Crawford pocketed the card. "I'm coming to that," he replied.
"The Chief Commissioner at that time was a Buford Finchley and the great experiment Guildris talked about was his idea. From the beginning here, there had been a certain small proportion of the population which consistently seemed unable to cope with the regulation of life which was necessary to a pioneer planet. Some of them starved when their private holdings failed; some of them became criminals when their families were exposed to want, leaving themselves and their families to be supported by the remainder of the population. When there was finally plenty of food and clothing and shelter for everybody and an end to the rationing system was proposed, the wise Commissioner Buford saw that such an end would put the weaker citizens at the mercy of the acquisitiveness of the stronger and threaten the stronger by the latent criminality of the weaker. He reasoned that no one needs more than enough of the necessities of life and that submission to socially beneficial regimentation was the mark of the socially adapted, the fitted to survive in a civilized age. So he began the present program of the most extensive control of the necessities and luxuries of life and the Eyefers were part of the natural result. They are the unfitted.
"They forget to apply for many of their types of rations: they forget the special ordinances for seasons and parts of the cities: they forget to re-register for all permits when they change their addresses: some of them even forget to earn enough to pay for both permits and food, and let the food go and get all the permits and have to be hospitalized for malnutrition ... they're Eyefers, too. They have a thousand excuses, but they all boil down to, 'I fergot.'"
Herl objected, "But you don't segregate them as you would criminals."
"No, of course not. They haven't committed any crime, usually; and we have no intention of punishing them. They are simply recognized as incompetent to manage their own affairs, sterilized, and guardians appointed to look after and support them. We realize that we have no right to interfere between an individual and his personal goals unless that individual threatens the liberty of other individuals." Crawford spoke self-confidently but without any show of self-righteousness.
The waiter approached with a loaded tray and began to place the food on the table.
Herl kept his gaze from the bowl of steaming gruel before him and the tremendous steak before his companion. "You don't interfere with them ... you just take away their jobs and their motivations to be social and their obligations to be human beings?"
Crawford started to reply: the waiter put the last dishes on the table and departed: Herl continued speaking hurriedly.
"I don't mean to sound critical of your experiment when I don't know the whole story yet ... but I should think that Miss Haulwell's competence to manage her own affairs (since you say that she was the best of your last three secretaries) was hardly to be judged on the basis of one small set of lapses."