1 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



manifested ; but it is not possible to get rid of tbem. The belief, 

 that faulty character can so organize itself socially as to get out of 

 itself a conduct which is not proportionately faulty, is an utterly 

 baseless belief. You may alter the incidence of the mischief, but 

 the amount of it must inevitably be borne somewhere. Very gen- 

 erally it is simply thrust out of one form into another ; as when, in 

 Austria, improvident marriages being prevented, there come more 

 numerous illegitimate children ; or as when, to mitigate the misery 

 of foundlings, hospitals are provided for them, and there is an increase 

 in the number of infants abandoned ; or as when, to insure the 

 stability of houses, a Building Act prescribes a structure which, 

 making small houses unremunerative, prevents due multiplication of 

 them, and so causes overcrowding ; or as when a Lodging-House Act 

 forbids this overcrowding, and vagrants have to sleep under the 

 Adelphi-arches, or in the Parks, or even, for warmth's sake, on the 

 dung-heaps in mews. Where the evil does not, as in cases like these, 

 reappear in another place or form, it is necessarily felt in the shape 

 of a diffused privation. For, suppose that by some official instrumen- 

 tality you actually suppress an evil, instead of thrusting it from one 

 spot into another suppose you thus successfully deal with a number 

 of such evils by a number of such instrumentalities do you think 

 these evils have disappeared absolutely ? To see that they have not, 

 you have but to ask, Whence comes the official appai'atus ? What 

 defrays the cost of working it ? Who supplies the necessaries of 

 life to its members through all their gradations of rank ? There is no 

 other source but the labor of peasants and artisans. When, as in 

 France, the administrative agencies occupy some 600,000 to 700,000 

 men, who are taken from industrial pursuits, and, with their families, 

 supported in more than average comfort, it becomes clear enough 

 that heavy extra work is entailed on the producing classes. The 

 already-tired laborer has to toil an additional hour ; his wife has to 

 help in the fields as well as to suckle her infant ; his children are 

 still more scantily fed than they would otherwise be ; and, beyond a 

 decreased share of returns from increased labor, there is a diminished 

 time and energy for such small enjoyments as the life, pitiable at the 

 best, permits. How, then, can it be supposed that the evils have 

 been extinguished or escaped ? The repressive action has had its 

 corresponding reaction ; and, instead of intenser evils here and there, 

 or now and then, you have got an evil that is constant and universal. 



When it is thus seen that the evils are not got rid of, but, at best, 

 only redistributed, and that the question in any case is, whether 

 redistribution, even if practicable, is desirable, it will be seen that 

 the " must-do-something " plea is a quite insufficient one. There 

 is ample reason to believe that, in proportion as scientific men 

 carry into this most involved class of phenomena the methods 

 they have successfully adopted with other classes, they will see 



