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In America the states of Mississippi, New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts have 

 all entered upon an anti-tuberculosis crusade; so have Saskatchewan and Newfound- 

 land. The provision for sanatoria under the National Insurance Act is part of a similar 

 movement in the United Kingdom. 



The Eugenics Congress in London in 1912 attended by no less than 500 delegates 

 was a striking manifestation of the consensus of the nations that the subject of race im- 

 provement needed to be scientifically treated, by the encouragement of fine families 

 and the elimination of the unfit. The ideals of the eugenists are excellent, but the 

 matters they touch are still very much in the domain of theory, and hardly ripe for legis- 

 lation. " At present, " as Major Leonard Darwin, the President of the Congress, said, 

 " the most urgent need is for more knowledge." That sums up the situation. In the 

 United States however a beginning has been made. Marriage by epileptics and feeble- 

 minded persons has been forbidden in some states, and in about one-third of the states 

 of the Union marriages between first cousins are also banned. A number of states 

 Indiana, New York, Connecticut, California, Iowa, Utah, Nevada, New Jersey and 

 Washington have gone further and passed laws for the sterilization of certain classes 

 of defectives and degenerates, such as habitual criminals, confirmed drunkards, epilep- 

 tics and drug habitues. It is only in Indiana and California however that the law has 

 been actively enforced. In the former state, which led the way in this heroic remedy, 

 about 125 compulsory operations have been performed in two years. The operation is 

 said to have no effect practically on sex instincts and little on sex habits. A different 

 method of dealing with the unfit and one less open to controversy is that illustrated in 

 the Mental Deficiency Bill which was before the British Parliament in 1912 (see undr 

 EDUCATION, in Section V. of the YEAR-BOOK). A Defectives Act very similar in its 

 provisions has already been passed in New Zealand. The decline of the birth rate 

 among the classes with whom children should be most abundant, the blighting of the 

 harvest of human life, is a fitting text for the eugenist, full of solemn warning to society. 

 But it is much to be feared that private selfishness will thwart his best efforts in the cause 

 of race improvement. The maternity provisions in the British National Insurance Act 

 may perhaps do something to check what has been called the "tragedy of spoiled 

 babies." Spain has been securing the better protection of infant life by providing for 

 the care of pregnant women, nurse agencies and proper milk supply. 



The Worker and the State. Undoubtedly the most striking social phenomenon of 

 late has been the pervading Labour unrest. " Underneath all this unrest," as the 

 Archbishop of York truly said, " is the movement of a true and right ambition to better 

 the conditions of individual life," to secure a fairer distribution of the proceeds of in- 

 dustry. To solve this problem Australia has been trying the compulsory submission of 

 industrial disputes to courts of arbitration. These courts have to do what is " fair and 

 reasonable," and incidentally to determine what is " fair and reasonable " in relation 

 to a living wage. The decisions of the courts are discussed in an interesting article by 

 Professor Harrison Moore in the Journal of Comparative Legislation, No. xxvi. It must 

 be sufficient here to say that the " fair and reasonable " in relation to the living wage is 

 defined as " the normal needs of the average employee regarded as a human being living 

 in a civilised community." This definition has been accepted generally in Australia 

 without any serious adverse criticism. The living wage is there regarded as " sacro- 

 sanct." In England the fixing of a minimum wage in the coal industry by the Coal- 

 Mines Act of 1912 makes a precedent which is pretty sure to be followed in other in- 

 dustries. Saskatchewan has been establishing a Labour Bureau in connection with its 

 department of Agriculture. This Board has very wide functions -to collect and pub- 

 lish information and statistics relating not only to employment, wages and the hours 

 of labour in the province, but to strikes, co-operative trade unions, labour organisations, 

 the relations of capital and labour, in fact the whole commercial, industrial and sanitary 

 conditions surrounding the working man. 



The Shops Act of 1912 in the United Kingdom, providing that " every shop shall, 

 save as otherwise provided by this Act, be closed for the service of customers not later 



