Eugenics, socialism and capitalism

In part II of 'Eugenics and other evils', Chesterton analyzes the reasons for the move towards Eugenics in his time. Socialism, and the desire that the government control the health of its subjects, is one influence. Capitalism, though, is also guilty: "That this is so, that at root the Eugenist is the Employer, there are multitudinous proofs on every side, but they are of necessity miscellaneous, and in many cases negative. The most enormous is in a sense the most negative: that no one seems able to imagine capitalist industrialism being sacrificed to any other object.' Similar to other arguments in other books, Chesterton shows how we tend to forget what should be our primary focus (such as normal people and families) and treat modern and fleeting institutions as permanent. Chesterton uses one example to make his point clear (from chapter V):

To this [a specific paper] a man writes to say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until we have educated the lower classes in the methods by which the upper classes prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness to sign his letter "Hopeful". [-] The curious point is that the hopeful one concludes by saying, "When people have large families and small wages, not only is there a high infantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are stunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a time with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if there were no unwanted children." You will observe that he tacitly takes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately shared,are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of human life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries, things to be modified to suit the wage-market. There are unwanted children; but unwanted by whom? This man does not really mean that the parents doe not want to have them. He means that the employers do not want to pay them properly.

Reading this, I think of the character of 'tiny Tim', from Dickens' 'Christmas Carol'...