Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/784

760 uneven lot, the laborer would often strike down the man whose mental superiority makes possible the earning of his bread. Trades-unions in attempting to reduce all work and wages to a dead level, in spite of the varying abilities of different workingmen, are striving to accomplish a reversal of natural law. As for any permanent success in this matter, they will find it about as difficult to change the operation of the law of the survival of the fittest, as the law of attraction of gravitation. A state or society might as well decree that the man with the strong lungs should not live any longer than the one with weak lungs, as attempt to restrain the fertile, active mind, and limit its performance by the capacity of the dull brain. At the same time, we should strive to find out the preventable causes of mental as well as of physical inferiority.

The child from the swarming tenement-house, after a desultory and unpractical schooling, is quickly transferred to shop or factory, where the struggle of life must be begun on a pitiably insufficient physical and mental training. A practical, industrial education does not appear to be within the conception of our public schools. This is just the line of education that would make them useful to the poor. We are hearing much at present of the dignity of manual labor; but work of the hands, unless in a measure directed by the head, is rather a lame accomplishment. Workingmen often show an inability to get along, because they have not sufficient mental equipoise to direct their affairs properly, as well as their work. They are continually being victimized by political manipulators and social quacks from this cause. Social conditions that keep men and women hopelessly toiling all their lives on one low plane are lamentable, but biological law shows us that heredity and a terribly unfavorable environment have of necessity precluded the physical and mental acuteness necessary to reach a higher level.

3. .—In character, no less than in body and mind, do we see vast differences among men. From the perfect activity of a well-balanced will to the uncertain energy of a vacillating character, there are innumerable variations. Such gradations do not stand in any ratio to intellectual culture. Moral power depends largely upon material environment. It does not flourish with filth or famine. Self-respect, that fundamental necessity for the higher attributes, can not well exist in rags and dirt. Moral rectitude is with difficulty conserved when the contact of individuals is too close. The excessive overcrowding so often seen in the tenements of great cities is as destructive of virtue as of physical health. I have seen sexual diseases engendered, even in childhood, that will not only cripple the development of the individual, but be propagated to future generations. Probably the most prolific cause of vice in densely populated centers is the condition here noted. This is only one aspect of a great subject. It is not necessary to believe that moral nature has been