308 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
We may blame the kind influence of charity for lack 
of discrimination in its efforts for the help of our neigh- 
bours. The indiscriminate charity of the middle ages 
is responsible for much of the misery of ours. It is 
only in very modern times that charity has had any 
relation with justice. It is only lately that science has 
shown that charity is to be judged not by its motives 
but by its results. “Charity, falsely so called,” says 
McCulloch, “covers a multitude of sins, and sends the 
pauper out with the benediction, ‘ Be fruitful and multi- 
ply.’ Such charity has made this element, has brought 
children to birth, and insured them a life of misery, cold, 
hunger, sickness. So-called charity joins public relief 
in producing stillborn children, raising prostitutes, and 
educating criminals.” 
Whatever the causes of hereditary inefficiency, it exists 
in our Civilization. It is part of our social fabric. It is 
an element not less difficult than the race problem itself. 
The race problem is indeed a phase of it, for when a 
race can take care of itself it ceases to have a problem. 
Hereditary inefficiency is therefore a factor in so- 
ciety. It must be considered as a factor in civil affairs. 
In what way does it affect the problem 
of government? In municipal govern- 
ment its evil effects are at once appar- 
ent. A single group of related families, 
all helpless and hopeless by heredity, forms in the clean 
and wealthy city of Indianapolis some four per cent of 
the population—5,ooo in perhaps 125,000. In other 
American cities, notably in San Francisco, with its mild 
climate and proverbial hospitality, the percentage is 
greater, for more of these families are represented. In 
no city are they absent. Self-government by such peo- 
ple is a farce. No community was ever built up of 
thieves and imbeciles. The vote of the dependent classes 
Pauperism a 
factor in 
government. 
