A SANITARY OUTLOOK 357 



whole of the unfitness of the race is attributable to the lack of food. 

 Many other causes contribute to that. A little later Dr. William Hall 

 seemed himself to realize this, for he affirmed that poverty — a very 

 comprehensive term, covering a multitude of evils — is ultimately re- 

 sponsible for the unsatisfactory physique of our people. Luxury has 

 its degenerates as well as poverty, but poverty is the wholesale degen- 

 erator, and it is, therefore, I am sure, with immense satisfaction that 

 all we who are interested in the public health have heard that it is the 

 intention of the government to appoint a Eoyal Commission to inquire 

 into the working of the poor law. It is to be hoped that the delibera- 

 tions of that commission will lead not only to the adaptation of the 

 poor law to modern social conditions, but to the discovery of efficient 

 methods of dealing with what may be called incipient pauperism, or 

 pauperism in the making, of distinguishing between professional pau- 

 pers and the widely different classes that are from time to time in need 

 of relief owing to fluctuating economic conditions, sickness, imma- 

 turity, or senile decay, and of ensuring that there shall no longer be 

 death or disease due to actual starvation amongst us. If the commis- 

 sion can solve the problems thus indicated, and if at the same time our 

 statesmen can in their wisdom, by free trade, or retaliation, or tariff 

 reform, or colonial preference, or in any other way, secure steady em- 

 ployment to all who are willing to work, we may then feel sure that 

 the golden age will not be long delayed. 



But we can not sit with hands folded waiting for the golden age to 

 be conferred by any government or commission. We must strenuously 

 persevere in our endeavors to ameliorate the condition of the people, 

 and this we can best do by improving their environment in the widest 

 sense. It is with environment you are officially concerned, and sure 

 I am that you have already by your up-hill labors in mending it left 

 your stamp on the condition of the people. And, indeed, I am inclined 

 to think if there had been no sanitary science and no sanitary inspect- 

 ors, the environment in this country would by this time have been 

 pretty nearly empty in certain localities. The right hand of the med- 

 ical officers of health, and with special functions of your own, you have 

 in a multiplicity of ways promoted that cleanliness which is not in- 

 ferior to godliness in giving a man length of days in the land. You 

 have sweetened our lives by curbing the offensive cupidity of trades- 

 men and manufacturers. You have protected us from secret poisoning 

 in our food, on a scale that the Borgia never dreamt of. You have, at 

 no small risk to yourselves, warded off from us contagious, infectious 

 and epidemic diseases, and extinguished sparks of them, which but for 

 you might have become ruinous conflagrations. You have even in 

 certain cases provided us with mortuaries and superintended our burial. 



Your duties as sanitary inspectors bring you into intimate contact 



