CHAPTER II. Organized Industry

ORGANIZED INDUSTRY

The true organic formula of political as of economic justice is—

“From each according to his powers, To each according to his needs.” J. A. HOBSON.

Whilst bearing in mind that the present economic system—a system unconsciously produced through the play of selfish forces—was a necessary stage of evolution, and tended to progress so long as savage proclivities in the mass of the people made a closer social union impossible, we have also to recognize the changes, outward and inward, occurring under that system. First, a rise of co-operation, both voluntary and involuntary—in factories and throughout business generally—has taken place, causing evolution to proceed on wider lines. Second, a slow, silent, unstudied, half-unconscious movement has advanced, and in these days eventuated in the conception of a new system which purports to be the form that industrial evolution must assume in the near future. And inasmuch as this new system is less egoistic and more social than any system of competition, it will move on ethical lines of progress.

The present system, as we have seen, is based on private property in land and the instruments of production and distribution. In opposition to this, socialism implies that the State or people collectively should own the land and instruments of production and distribution. Further, that the State should organize routine labour and direct the distribution of produce upon this basis, and that throughout society social equality should be established and maintained.

The sentiment of justice and the feelings of sympathy and solidarity, without which no socialized society could exist, are prominent everywhere to-day. They manifest in philanthropic action all over the country, in constant efforts to adjust political and economic forces to lines of social equality and in the revolt of wage-workers, throughout the civilized world, from conditions they are finding intolerable and will not much longer endure.

A wholly unselfish order of life is impossible still, but under any intelligent collectivist system, individual selfishness becomes modified and controlled. Hence we may confidently expect that the strong anti-social feelings fostered by the private property and competitive system of industry will largely subside in the greater fraternity of an organized socialism.

It is significant that ignorant opponents, in their wildly erroneous interpretation of the theory of socialism as an equal division of money to all, recognize the gross injustice of the present distribution of wealth. The wrong and misery accruing from the individualistic system of industry are widely felt and freely admitted, while the underlying causes of the evil and the true remedies are not yet understood.

As regards the connexion of socialism with the theories of political economy, I must shortly explain: Political economy is the science of wealth—its production and distribution. But as the science relates exclusively to the present competitive system, the socialist finds in it a full exposure of the evils involved in that system, and ample grounds for striving to bring about its supersession by a system of co-operation on a socialized property basis. There is not and there cannot be any conflict between a true political economy and a scientific socialism. The one describes what is, the other what may be and ought to be. Both recognize that wealth is produced (and it is the only possible way) by the application of labour to land, and its products. In the present system, the individual possession of land and the instruments of production forms the ruling factor, producing inequality in the distribution of wealth and gives the basis on which commercial competition rests. In referring to laws of political economy, it is not unusual to speak as if they were laws of nature, no more to be banished than the law of gravitation. On this assumption there is raised the argument that society is forever bound to the present system, with its payments of rent, interest and profits out of the surplus proceeds of labour. Nevertheless, it is easy to see that the so-called laws of economics are only rules of social living springing from motives of human self-seeking exercised within the generally accepted conditions of private property in the essentials of life. It is not necessary for the socialist to contend against any single generalization of political economy; each may be true on its own basis, but, with that basis socialism is at war. Let society relinquish the property basis, and political economy remains applicable only to the past, while in the future the motives of human self-seeking enter upon a fresh career in a more altruistic system.

We must grasp the true nature of the various tributes imposed upon labour—rent, interest, profits and rent of ability—to comprehend their economic bearing. A farm is the private property of a landlord, while it is cultivated by a farmer and his labourers. The proceeds of the industry of the two latter is divided into three portions—the labourers’ wages, the landlord’s rent and the farmer’s profits. The first, dependent on demand and supply in the labour market, is kept down to what will cover the expense of a bare subsistence; and the second is always the highest amount the landlord can extract above the portion the farmer consents to live upon after paying the subsistence wage to his labourers. A landlord’s rapacity, however, is no longer the only factor in determining rent, since State interference has been found necessary for protection of farmers in the public interests. The economic bearing of rent is this: it gives effect to the demands of the landlord class for the results of an immense amount of labour applied to the production of varied commodities. As already explained, the produce sold in towns by farmers to pay rent goes, in large measure, to the support of workers who are manufacturing luxuries, objets de luxe, and many meretricious wares that minister to the depraved taste of men and women whose happiness is destroyed by a life of idleness and ennui.

