78 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



weaving, milking and butter-making, while the labour 

 they were previously driven to perform is undertaken 

 by four-footed beasts of burden. A farming popula- 

 tion not too widely dispersed, where crops and stock 

 are intermingled, probably affords one of the best 

 grounds for raising a healthy population. 



An unregulated industrial life, such as was to be 

 found in England from the rise of industrialism to 

 the passing of the Factory Acts, seems to vie with an 

 agricultural community of a low type in depressing 

 the prospects of humanity. Too often, mere numbers 

 are all that is required ; there is neither time nor 

 opportunity in which to develop the finer qualities of 

 body and mind. The women are absorbed into the 

 factories as readily as, or more readily than, the men, 

 since their labour is cheaper. The birth-rate is low, 

 the death-rate is high ; the race is obviously on a 

 downward grade both as regards physique and mental 

 calibre. 



The type of society which has evolved the speculator, 

 the financier, or indulges in the pursuits of ill-regulated 

 gold-mining and all forms of economic gambling, has 

 always proved highly unsatisfactory. There is no 

 more demoralising element in any station of human 

 life than perpetual uncertainty as to the means of 

 subsistence, with alternate periods of poverty and 

 wealth. Great luxury vies with depths of misery, 

 till both become familiar objects. The sense of re- 

 sponsibility is naturally little developed. The women, 

 who have no economic raison d'etre in such a com- 

 munity, are the objects of irresponsible indulgence, one 

 of the means by which the men make visible the 



