I think, then, we ought not, in dealing with poverty, to ignore the possibility that inferiority of hereditary type may be a factor in it. If people who cannot support a family actually have children, I would wish these to have as good a chance as any; but so far as possible I would prevent such people from having children. I favor reforms aimed at reducing the infant death-rate, but think they should be accompanied by other reforms aimed at reducing the birth-rate among those who are unable to maintain the social standards. Let me suggest an actual problem. It is well known that the birth-rate of the Negroes in the South is very high, so high that if it were not largely offset by a very high infant death-rate, the colored people would soon overwhelm the whites. Apparently, then, if social reforms were rapidly introduced lowering the death-rate of colored children to that of the whites, without other reforms tending to lower their birth-rate, this overwhelming would actually take place. I ask, then, whether, from the white standpoint at least, this one-sided reform would not be worse than none, and whether we might not make a similar mistake by pushing improvements in the care and feeding of infants without at the same time pushing eugenic measures aimed at raising the standard of heredity in the infants born. No doubt the shifting conditions of our society may bring it to pass that large numbers are living below the social standards from reasons quite apart from natural incapacity. This is evidently the case with immigrants coming from countries of lower standards and often undergoing here exceptional economic and moral pressure. The presumption is that any social inferiority they may exhibit is due to environmental rather than hereditary causes. I suppose the fact that most social workers in America deal largely or wholly with immigrants has much to do with the prevalence among them of the view that the hereditary causes of poverty are unimportant. The greater stress put upon the latter in England may be connected with the different character of English poverty. The social conditions best for the maintenance of the biological type are neither very harsh nor very easy. We need a real struggle to supply a test of what can make good in life, but the conditions of this struggle should ameliorate with social progress. Any test should conform to the normal conditions of the system for which the test is made; and any social struggle that is on a lower plane is not a good test. I have heard it asserted that the best types are those that can survive under the worst conditions; but this is patently false. The test of extreme physical hardship in infancy would probably tend to eliminate the higher intellectual capacities. The best types are simply those capable of the best function, and the more nearly we can make good function on a high social level the test of survival the better.