742 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



trial Europe, there is not a single large manufacturing city whicb is 

 free from a vast mass of people whose condition is exactly that de- 

 scribed, and from a still greater mass who, living just on the edge of 

 the social swamp, are liable to be precipitated into it by any lack of 

 demand for their produce. And, with every addition to the popula- 

 tion, the multitude already sunk in the pit and the number of the host 

 sliding toward it continually increase. 



Argumentation can hardly be needful to make it clear that no so- 

 ciety in which the elements of decomposition are thus swiftly and 

 surely accumulating can hojie to win in the race of industries. 



Intelligence, knowledge, and skill are undoubtedly conditions of 

 success ; but of what avail are they likely to be unless they are backed 

 up by honesty, energy, good- will, and all the physical and moral fac- 

 ulties that go to the making of manhood, and unless they are stimu- 

 lated by hope of such reward as men may fairly look to ? And what 

 dweller in the slough of niisere, dwarfed in body and soul, demoral- 

 ized, hopeless, can reasonably be expected to possess these qualities ? 



Any full and permanent development of the productive powers of 

 an industrial population, then, must be compatible with, and, indeed, 

 based upon a social organization which will secure a fair amount of 

 physical and moral welfare to that population ; which will make for 

 good and not for evil. Natural science and religious enthusiasm rarely 

 go hand in hand, but on this matter their concord is complete ; and 

 the least sympathetic of naturalists can but admire the insight and the 

 devotion of such social reformers as the late Lord Shaftesbury, whose 

 recently published "Life and Letters" gives a vivid picture of the 

 condition of the working classes fifty years ago, and of the pit which 

 our industry, ignoring these plain truths, v.'as then digging under its 

 own feet. 



There is perhaps no more hopeful sign of progress among us in the 

 last half-century than the steadily increasing devotion which has been 

 and is directed to measures for promoting physical and moral welfare 

 among the poorer classes. Sanitary reformers, like most other reform- 

 ers whom I have had the advantage of knowing, seem to need a good 

 dose of fanaticism, as a sort of moral coca, to keep them up to the 

 mark, and, doubtless, they have made many mistakes ; but that the 

 endeavor to improve the condition under which our industrial popula- 

 tion live, to amend the drainage of densely peopled streets, to provide 

 baths, wash-houses, and gymnasia, to facilitate habits of thrift, to fur- 

 nish some provision for instruction and amusement in public libraries 

 and the like, is not only desirable from a philanthropic point of view, 

 but an essential condition of safe industrial development, appears to 

 me to be indisputable. It is by such means alone, so far as I can see, 

 that we can hope to check the constant gravitation of industrial soci- 

 ety toward la misere, until the general progress of intelligence and 

 morality leads men to grapple with the sources of that tendency. If 



