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Wealth as an Eliminative Agent. 
[June, 
IV. WEALTH AS AN ELIMINATIVE AGENT. 
By W. Mattieu Williams. 
S jHE concluding part of the article on “ Vice as an 
l Eliminative Agent,” in the last number of the 
“ Journal of Science,” is very suggestive. The writer 
says that the commercial scoundrel “ robs not by crying 
‘ Stand and deliver ! ’ but by rigging the market. He be- 
longs not to a gang, but to a syndicate, and when he has 
done more harm than a generation of bandits, burglars, or 
forgers, he dies in peace, and leaves his children in good 
positions.” 
Query- — Are the positions of his children really good ? 
Is the ill-gotten wealth with which he endows them likely 
to fit them for holding their ground in the general struggle 
for existence ? Or may it be an effectual agent in extermi- 
minating the foul brood ? 
We must remember that the man who lives a life of 
vigorous commercial rascality, and is married to a woman 
of his own type, will transmit to his offspring a vigorous and 
vicious organisation. If his domestic partner is quite dif- 
ferent, an alternation of type among his children will be the 
probable result, some resembling the father, others the 
mother. 
What is the effedt of the possession of unearned wealth 
upon young men with vicious predispositions ? It is simply 
a weapon of “ happy despatch,” which operates by supplying 
abundant means of sensual self-indulgence. Given two 
young men with low animal organisation, and equal physical 
vigour and bodily health, — one a navvy or farm labourer, the 
other inheriting sundry thousands a year on coming of age, 
— which is likely to live the longer and leave the larger 
family ? Anybody who has had opportunity of watching the 
career of representatives of these two classes can answer 
this question at once. 
Only a small minority of human beings are benefited by 
inheriting large accumulations of wealth. An exceptional 
organisation is necessary to enable a young man to escape 
the temptations and physical excesses which the early inhe- 
ritance of great wealth supplies. This is indicated by the 
degeneration and dying out of all aristocracies that are not 
continually recruited from the useful classes. The law is 
strikingly illustrated by our own race. While the working 
