HEREDITARY INEFFICIENCY. 307 
ited in his powers. He can give as much as he sees fit. 
As the office is a political one, about the time of nomi- 
nation and election the amounts increase largely. The 
political bosses favour this and use it—now in the inter- 
ests of the Republican now of the Democratic party. It 
thus becomes a corruption fund of the worst kind. 
What the township trustee fails to do, private benevo- 
lence supplements. The so-called charitable people who 
give to begging children and women with baskets have 
a vast sin to answer for. It is from them that this pau- 
per element gets its consent to exist.” , 
In every American city, as in Indianapolis, there 
exist a large number of people who, in the ordinary 
course of life, can never be made good 
citizens. Our free institutions do not 
make them free; our free schools do not 
train them; our churches do not contain the means of 
their salvation. It is well to face the fact that the ex- 
istence of the great body of paupers and criminals is 
possible only by feeding them in one way or another 
on the life-blood of the community. It is the presence 
of this class which adds terror to poverty. It is they 
which make intolerable the lot of the worthy poor. The 
problem of poverty and misfortune is a difficult one at 
best. It is rendered many times more difficult by the 
presence among the poor of those whom no condition 
could bring to the level of self-helpful and self-respect- 
ing humanity. The difficult problem of the unemployed 
becomes far more difficult when associated with the 
hopeless problem of the unemployable. 
It is not important to our present discussion to con- 
sider how these conditions arose. It may be a defect 
of human society that the law of natural selection has 
not had its perfect work. The destruction of the unfit 
has not kept pace with their power of reproduction. 
Paupers as 
parasites. 
