The mortality of children between the ages of one and five years depends chiefly upon the incidence of the infectious diseases. It is well known that these diseases are much milder in civilised than in uncivilised countries. From this it follows that the death-rate among children between the ages of one and five years depends chiefly upon the level of civilisation; the death-rate being higher where the level of civilisation is low, and conversely; but the infantile death-rate is much less influenced by the standard of civilisation. Moreover, recent investigations have shown that (especially in large towns and in industrial regions) high infant mortality is closely associated with a low level of fitness for military service, and with a high death-rate from tuberculosis. It is true that the number of those who succumb to tuberculosis and the number of those who prove fit for military service are influenced by other causes in addition to the infantile death-rate--causes which have nothing to do with that death-rate. But the fact remains indisputable that the causes leading to a great mortality among infants tend to injure the constitution of those infants who succeed in surviving, and thus weaken the general health of the population. _Socialism_ versus _Poor-Relief_.--Many Socialists are opposed to the relief of destitution. Poverty existed prior to the rise of capitalism, and is found where the capitalist system has not as yet struck root. But the chief cause of poverty to-day is unquestionably capitalism. Capitalism is the creator of the proletariat, the type of the poor class; poverty and proletariat, poor man and proletarian, are almost equivalent terms. Capitalism is also the creator of pauperism (_e.g._ of the industrial reserve army), which must be regarded as an essential pre-condition of capitalist production. In the manufacturing districts, poverty is more extensive than it is in the agricultural districts. In the towns it is more extensive than in the country. Capitalism cannot exist without poor-relief. Unless the destitute are relieved out of the superfluity of capitalism, certain very undesirable consequences will ensue. For poverty is a chief cause at once of punishable offences and of all kinds of disease. The two main purposes of the relief of the destitute are, in fact, the protection of the rich against criminal outbreaks on the part of the poor, and the prevention of the epidemic diseases which would breed in the surroundings of neglected poverty, and spread thence to the homes of the rich.