The foregoing study indicates that the time has come, if it is not far past, when the traditional policy of fostering immigration is opposed to the welfare of the masses of the people. This belief can be based solely on grounds of numbers, the relation of population to resources, quite apart from a preference for particular races or the familiar arguments regarding social and political evils and lack of assimilation, however valid they may be. The limitation of immigration would immediately improve working-class conditions where they are worst in America,[16] and would check and probably reverse the tendency to diminishing returns already manifest in many directions. This opinion does not necessitate an absolute prohibition of immigration; it is consistent with the continuance of immigration of a strictly selected character, and in numbers so small that all European immigrants now here could be rapidly and completely assimilated, economically and racially. With a slow national increase of population and with the continued progress of science and the arts, it should be possible for real wages to continue indefinitely rising in America. The selection of immigrants to be admitted should be a part of a national policy of eugenics,[17] which aims to improve the racial quality of the nation by checking the multiplication of the strains defective in respect to mentality, nervous organization, and physical health, and by encouraging the more capable elements of the population to contribute in due proportion to the maintenance of a healthy, moral, and efficient population. In such a view, a eugenic opportunity is presented in the selection and admission of immigrants that are distinctly above (not merely equal to) the average of our general population.