75 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a healthy start. To insure correct environment and habit, particularly 

 in the early years of life, is of vital importance to the well-being and 

 efficiency of the individual. This, unfortunately, is ncc, and in many 

 cases can not, be done. Hence the fearfully unequal physical, mental, 

 and moral equipment of mankind, that allows the minority to have too 

 much, the majority too little, of the world's necessities and comforts. 



This question, however, has a broader interest than is merely in- 

 volved in economics. One of the ultimate aims of life upon earth is 

 the perpetuation of the species, an essential incident of which is the 

 struggle to live. This aim of life in Nature is seen in all creations, 

 from trees and insects up to man. Under the term "struggle of 

 life " are included many complex factors. Such problems as how to 

 conserve and prolong life, how to lower the death-rate in children, 

 how to produce good hereditary development, how to strengthen the 

 bodies and minds and enlarge the spiritual bounds of men — all these, 

 and many other questions, are included in a conception of this strug- 

 gle. It is evident that those are the best conditions of life that lead 

 to the highest development of the physical, mental, and moral facul- 

 ties, and the largest and best growth of the species. The all-im- 

 portant question is this : How are the present conditions of society 

 favoring and how subverting a successful struggle on the part of 

 many of its members? How far do they tend to cripple the best 

 development of life? This larger and more absorbing question in- 

 cludes the narrower one we are here discussing, as to the observed 

 inequalities of society. It is too large a theme for a single essay. A 

 brief glance at the varying conditions that produce social inequality 

 may be of interest. 



1. Unequal Physical Development.— As a rule, the more bodily 

 vigor a person possesses the better will be his chance of getting on 

 in the world. Many people fail because they have not the physical 

 strength for prolonged and successful effort. What fair chance, then, 

 has a child beginning life in an overcrowded tenement-house, all of 

 whose bodily functions are from the first contaminated ? The cells, 

 of which the human body is but an aggregate, might at this time by 

 healthy surroundings and physiological living, have marked upon them 

 an impress of lasting vigor ; by foul air and improper nourishment 

 they likewise have sown in them the seed of an early degeneration. 

 After a large dispensary experience, I have no hesitancy in saying 

 that the great majority of children brought up in the tenement-houses 

 of New York are, in greater or less degree, affected by a constitutional 

 taint, usually scrofulous or rachitic. Such a vicious condition grows 

 by what it feeds on. Each generation will get worse from the addition 

 of hereditary influences to the faulty environment, unless something is 

 done to check these evils. It is not difficult to foresee what will result 

 in a community if a large proportion of its inhabitants are, by reason 

 of their physical organization, seriously handicapped in the struggle 



