Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/253

 of recording telephones, wirelessly actuated, special laws will have to be devised to protect trade against the various kinds of fraud which this method of transaction would otherwise facilitate, and some methods will have to be devised for giving legal force to arrangements made by telephony, akin to the methods which now give legal force to written contracts. Similarly, various by-laws will have to be enacted to protect the public against the accidents incidental to the various methods of rapid transit that will have come into use. Probably it will no longer be necessary, and it will have been perceived to be injurious, to protect travellers against their own rashness.

It is a well-known phenomenon that periods of material prosperity and high wages are fruitful in crime. Probably increased consumption of alcohol in prosperous times is the sole cause of this. There can be no direct connection between wealth and criminality; the bulk of the criminal population is, on the contrary, poor. It would be idle to speculate as to whether the next century will or will not continue to legislate against intoxicants, because it is morally certain that intoxicants will have been legislated out of existence already, without waiting for the period when it would no longer be necessary to abolish them forcibly. For at present, and in the more immediate future, there is no ground whatever for antici-