292 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



this he called attention to the filthy conditions under which the 

 English labouring classes lived. To remedy this, collective 

 responsibility undertook the first stage of social reform by 

 cleansing, lighting, and policing of the streets, and by establish- 

 ing systems of water-supply and drainage in our cities and large 

 towns. 



The second stage of social reform was factory legislation, for 

 regulating the conditions of work in factories, for protecting those 

 employed in unhealthy occupations and industries, and for 

 restricting the work of women and restraining the work of 

 children. Like many other essential social reforms, it met with 

 much opposition. 



The third stage was the nationalisation of education in 1870 

 and the extension of the meaning of education has so far pro- 

 gressed that it now includes not only mental but also physical 

 development, the exercising and even feeding of children where 

 necessary, the care of the feeble-minded by the formation of 

 special schools, medical inspection and notification of infectious 

 diseases, treatment of children's ailments, and attention to the 

 eyes, ears, and teeth at the school-age. 



Last to occur, the effort to guard the child before the school- 

 age, even as soon as it is born, even before birth through 

 attention to the future mother. There is yet one other educa- 

 tional method of far-reaching importance to the masses, and that 

 is the scout movement and officers' training corps, by which 

 boys and youths are trained to become self-reliant yet unselfish, 

 and submissive to discipline without losing individuality. That 

 spirit of esprit de corps which is the striking feature of our public 

 schools and universities is by this movement extended to the 

 boys and youths of all classes, and it cannot fail to have an 

 important influence upon development of character. Each of 

 these stages has supplemented and reinforced the other ; yet we 

 hear on all sides the pessimistic cry of the degeneration of the 

 race set up by a few unthinking people who advocate a " laissez- 

 faire " or the so-called " better dead " theory of all those who are 

 unable, through inborn lack of vitality, to resist racial diseases. 

 Are we to listen to these pessimists ? No ! Rather should we 

 look with pride to what has been done in the last fifty years to 

 better the condition of the people. 



In respect to tuberculosis I will quote the words of a great 

 French scientist uttered at the International Congress of Tuber- 



