Page:Tyranny of Shams (1916).djvu/160

 would have a most effective means of locating the criminal. Any who were permanently refractory, or showed an incurable disposition to revert to crime or to the vagrant industries which disgrace our cities to-day, would have no moral right to burden us with their existence. The community would offer work and sufficient wage to all. The rest might disappear into segregated “homes of idleness,” or, if we are as wise as we ought to be, into lethal chambers.

This incurably refractory group would, however, probably prove smaller than many believe. We are at present a little too much inclined to consult scientific theorists about heredity (which is still very obscure in science) and too little inclined to make social experiments. I am assuming that a dozen other reforms would proceed simultaneously with the reform of industry. Education would no longer confine itself to giving an elementary literacy to children, without any further care what use they make of their literacy; it would, as I will suggest later, seriously concern itself with the adult population. A bolder treatment of the housing question would stimulate those who have evil traditions; we should not confine ourselves to building clean rooms for them, which they might make filthy if they wished. Prudential restriction of the birth-rate would be impressed on the poorer class, with great benefit to themselves and their children and the State. Eugenic proposals might be practically formulated and encouraged. We should not expect