The Ideal State 293 



the wives and mothers of the nation know very well, 

 •end that men are much more able to secure all such 

 reforms than they are themselves. 



Medical men have for long tried to establish the 

 State regulation of vice, which would have cured and 

 prevented disease which has wrought such havoc to 

 innocent women and children, and would eventu- 

 ally have reduced prostitution to the lowest possible 

 limit. Reform of this nature has been prevented by 

 agitation on the part of people unable to appreciate 

 facts, with the result of continual increase of the very 

 evil they wish to remove. 



Acts of Parliament are very useful things, but they 

 will never accomplish the final destruction of vice of 

 this nature. Its ultimate destruction will only come 

 with a universal spirit of self-sacrifice as the law of life, 

 and the removal of the great temptation to acquire gain 

 by the abolition of the gold standard, and consequently 

 the power of acquiring riches by means of the foulest 

 and most degrading traffic known to our civilisation. 

 In the meantime it must be dealt with drastically and 

 without fear ; and, coincidentally, gambling dens must 

 be summarily swept away and the liquor traffic rigidly 

 controlled by Government, and drunkenness in every 

 case punished by detention, the period of imprisonment 

 to be increased according to the number of offences. 



But we must go further. Presuming that popula- 

 tion increases to the utmost limit of the food supply, 

 and that the gold standard and private property 

 has been abolished ; in such circumstances the 

 young men and women will wish to marry. If they 

 all do so, how is the growth of the population be- 

 yond the means of subsistence to be prevented? 

 As has been proved, the population at present 

 is controlled by the labour market ; a man does 

 not marry until he has acquired sufficient to enable 



