The curse of alcohol,[114] too, lies heavy on our land; it shortens life, incapacitates for work, impoverishes and degrades; visits in innumerable forms the sins of the parents upon their innocent yet grievously afflicted children; promotes crime and perverts judgment. Each year brings more statistical and biological evidence of its enduring and deteriorating effects upon humanity. It seems strange, therefore, that the law to insist upon the provision of an adequate water supply for every dwelling remains entirely insufficient to meet the most urgent needs of many town streets as well as country villages. Cleanliness is consequently impossible, and the public-house must be perforce frequented, for it provides a beverage more palatable and perhaps as wholesome as the cottager's nearest supply. XI. THE SOURCE OF THESE CAUSES TO BE FOUND IN FAULTY ADMINISTRATION OF THE HOME May not the causes of some considerable proportion of this apathy be traced to a want of popular faith in the teachings of hygiene? Is not one source of the prevalent unbelief in its tenets to be found in the widespread ignorance of the right administration of human life in the home, which turns out therefore a product of unhealthy, inharmonious citizens, who are a source of weakness to their country and a menace to civilisation? How could it be otherwise? If the cradle of life be defective, and its occupants be debilitated, it is not the nurslings alone upon whom the penalties will fall; whereas if home administration be guided by intelligence, and the quality of the inmates be high, individual and national prosperity are assured. The burden of responsibility or the privilege of promoting progress (according to the spirit in which obligations are assumed) rests with those who propose to be or already are parents; they being influenced in their turn by the educational and social conditions of their surroundings. Parental care and intelligent home management are thus intimately concerned with the physical evolution of the race, as well as with its moral development. They must, therefore, assume an increasing rather than a diminishing importance, if the full development of potentialities is to be insured in the rising generation, and racial progress promoted. Any proclivity to depreciate the dignity or to undermine the influence of these institutions must be carefully examined and, if necessary, sternly repressed.