It is not land only, but capital in the shape of railways, factories, workshops, machinery, etc., that are held as private property. For the use of these, therefore, workers pay a tribute called interest on capital. This interest gives effective demand to the wants of a large class of comparatively idle shareholders, who further absorb the services and produce of another great army of workers. The next tribute, namely profits, is a claim connected with the organizing of labour. It represents a prodigious tax levied upon workers, a tax that enables employers and managers—more or less wealthy—to enjoy comforts and luxuries their employés can never command. The fourth tribute has been called the rent of ability. It rests on the non-ethical principle that some people deserve from society a great reward for work they have pleasure in doing, while the toilers engaged in irksome, dangerous, dirty, distasteful work—however necessary to the whole community—are only entitled to a pittance wage.

Let us look at the proportional value of rent, interest, profits and rent of ability in their relation to the reward of manual labour. Out of the yearly income of the nation, recently computed at £1,450,000,000, £510,000,000 goes in rent and interest and £410,000,000 in profits and salaries to the ruling classes, while £530,000,000 only is available for payment of wages to manual workers. But when we consider that the latter compose the great mass of the population, and the former a small section or fraction of it only, the enormities involved in the working of our property institutions exhibit their true colours, and the growing sense of justice within civilized humanity revolts wholly from the system. The facts, roughly speaking, are that one-third of the total income of the nation goes to four-fifths of the population, while the remaining one-fifth pockets two-thirds of the income. (See Sidney Webb in Fabian Tract No. 69.)

In the Census of 1891 there were 543,038 adult men who entered themselves as not working for a living. We may assume these belonged chiefly to the wealthy classes, and if we reckon their average incomes at £500 per annum, there emerges a sum of £271,519,000 as approximately the value of the labour they exact each year from workers to whom they render no services in return. Again, if we add to the number of these idle men the women and children now living on rent and interest, the above computation falls far short of the reality. And, need it be said, the more there is taken from workers by non-workers, the less must remain for the workers themselves.

To people ignorant of economic principles, the man who spends a good income on personal gratifications appears—in his relations to society—either passive, or active beneficially, inasmuch as he “gives employment,” and his “giving” on these lines is lavish. Moreover, it is considered that the difference between rich and poor is one of natural inequality, of which, if workers complain, they are considered as unreasonable as the invalid who complains that other people are healthy. But the facts admit of no such analogy. The rich owe everything to the poor. They are simply a parasitic class, and the money they spend represents a power (socially permitted) to command and absorb the labour of their fellows. They exact life-long services, for which they bestow no personal service in return. Were we to place a rich man with all his money on an uninhabited island, however fertile, he would at once be reduced to his natural stature. No money would cause his daily comforts to spring up around him, and still less the many luxuries without which he feels his existence has no charm. In order to live he himself must work, for he is the sole representative of the scores of fellow-men on whose labour he has hitherto wholly depended for necessaries and all the amenities of a civilized life. The absorption by one of the labour of many is a social arrangement of genetic origin, and is immoral or non-ethical in character.

Socialism is the philosophy of a pure, wholesome, progressive industrial life, to be initiated and maintained by human effort—nay more, it is a veritable Gospel of Peace. And I use the word Gospel advisedly, for the finest religious quality of human nature is not in those beings who calmly pursue a course of spiritual development for themselves, unmindful that the physical part of their fellows craves the food and rest without which the latent soul within cannot manifest itself.

We have seen that in the domain of feeling the stirrings of socialism have for years been agitating the bosom of society, and although the outcome in philanthropic action issues usually in failure, none the less does it spring from the highest and holiest motives of man. But while philanthropy chiefly represents love’s labour lost, there are other and more virile forces in action that are indicative of a coming organic democracy. Observe, for instance, the constant efforts of the people to alter the political and economic strain by State interference. This agitation is a very significant fact. It betrays a hunger for social justice which will certainly increase with the growth of knowledge, public spirit and sensitiveness to personal rights. This hunger can never be fully appeased under any system that permits wealth to flow to the lucky, the clever, the cunning, the greedy, and be handed down by inheritance and bequest from generation to generation. No modification of individualism and not even socialism will banish all popular agitation. Communism is the far-distant goal to which it points, for communism alone sets forth as attainable a satisfying equality in all the comforts of life, and since evolution must eventuate in social justice, whatever falls short of this will inevitably contain some conditions of discontent.

