to do during life, in order to support
himself, is the unit of measurement of the burden he has to bear. Many
factors in modern times have helped to reduce that work to a minimum.
The invention of machinery has multiplied his eyes, his hands, his feet;
and one man can now produce, for his own maintenance and comfort, what
it took perhaps a score of men to produce even a century ago. Man's
disabilities from incidental and epidemic disease have been immeasurably
reduced by modern sanitation, and the teaching and practice of
preventive medicine. Agricultural chemistry has made the soil more
productive, and manufacturing arts have aided distribution as well as
production.

All the departments of human knowledge have been placed under
contribution to man's necessity, and longer life, better health, and
more food and clothing for less work, are the blessings on his head
to-day.

While the burden has been lessened by the industrial and scientific
progress of the last half century, it has been augmented by the
fertility of the unfit; and the maintenance in idleness and comfort of
the great and increasing army of defectives constitutes the fit man's
burden. The unfit in the State include all those mental and moral and
physical defectives who are unable or unwilling to support themselves
according to the recognised laws of human society. They include the
criminal, the pauper, the idiot and imbecile, the lunatic, the drunkard,
the deformed, and the diseased. We are now face to face with the
startling fact that this army of defectives is increasing in numbers and
relative fertility.

Consider what a burden is the criminal. Every community is more or less
terrorised by him; our property is liable to be plundered, our houses
invaded, our women ravished, our children murdered. To restrain him we
must build gaols, and keep immense staffs of highly paid officials to
tend him in confinement, and watch him when he is at liberty.
Notwithstanding these, crime is rife, and is rapidly increasing. Says
Douglas Morrison:--"It is perfectly well known to every serious student
of criminal questions, both at home and abroad, that the proportion of
habitual criminals in the criminal population is steadily on the
increase, and was never so high as it is now.... The population under
detention in reformatory institutions is increasing more rapidly than
the growth of the community as a whole, and, as far as it is possible to
see, the juvenile popula