We are describing the unending process of selection which goes on from hour to hour and day to day in any well ordered social group.  Every group has its fields of endeavor, its goals and its scale of priorities.  Individuals come and go.  The group carries on.  Excellence in group performance depends upon its competence in selecting, training and coordinating its endeavors.

Every social group has its hard corps of trained and tested veterans.  Also it has its problem of aging.  The apprentice of yesterday becomes the experienced, skilled operator of today.  Tomorrow brings retirement for those who have reached the age limit of service and who as a matter of group routine are replaced by newcomers.  In the course of this cycle the directors of the group have their opportunity to improve the level of group efficiency by phasing out the old and incorporating the new.

The range of capacity, from perception and facility to ineptitude and incompetence, holds for the new generation as it did for the old.  The tone and performance level of each group is determined by the effectiveness of this selective process.

At some point it becomes necessary to inquire into the biologic aspects of any social enterprise.  We are doing our utmost to select and educate and train the fit.  Are we producing potential fitness?

Long experience has taught us that we cannot produce a silk purse from a sow’s ear.  Eugenics emerges as an important aspect of every long term group endeavor.  Qualities and capacities are handed on from parent to offspring.  Are we reproducing fitness or unfitness?

As we move beyond civilization onto a more mature and more complicated culture level, we may have a workable system of social priorities, but does our oncoming stream of manpower have the interest, the imagination, the competence, the sense of social responsibility and the staying power necessary to arouse in a series of generations the will and determination to carry out social policy?

Are the oncoming generations able and willing to shoulder the loads of clearing out the rubbish accumulated through ten centuries of western civilization, make effective use of science, technology and available human capacity and move onward and forward to new levels of social achievement?

We could develop a corps of socially responsible technicians as we have developed a corps of competent scientists and technicians in the field of natural science.  In each field priorities are constantly changing.  Each field is called upon to meet the changes by making corresponding changes in its personnel, its education and its apprenticeships.

In addition to formal schooling and apprenticeship we have a vast network for the distribution of information and the formation of public opinion.  The printing press, the camera and other means of communication determine the levels of information and the willingness of the public to keep abreast of the shifting social scene.