240 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



all very well to criticise the schemes of others," may be said, " but 

 have you anything better to offer ? " 



I confess I have no particular scheme of reform to offer, nor 

 any patent method by which society can lift itself up by its boot- 

 straps ; but, in my humble judgment, most of the modern reform- 

 ers are overlooking the one thing which is really the parent of 

 much of the misery they desire to exterminate. And that cause is 

 the parents themselves. Go into the slums and alleys where most 

 of this poverty and misery abound, and you find them teeming 

 with children— ragged, half -starved, hungry-eyed, semi-diseased 

 children. What is the use of dredging a pool if, for every bucket 

 of dirt you take out, another dumps in a wagon-load ? Why, if 

 that part of society to which this state of existence is common 

 did not make themselves so cheap, they need be in no such condi- 

 tion. When there is a superabundant crop of apples, you will 

 find the orchard strewn with them, rotting from neglect. The 

 best are taken, and the poor ones are trodden under foot. And 

 when these bountiful harvests of children continue with such 

 exasperating regularity, you may expect to see the worst part of 

 humanity cast out and trodden under foot, literally left to rot as 

 useless, so long as society is as it is. Why should men make 

 themselves so cheap ? If ever the doctrine of "restriction" 

 needed enforcement, if ever there was a field where its results 

 would be productive of good, it is here, by restricting the supply 

 and so enhancing the prices of men. 



Involuntary pauperism and its attending evils will cease 

 whenever the demand for men runs ahead of the supply. 



I am not preaching Malthusianism as it is generally under- 

 stood. It is local over-poxjulation and its accompanying unman- 

 ageability of which I speak. I have no doubt that this earth, if 

 properly tilled and worked, will supply humanity with bread 

 enough and to spare. But that will take many generations to 

 accomplish. I am simply looking at things as they are, no matter 

 how they came to be so. I can see that so long as human beings 

 are brought into society at the present rate, and in the condition 

 we are in, economics is not going to save them. One of the most 

 hopeful signs in the spread of education is, that each class as it 

 rises to a higher scale of knowledge lowers the percentage of its 

 birth-rate. Where would your capitalists be with an extremely 

 limited supply of labor ? Given an exclusive community of mil- 

 lionaires, and what avail will be their millions ? Riches and 

 poverty are simply relative conditions. Your millionaire is rich 

 only because there happens to be a herd of men extremely desir- 

 ous of getting what he possesses. And a man believes himself 

 poor if he does not possess those desirable things, even though 

 he have enough to eat and drink and wear. One generation 



