Mankind in the MakingWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
Mankind in the Making
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Social problems; Social sciences
If a woman does not wish to be dealt with as a half-hearted murderess
she should not behave like one. It should also be punishable on the part
of a mother to leave children below a certain age alone for longer than
a certain interval. It is absurd to punish people as we do, for the
injuries inflicted by them upon their children during uncontrollable
anger, and not to punish them for the injuries inflicted by uncontrolled
carelessness. Such legislation should ensure children space, air and
attention. [Footnote: It is less within the range of commonly grasped
ideas, it is therefore less within the range of practical expedients,
to point out that a graduated scale of building regulation might be
contrived for use in different localities. Districts could be classed
in grades determined by the position of each district in the scale
of infant mortality, and in those in which the rate was highest the
hygienic standard could be made most stringent and onerous upon the
house owner. This would force up the price of house-room, and that would
force up the price of labour, and this would give the proprietors of
unwholesome industries a personal interest in hygienic conditions
about them. It would also tend to force population out of districts
intrinsically unhealthy into districts intrinsically healthy. The
statistics of low-grade districts could be examined to discover the
distinctive diseases which determine their lowness of grade, and if
these were preventable diseases they could be controlled by special
regulations. A further extension of these principles might be made.
Direct inducements to attract the high birth-rates towards exceptionally
healthy districts could be contrived by a differential rating of sound
families with children in such districts, the burthen of heavy rates
could be thrown upon silly and selfish landowners who attempted to
stifle sound populations by using highly habitable areas as golf links,
private parks, game preserves, and the like, and public-spirited people
could combine to facilitate communications that would render life in
such districts compatible with industrial occupation. Such deliberate
redistribution of population as this differential treatment of districts
involves, is, however, quite beyond the available power and intelligence
of our public control at present, and I suggest it here as something
that our grandchildren perhaps may begin to consider. But if in the
obscurity of this footnote I may let myself go, I would point out that,
in the future, a time may come when locomotion will be so swift and
convenient and cheap that it will be unnecessary to spread out the homes
of our great communities where the industrial and trading centres are
gathered together; it will be unnecessary for each district to sustain
the renewal and increase of its own population. Certain wide regions
will become specifically administrative and central--the home lands, the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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