opportunity among unskilled labourers than elsewhere. Inclinations to art, science, or mathematics will be more favoured in the upper and upper-middle classes than elsewhere. The result may be truly selective, for instance by encouraging types genetically above the average in submissiveness among the proletariat. For the most part, however, it likely merely to mask genetic differences. The fact that an undue proportion of artists, writers and scientists spring from the upper strata of society would then not mean that these strata were proportionately well endowed by heredity - merely that in the rest of society the Darwins and the Einsteins, like the Miltons, were mute and inglorious. Two interesting recent studies by Gray and [hairline rule left column-width over footnotes] [footnotes]*Carr-Saunders, 1926, pp. 195-6. [dagger]Ind. Health Res. Bd. Rept., 1935. [end]