4H 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not only from the humblest but from 

 the most disadvantageous beginnings to 

 positions of wealth and influence. It 

 is all a question of fitness. In the so- 

 cial sphere, as elsewhere, the fit will 

 survive and flourish ; the pre-eminently 

 fit will flourish pre-eminently. It may 

 be that pre-eminent fitness for present 

 social conditions may not imply ideal 

 excellence of character ; no doubt it 

 does not; still the fact remains that 

 success is a question of adaptation, and 

 that want of success or poverty means 

 non-adaptation. 



All this may seem very trite, but it 

 would not be safe to argue that because 

 a thing is trite all the good it is capa- 

 ble of yielding has been extracted from 

 it. In the general craze for novelty, 

 old truths are abandoned before they 

 have been half worked out. The theo- 

 ries of the Anti-Poverty Society are 

 very taking with the multitude ; but we 

 venture to predict that, after they have 

 had their day, men will find that there 

 is still much to do on the old lines to 

 which we are now calling attention. 

 The way to kill poverty, we hold, is to 

 kill it individually that is to say, to 

 bring such influences to bear on the 

 unfit as shall render them fit; to make 

 war against idleness, inefficiency, stu- 

 pidity, extravagance, weak self-indul- 

 gence, and all else that makes for 

 poverty either by diminishing the pro- 

 ductiveness of labor or by promoting 

 undue consumption. It is sometimes 

 held that the laboring classes do not 

 get their fair share of the proceeds of 

 their industry ; but the fact is not in- 

 sisted on as it might be that the share 

 they get will at any given time be di- 

 rectly proportional to their own in- 

 herent merits as workers and as men. 

 The question is how near can they 

 come to negotiating on a footing of per- 

 fect equality with the employers of la- 

 bor, and that depends upon the bearing 

 and attitude which they are enabled to 

 assume. A body of thoroughly intelli- 

 gent and self-respecting men, with es- 

 tablished habits of self-control and gen- 



eral capacity for self-guidance, would 

 enter upon the negotiation with far 

 better chances of concluding it to their 

 satisfaction than would a body of men 

 less intelligent and less under moral 

 control, even allowing the latter the 

 benefit of all the most improved ap- 

 pliances for industrial war, including 

 street -rioting and the persecution of 

 "scabs." It is mainly a moral and in- 

 tellectual reform that is wanted ; and 

 we are far from saying that it is wanted 

 only in the ranks of those who earn 

 their bread by the labor of their hands. 

 No serious person can consider the ex- 

 travagance which now marks the ex- 

 penditure of the middle and upper class- 

 es (if we may without offense use such 

 terms as these to indicate comparative 

 degrees of wealth), without feeling that 

 a bad example of profusion and osten- 

 tation is shown to the wage-earners 

 that a wrong ideal of life is set before 

 them. It is true now, as ever, that a 

 man's life " consisteth not in the abun- 

 dance of the things that he possesseth" ; 

 but it hardly seems as if any one to-day 

 believed it. The majority at least only 

 seem to live in proportion as they sur- 

 round themselves with visible and tan- 

 gible evidences of their material pros- 

 perity. One consequence very im- 

 portant in relation to our present sub- 

 ject is that a standard of living is 

 set up which not all who become ac- 

 customed to it can permanently main- 

 tain ; and thus extravagance leads to 

 poverty. How many are miserably poor 

 to-day whose parents brought them up 

 in comfort, if not in affluence! We 

 say " miserably poor," because poverty 

 is never so miserable as when compli- 

 cated with vain regrets and a general 

 sense of disinheritance and decay. If 

 we would fight against poverty, there- 

 fore, we must fight against it every- 

 where, and try to make all classes ot 

 society understand that life is a strug- 

 gle for which a definite equipment is 

 required, and that no part of that equip- 

 ment is more essential than moderation 

 of desire. Much, also, as the Malthu- 



