Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/460

434 charity has still full sway. We are individually and unitedly to suppress the idle, incompetent, and vicious, and at the same time we are to help in every way the industrious and well-intentioned. The congenital criminal and the vagabond we are to imprison for an indefinite time; in this confinement they should be made to work. Paul said that "if any would not work, neither should he eat." Tasks that do not compete with honest labor should be devised for them—breaking stone, sawing and cutting wood for the deserving poor; in certain districts, working on the road, filling malarious tracts, etc.

These are the suppressive and punitive methods, on the one hand; the selective method, on the other hand, is to be found in the erection of wholesome tenement-houses. These should have amusement halls; gardens, if possible; reading-rooms and libraries; halls, where instructive lectures should be given—not on the Holy Land or Babylonian antiquities, but on bread-making, the chemistry of common life, hygiene, and cognate subjects. Talented men and women will be induced to give their services occasionally to entertain or instruct.

Adopting the deed of trust under which the Peabody buildings in London were given, we should apply the selective action by letting the apartments at the lowest possible rate to all those who are temperate, industrious, and are willing to work, while the vicious and the evil disposed should be rigorously excluded.

"Cruel!" you say; but we should recognize the far-reaching mercifulness of this plan in preventing the bringing of vicious children into the world, to live a life of misery and shame, or, if brought in, to find such unfavorable conditions as shall remove them while still young.

Quarantine the evil classes as you would the plague, and plant on good ground the deserving poor. Those who talk about the liberty of the individual before the law are not to include those who are endangering the liberty, perhaps the lives, of others, and are transgressing the law at every step.

Having established the means by which selective action may be brought into play, and in so just a manner, too, that even a vagabond could not complain of its injustice, we are to establish conditions by which the offspring of such colonies may have every chance of continuing in the life of sobriety and industry