Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/256

 effects are no more injurious, at present, than those of a moderate use of wine or spirits: but they can become perilous, and may develop in all sorts of ways, when the nervous organisation becomes more delicate. Thus, the abolition of alcoholic beverages, at present the fad of a minority not always very respectable in the methods of its propaganda, will presently be an indispensable feature of social progress.

Unless all criminologists are wrong in their deductions, something like fifty per cent. of all crime will be got rid of when alcohol no longer exists to cause crime. There are further ameliorative influences certain to be at work which will tend to reduce the sorts of crime chiefly troublesome at present. Adopting the familiar division of crime into (a) offences against the person and (b) offences against property, it is very easy to see that what may be called private crime (as distinguished from crime against the body politic) will diminish automatically, When the extremes of wealth and poverty have become as much less marked as I have endeavoured to show that they must become, it is evident that the temptation to offences of greed will be greatly diminished. A large proportion of all these crimes arises out of poverty alone, or out of poverty coupled with stupidity. A man who has not enough intelligence to earn is very likely to steal in order to provide for himself; and one who is