The advances in sanitation and medical science made in the last 60 years have resulted in an enormous reduction of infant mortality in large towns, and also in an average prolongation of life. Epidemics of smallpox, cholera, typhus, diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc., which took such a heavy toll in the past, are now effectively controlled by the existing system of isolation hospitals, and of efficient public health supervision. To-day it is possible for the medical student to traverse his six laborious years of training without seeing a single case of typhoid fever――a disease which in the times of his elders used to be one of the commonplaces of a hospital. These improvements in sanitation, the progress made in aseptic surgery, in prophylactic medicine, and in the general treatment of disease, have been largely responsible for the lowering of the death-rate already mentioned. The increase of humanitarianism in civilized countries has resulted in the creation of an enormous number of philanthropic institutions and charity organizations, through the channels of which much relief is brought to the impoverished classes. This spirit now makes it difficult for those endowed with a superfluity, or even a sufficiency of wealth, to contemplate with indifference the misery and degradation of less fortunately placed fellow human beings. And lastly, since the entry to power of any given political party is conditioned by the acquisition by that party of a sufficient number of votes, given by a mainly proletarian electorate, it follows that politics are likely to be framed in such a way as to commend themselves to such an electorate. It would seem unfair to omit this fact from consideration, though it has been over-emphasized by a school of political cynics who deny the participation of humanitarian feelings in politics (outside the realm of speech-making), and who attribute to political expediency an excessive if not an exclusive rôle in improving the lot of the very poor. In virtue, then, of these factors it would nowadays be very difficult for any individual, however worthless, actually to starve, and many people of defective stock and bad physique who, in the ordinary course of nature would perish, are now artificially kept alive to perpetuate their kind. * * * * * The ‘economic’ factor tending to produce deterioration in the race, presupposes the dysgenic. Among uncivilized peoples it is the biologically superior type which is most prolific. In advanced civilized countries, which are democratic in social organization, the reverse obtains. Thus among most primitive people, the Chief――_i.e._ the man with most courage, initiative, resourcefulness and power of leadership――enjoys the possession of most wives, and therefore produces most offspring. The analogue of the drunken unemployable of to-day would probably not be permitted to marry.