120 DARWINISM AND RACE PROGRESS. 



Those Competing are Handicapped by Property)- 



This is brought about in many ways, but by none 

 more effectively than by the amassing and transmission 

 of property. Instead of living a hand-to-mouth 

 existence, all communities have very naturally in- 

 stituted what is known as personal property ; they have 

 permitted individuals to acquire and transmit large 

 quantities of food or clothing, etc,, or that which can 

 be converted into this, namely money. By lending 

 this property to those who are in need of it, and by 

 exacting a percentage increase in payment of this 

 loan, wealth may yield in perpetuity a sufficiency to 

 support without further expenditure of labour. By 

 the earning, with physical or mental labour, of wealth, 

 and by the increments produced by the loan ot 

 wealth, this wealth has accumulated in certain 

 families and in certain classes, and this power is 

 handed down from generation to generation. In 

 order to obtain wealth in any quantity, great physical 

 skill or mental training is, as a rule, required, and 

 this is only to be obtained for a child by the expen- 

 diture of wealth on the parent's part. The wealthier 

 families in a community have therefore either suffi- 

 cient wealth to support their children in idleness, or, 



1 Consult " Darwinism and Politics," by Professor D. G. 

 Ritchie, 2nd Edit., p. vi., upon the interference of property with 

 natural selection. 



