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accommodating a number of families generally very poor and relying upon 

 casual labour. Woolwich has a relatively low percentage, 4*6 per 1,000, 

 and I should attribute this to the fact that the majority of the householders, 

 although not possessing high wage earning capacity, are more or less skillled 

 artisans in comparatively continuous employment, whereas at Stepney (6*6), 

 Poplar (6*2), and St. George's (6'4) casual labour and lower wage- 

 earning capacity predominate, with a proportionately higher rate of over- 

 crowding in one-roomed tenements and pauperism. It is probable that 

 those parishes which had a high rate of registered pauper lunacy would 

 also have a high rate of births, of infant mortality, and of tuberculosis. 

 While yielding to no one in the desire to see temperate measures adopted 

 for the control and regulation of the liquor traffic and the segregation of the 

 chronic inebriate, who, in my judgment, is more dangerous to society than 

 the lunatic ; nevertheless, I am of opinion that there is no proof that 

 certifiable insanity would diminish to anything like the extent that is fondly 

 cherished by total abstainers if alcohol were abolished. I feel certain, 

 however, triere would be less disease and far less crime and pauperism 

 than now exists in the general population of this country. Dr. Bevan 

 Lewis and Dr. Sullivan, by careful analysis and tables, have shown that in 

 the regional distribution of insanity it is difficult to trace any evidence of 

 alcoholic influence such as might be expected if alcoholism really accounted 

 for a sixth of the total cases of registered insanity. They have shown 

 that inland and agricultural communities were the least inebriate, but 

 had the highest ratios of pauperism and insanity ; inland and maritime 

 mining and manufacturing communities above all others were the most in- 

 temperate, yet revealed the lowest ratios of pauperism and insanity. Dr. 

 Sullivan concludes that alcohol, as the essential cause of certified insanity, 

 falls a good deal short of the 1.6 per cent, at which it is rated in the 

 official statistics. This entirely conforms with my observations on post- 

 mortem examinations in hospital and asylum practice. There is a correla- 

 tion, however, between the wage-earning capacity of a population, 

 pauperism, insanity, and tuberculosis. As the mentally and physically 

 more fit migrate from the agricultural districts to the industrial centres, or 

 emigrate, a progressively, mentally, and physically enfeebled rural popula- 

 tion must result. Like tends to beget like, and so Eugenists should urge 

 back to the land as one of the most pressing calls for legislation if we do' 

 not want a complete mental and physical deterioration of our rural popula- 

 tion. It is a well-known fact that the feeble-minded are especially prone 

 to tuberculosis, which is one of Nature's methods of eliminating the unfit. 

 Imbeciles and idiots are often sterile, which is one mode by which a 

 completely degenerate stock may die out, but degenerate stocks generally 

 contain feeble-minded of all grades, the majority of which will not die out, 

 but propagate freely, and no class of the community is responsible for 

 registered insanity, and (at present) unregistered feeble-mindedness to such 



