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. While it might fit the child to work more gainfully in later years, yet the years of gain are so long postponed that the parent can expect to share in but little of it. These arguments would not affect the well-to-do parent, or the high-minded parent who was willing or able to make some sacrifice in order that his children might get as good a start as possible. But they may well affect the opposite type of parent, with low efficiency and low ideals.[179] This type of parent, finding that the system of compulsory education made children a liability, not an immediate asset, would thereby be led to reduce the size of his family, just as he seems to have done when child labor was prohibited in England and children ceased to be a source of revenue. Compulsory education has here, then, a eugenic effect, in discouraging the reproduction of parents with the least efficiency and altruism. If this belief be well founded, it is likely that any measure tending to decrease the cost of schooling for children will tend to diminish this effect of compulsory education. Such measures as the free distribution of text-books, the provision of free lunches at noon, or the extension to school children of a reduced car-fare, make it easier for the selfish or inefficient parent to raise children; they cost him less and therefore he may tend to have more of them. If such were the case, the measures referred to, despite the euthenic considerations, must be classified as dysgenic. In another and quite different way, compulsory education is of service to eugenics. The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of the country are passed,--or more accurately, a series of sieves, which will enable the teacher to determine just how far it is profitable to educate each child so that he may lead a life of the greatest possible usefulness to the state and happiness to himself. Obviously such a function would be inadequately discharged, if the sieve failed to get all the available material; and compulsory education makes it certain that none will be omitted.