_The Tendency of Evolution._--The tendency of evolution is towards the disappearance of child-labour. It is statistically proved that the larger any industrial undertaking, the smaller proportionately is the number of children employed in that undertaking. But the tendency of evolution is unquestionably in the direction of the development of gigantic commercial enterprises through the absorption or competitive destruction of a much larger number of comparatively small enterprises. In the future we shall attain a condition in which no one will be allowed to undertake work of any kind which is injurious either to himself or to his offspring in any way whatever. Much of the work of women and children for wages such as goes on to-day will unquestionably be prohibited. No doubt, wage work for women will exist in the future, and some of it perhaps will be more intensive even than to-day; but, unquestionably, whatever wage work women do will be in a form which can do no harm to the present or to future generations. Children will be properly educated, and until the years of their education are finished will engage in such work only as is educative in its influence and character. Technical manual instruction will be one of the principal methods of education. As co-operative housekeeping spreads, women will have much less domestic work to do than at present. In this department of work also, the principle of the division of labour will be applied, and the individual details of the domestic economy of to-day will then be entrusted to the hands of professional specialists. Adult women will engage in much the same sort of work as men, with the exception of those occupations which experience shows to be injurious, for sexual reasons, either to themselves or to their offspring. In the regulation of women’s work, consideration will of course have to be paid to the physiological disturbances which periodically recur in women. CHAPTER V THE PROTECTION OF CHILDREN AGAINST DISEASE _Introductory._--The objects of this department of child-protection are, first, to prevent the child becoming ill; secondly, if it has become ill, to cure it. The hygiene of childhood deals with the former question, and pediatrics with the latter. In this chapter we shall consider those problems only which concern the health of children of the poorer classes.