=Deterioration of Survivors.=--As to the deterioration of the survivors there can be no question. The evidence of Dr. Tarrop, quoted before, and of other certifying surgeons is conclusive on this point. That school of thought which frames its industrial policy on the theory of the survival of the fittest, can scarcely point to any very triumphant results in the districts which we have been considering. They may assert, and will no doubt continue to assert, that the wholesale sweeping-off of damaged lives in the early months is a great boon to the race, and that the survivors, having stood the ordeal, are presumably more or less seasoned for the discharge of their functions. It must be pointed out, however, that the tests applied are one and all unnatural ones, and that if the laws of nature are to be consulted we shall be right in assuming that the children who have died are those who were best fitted to live. For what are we to think of the standard of living which subjects all new-comers to their capacity of assimilating adulterated and unhealthy food, dispensing with maternal care, breathing air which is foul, and existing without sunshine? Yet this is the kind of test which the pseudo-scientists of the day are so proud of applying, and the result is a weedy, sickly, unnatural generation, brought up without regard to any one of the most fundamental laws of nature. It would be every bit as reasonable to evolve a system of botany which rejected, as extinct or dying, families of plants, which could not be cultivated in a dark chamber or in a refrigerator, as to create conditions of industrial life without reference to the laws of nature or the teachings of health, and then to argue that the fitness of the race depends upon compliance with them. CHAPTER VIII. _LEGISLATION._ FACTORY LEGISLATION INCOMPLETE: Its intention--Sanitary and General Provisions--Causes of Inefficiency--Factory Acts a Compromise--Experts Required--Cubic Space Requirements--REFORMS NEEDED: HEALTH--Medical Examinations--Hygienic Regulations--Employment of Mothers--Need for Statistics--HOURS OF LABOUR: Abolition of Legal Overtime--Prevalence of Overtime--Overtime Unnecessary--Taking Work Home--REGULATION OF OUTWORK--CHILD LABOUR--EXTENSION OF THE FACTORY ACT DESIRABLE--Laundresses--Nailmakers--Local and Imperial Authority--THE TRUCK ACT--Conclusion.