Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/341

 SOCIAL POLICY TOWARD DEPENDENTS 329

delayed, by certain widely accepted errors. Thus we have a large number of citizens who cling to the belief that " natural selection " is adequate and preferable. They speak of the "evanescence of evil ; " they cite the high rate of mortality of starved and sickly infants; the sterility of prostitutes; the frequent celibacy of vicious and criminal men; the disappearance of degenerate families; the ravages of alcoholism and disease among the neurotic and inefficient. Doubtless, as was long ago abundantly illustrated by Malthus, misery, pain, weakness, vice, do tend to extinction without any conscious, concerted, and rational effort of the community through law. Why not leave the weeding-out process to these destructive agents and forces?

False modesty has been an important factor in hindering the calm and reasonable discussion of the selective process. Ignor- ance of biological science has contributed to the obstacles in the way of progress. We need to consider what the waiting, laissez- faire policy involves in order to understand why a humane society will not always stand by without a positive effort to modify the process and reduce its cost. It would mean, first of all, that hun- dreds of thousands of our fellow-men who fail in competition would starve or freeze before our eyes in our streets. Among these would be innumerable innocent little children, and helpless old men and women, unfortunate and crippled veterans of the army of labor. We do not need to depend on imagination for a knowledge of the effect of such conduct. It is what Bill Sykes did, what miserly stepfathers and heartless tyrants have done. The king who heard that his subjects had nothing to eat, and sent word that they were welcome to eat grass, was inviting a revolu- tion and it came. Hunger breeds despair, and those who are left on the verge of starvation have nothing to risk when they steal and rob, or set the torch to palaces, and rob public stores and granaries in the glare of conflagrations.

The instinct of sympathy is too deep and general to permit neglect. The moral obligation of charity is now with us organic, institutional, and fortified by ethical philosophy. While we can- not " prove " it, as we can a physical cause of disease, we can show to all who are capable of appreciating the argument that charity