The necessary redistribution of skill and talent may be brought about in a variety of ways, or by the concerted pursuit of a prograrn working in many directions. First and fore most should be mentioned, of course, an effi cient educational system which should make ignorance and lack of skill to disappear and with them ignorant and unskilled labor. It should greatly multiply the number of persons capable of entering those occupations where men and women are now scarce. This in itself would tend to double the number in the em ploying classes and halve the number in the un skilled classes. However, the benefic,ent effects of such an educational system might easily be counteracted in any community by the importa tion of masses of ignorant and unskilled labor ers. A very careful selection of immigrants would be absolutely essential as a supplement to the educational system. There should, of course, be no restriction upon immigration of people who are capable of entering those occu pations where men and women are scarce. In fact, every encouragement should be offered to immigrants who are capable of entering the employing classes, but there should be an abso lute exclusion of those who are only capable of entering the ignorant and unskilled classes, Even with a beneficent educational system and a selective immigration policy, the benefi cent effects on the distribution of talent and of wealth might be in part counteracted by what is sometimes called selective birth rate.
If the people who regularly enter the more well-paid occupations should continue to marry late and have small families, while the people in the poorly paid occupations marry early and have large families, this itself would tend toward a bad distribution of skill and talent, thinning people out at the top and thickening them at the bottom. This, however, is the most diffi cult phase of the whole question to handle_ It is not difficult to construct an educational system or a selective immigration policy, but the problem of increasing the birth rate among the intellectual classes and decreasing it among the unskilled and ignorant classes seems well nigh insoluble. Probably nothing except a superior kind of moral teaching which will in crease the family-building ambition and dimin ish the spawning tendency is the only effective remedy.