as disclosed through investigations by the Galton
Eugenics Laboratory in England and characterized as a national menace.
In the words of David Heron, a study of districts in London showed that
"one-fourth of the married population was producing one-half of the next
generation." In United States less exhaustive investigation showed the
same tendency at work and the alarm which the facts created found a
popular expression in the term "race-suicide."

It is under these circumstances and as a result of investigations and
agitations of the eugenists, that the poor, the defective, and the
delinquent have come to be regarded as "inner enemies" in a sense that
would scarcely have been understood a hundred years ago.

Poverty and dependency in modern society have a totally different
significance from that which they have had in societies in the past. The
literature descriptive of primitive communities indicated that in the
economic communism of a society based on kinship, famines were frequent
but poverty was unknown. In ancient and medieval societies the
dependency, where it was not professional, as in the case of the
mendicant religious orders, was intimate and personal. In this respect
it differed widely from the organized, official, and supervised
philanthropy of our modern cities.

With the abolition of serfdom, the break-up of the medieval guilds, and
the inauguration of a period of individual freedom and relatively
unrestricted competition (laissez faire) which ushered in the modern
industrial order, the struggle for existence ceased to be communal, and
became individual. The new order based on individual freedom, as
contrasted with the old order based on control, has been described as a
system in which every individual was permitted to "go to hell in his own
individual way." "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully
exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will,"
said Mill, "is to prevent harm to others. His own good either physical
or moral is not a sufficient warranty." Only when the individual became
a criminal or a pauper did the state or organized society attempt to
control or assist him in the competitive struggle for existence.[204]

Since competitive industry has its beginnings in England, the study of
the English poor laws is instructive. Under the influence of Malthus
and of the classical economists the early writers upon poverty regarded
it as an inevitable and natural conse