And of old-age pensions his concluding remark is:
"Nature knows of no right to maintenance, but only the necessity of getting rid of these who need it by mending or ending them."
Again, as to the huge waste of infant life now going on, which he admits is preventable and might be saved, he remarks:
"We must agree that it would be of the lower, or lowest type of careless, thriftless, dirty, and incapable families that the increase would be obtained. Is it worth while to dilute our increase of population by 10 per cent. more of the more inferior kind?"
And he concludes thus:
"This movement is doing away with one of the few remains of natural weeding out of the unfit that our civilisation has left us. And it will certainly cause more misery than happiness in the course of a century."[140:A]
[140:A] Janus in Modern Life. By W. M. Flinders Petrie, D.C.L., F.R.S.
The whole book is full of such statements as the above, for which neither facts nor arguments are given. It is assumed throughout that the failures in our modern society are so through their
own fault—they are "wastrels"—and deserve neither pity nor help. He knows nothing apparently of Dr. Barnardo's work in rescuing these "wastrel" children from the gutter and the workhouse, treating them well and kindly, training them in work, and sending many thousands to Canada. A record of their subsequent life was kept, and it was found that very few failed to do well, while a very large majority became valuable citizens in their new home. On the whole, they were in no way inferior to the average of emigrants who go at their own expense, and who are admitted to be among the best of our workers.
None of the writers of the class here quoted seem to have made themselves acquainted with the researches of Herbert Spencer, Sir F. Galton, and others, as to the natural laws which determine the rate of increase of population when those laws are allowed to operate freely under rational and moral social conditions. A short statement of these laws will therefore be given.