It is no excuse for such a state of things that the rich give employment. There is no merit in giving employment: a murderer gives employment to the hangman; and a motorist who runs over a child gives employment to an ambulance porter, a doctor, an undertaker, a clergyman, a mourning-dressmaker, a hearse driver, a gravedigger: in short, to so many worthy people that when he ends by killing himself it seems ungrateful not to erect a statue to him as a public benefactor. The money with which the rich give the wrong sort of employment would give the right sort of employment if it were equally distributed; for then there would be no money offered for motor cars and diamonds until everyone was fed, clothed, and lodged, nor any wages offered to men and women to leave useful employments and become servants to idlers. There would be less ostentation, less idleness, less wastefulness, less uselessness; but there would be more food, more clothing, better houses, more security, more health, more virtue: in a word, more real prosperity. 16 EUGENICS The question has been asked, would the masses be any better for having more money? One’s first impulse on hearing such a silly question is to take the lady who asks it by the shoulders and give her a violent shaking. If a fully fed, presentably clothed, decently housed, fairly literate and cultivated and gently mannered family is not better than a half-starved, ragged, frowsy, overcrowded one, there is no meaning in words. Still, let us not lose our tempers. A well-fed, clean, decently lodged woman is better than one trying to live on tea and rashers in dirty clothes in a verminous garret. But so is a well-fed clean sow better than a hungry dirty one. She is a sow all the same; and you cannot make a silk purse out of her ear. If the common women of the future were to be no better than our rich ladies today, even at their best, the improvement would leave us deeply dissatisfied. And that dissatisfaction would be a divine dissatisfaction. Let us consider, then, what effect equality of income would have on the quality of our people as human beings. There are some who say that if you want better people you must breed them as carefully as you breed thoroughbred horses and pedigree boars. No doubt you must; but there are two difficulties. First, you cannot very well mate men and women as you mate bulls and cows, stallions and mares, boars and sows, without giving them any choice in the matter. Second, even if you could, you would not know how to do it, because you would not know what sort of human being you wanted to breed. In the case of a horse or a pig the matter is very simple: you want either a very fast horse for racing or a very strong horse for drawing loads; and in the case of the pig you want simply plenty of bacon. And yet, simple as that is, any breeder of these animals will tell you that he has a great many failures no matter how careful he is.