THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNFIT. 185 



sickly and defective classes, who are often as prolific as they are 

 inefficient. In our civilization these institutions have become a 

 necessity, but their abuse should be carefully guarded against. 

 What is urgently needed are homes or retreats where poor con- 

 valescent patients can recuperate after their discharge from the 

 hospital. As it is, such people, in a weakened condition, have no 

 place to seek the needed rest, and either fall victims again to a 

 former disease, or become chronic invalids. Here would seem to 

 be a more fruitful field for philanthropy than the building of 

 additional hospitals. Above all, more of an effort should be made 

 to get at the roots of the cause than to temporize so with the effect. 

 Municipal governments annually devote large sums of money for 

 the care of the sick, the criminal, and the insane, but devote no 

 energy to investigating and striving to prevent the factors that 

 are constantly at work in producing these classes. Here, if ever, 

 an ounce of prevention is equal to many pounds of cure. The 

 Department of Public Charities and Correction of New York 

 city, with its 15,000 wards, received $2,166,237 in 1891, and re- 

 quests an appropriation of $2,877,245 for 1892. If a part of the 

 money that is annually devoted to keeping alive the helpless and 

 suffering could in some way be diverted toward remedying un- 

 healthy domiciles, relieving overcrowded tenements, dissipating 

 polluted air and foul gases, supplying the best food at cheap 

 rates, educating the masses in the simple principles of hygienic 

 living, closing the saloons, and in many like ways checking the 

 sources of disease and degeneration, this knotty problem would 

 find its best solution. The way we can cure is by prevent- 

 ing. We permit factors to exist that degenerate men physi- 

 cally, mentally, and morally, and then bring up a clumsy, 

 mechanical, outside philanthropy to try and reform by patch- 

 work. 



Probably one of the greatest dangers to organized society is 

 found in the criminal classes. The laws of the production and 

 confirmation of criminals, with their treatment, should be among 

 the most thoughtfully studied branches of political science. The 

 number of convicts in penitentiaries in 1880 was 35,538, while in 

 1890 it was 45,233, an increase in ten years of 9,695, or 27'28 per 

 cent, and during this interval the total population increased only 

 at the rate of 24'86 per cent.* Again, the total number of prison- 

 ers in county jails in 1880 was 12,691 ; in 1890, 19,538, an increase 

 in ten years of 6,847, or at the rate of 53'95 per cent.f Coming to 

 the inmates of juvenile reformatories, we find the number re- 

 ported in 1880 was 11,468 ; in 1890, 14,846, an increase of 3,378, or 



* Census Bulletin, No. 31, February 14, 1891. 

 f Census Bulletin, No. 95, July 14, 1891. 



