prison, in the workhouse, or in a charitable institution, and if he is not thus maintained he will maintain himself by crime or beggary. Throughout his life he remains a parasite upon his fellows. It is always therefore the most economical course, if it be possible, to alter his environment, so that he may have the chance of supporting himself. But the argument for Social Reform is not based only on the possibility of altering environment so that individuals who are unfit for it may maintain themselves so long as they live. Spencer was reasoning away from the facts. It is not only the incapable {340} who are poor. It is not only the imprudent who are overcome by distresses. It is not only the idle who starve. Bad conditions of life destroy not only the inefficient, but the efficient, and many of those whom they do not kill they maim. He is a very dull and stupid observer who supposes that all the slovenly, debauched, and criminal men and women whom he sees around him are what they are because of their innate qualities, or that all those who die of their own dirt, debauchery, and criminality are any worse. They were not all born criminals whom our great-grandfathers hung or transported for petty larceny, nor are they all born inefficients whom some modern eugenists would segregate or sterilize. A bad environment does not merely destroy the inefficient, it manufactures them; and it is as reasonable to oppose social reform, because it prevents the elimination of the unfit, as it would be to defend excessive eating and drinking, or sitting in wet clothes. Unhealthy living would no doubt destroy people with weak stomachs and livers, and a tendency to chalky deposits in the joints. But for every one who perished in this struggle with environment there would be ten who survived. Bad housing and bad wages produce the same results as bad habits. Of all the slum children who die of their surroundings, a large number would have lived to become valuable citizens if they had had better conditions of life in their early years. An ill-fed girl becomes the mother of weakly children. Inadequate housing produces disease, incest, and prostitution, besides killing a few undesirable infants. Casual labour kills only after it has given birth to an incalculable amount of laziness, vice, and mental disorder. Everywhere the good is kept back, even if some of the bad is prevented from development. The slum creates what the slum destroys, and it discharges upon the community much that it does not destroy. The elimination of the unfit is uncertain and capricious. The deterioration of the fit is certain and remorseless. Social Reform, if it is nothing else, is thus the only possible means of discovering which individuals are fit in the human sense. It is only when all have a chance of survival that we can distinguish the naturally inefficient from the accidentally inefficient. The {341} reformer need have no fear that his generous impulses are signs of an anti-social