But whilst a craving for justice among the masses cries out for State interference, from whence comes the modern view of what justice means? Among the classes it has been considered that the man who is clever, i.e. mentally strong, has a right to a greater reward for labour than the man who is stupid. The origin of this notion is simply the fact that in a competitive system he is able to obtain that superior reward. Power, and not any ethical idea, is the foundation of the notion. The notions of justice prevailing throughout society have all arisen naturally in the past amid the strong and privileged few, and readily have they been accepted by the docile and oppressed many. The clever, not the stupid, have formed public opinion, and that under a purely egoistic impulse. Nevertheless, as evolution passes from the unconscious to the self-conscious stage, reason unites with altruistic feeling to give birth to new conceptions that are moulding public opinion to a higher and truer form, and working out on the plane of practical action. The conception of justice involved in socialism is naturally unpalatable to the privileged few, but it goes far to prove the truth of socialism, that the conception is the fruit of the most advanced study of our social organism as a whole, while it coincides precisely with the blindly instinctive pulsations of the central mass of the people.

Turning now from the moral and emotional to the economic and practical side of the question, we are bound to inquire by what methods transition from the present competitive commercial system of industry to the socialism of the future will take effect. For, be it observed, supporters of the latter system not only assert its ethical superiority, but further assert that it is both practicable and economically inevitable.

There are two, and only two, general directions of popular reform: first, the revolutionary—the driving straight at established institutions with the intention of overthrowing them; second, the legislative—the aiming to improve the existing system by co-operative methods and the modification and gradual destruction of its worst features, i.e. its extremes of injustice and inequality. I have to point out how retrograde and futile for the promotion of happiness is sudden revolution. It is the spontaneous method of human passion where intellect is unenlightened on natural evolution and causation. It seeks to overturn what, for the time being, is the highest product of evolution, and it would blindly substitute that, which although ethically superior, the society of the time is unable to support. The method of legislative reform, national and municipal, is the rational one; and no other, we may confidently hope, will be tried in the civilized countries of Europe so long as socialists are not harassed and persecuted for their opinion beyond the point of endurance.

Already, as regards legislation in this country, the power of the Demos—the mass of the people—is acutely felt. Step by step our rulers have been compelled to lower the political franchise in order to quell revolutionary tendency and maintain their position. Fear-forces within the social organism have changed direction unnoted at the surface. The classes are secretly more afraid of the people than the people are of the classes; yet the actual burdens borne by the people are in no way lightened. And why is this so? Because the people generally are ignorant of their political power, and still more ignorant of how to wield it favourably to their own interests. As has truly been said: “The difficulty in England is not to secure more political power for the people, but to persuade them to make any sensible use of the power they already have.”

But social forces of persuasion and enlightenment are ready prepared for their guidance. In the upper and lower sections of the middle class, men and women whose culture is scientific and whose moral sentiment is advanced, are ranging themselves in the van of the world’s progress, and chiefly through their efforts there is pouring into and penetrating the darkness of the masses a flood of intellectual enlightenment. This process begun has its definite bearings. A growing intelligence in the people will cause the displacement of all authority that is irresponsible. A better selection of legislators will be made, and these, constrained by judicious criticism, will study the principles of social science and learn how best to attain the clear ends of government.

As our masses rise to the full exercise of their political power and the democratic trend of the nation goes forward, no higher motive force than that of self-seeking is required to secure better social conditions. Not only does the ignorant self-seeking of the masses carry weight commanding attention, but the intelligent self-seeking of rulers is a force set in similar direction. To please the majority of constituents is their highest policy; and since food and leisure and education are the essential needs of that majority, such available intellect as the legislative body possesses will be honestly applied to promoting the increase and better distribution of these various necessaries of a civilized life; in short, to promoting the general well-being in so far as the exigencies of the times permit.

I do not deny that self-seeking in rulers has hitherto mainly led to the clever hoodwinking of ignorant constituents. I merely assert that we have rounded the point of Cape Danger in that regard. Every step we take on democratic lines, every advance we make in educating the people, removes us further from that danger point. Moreover, I assert that extending the Parliamentary franchise to women of every social class will equally work for good. The new altruistic or philanthropic spirit of the age has laid firm hold of the so-called educated women of to-day. When public responsibility presses these women to self-education in politics, the myriad injustices revealed will cause them to turn from futile individualist charities and concentrate their energies on works of real and lasting social reform. We may confidently anticipate that the British Parliament will become an excellent instrument of Democratic Government when certain reforms—that are already widely agitated—have been carried out. These reforms are that: “The House of Commons should be freed from the veto of the House of Lords, and should be thrown open to candidates from all classes by a system of payment of representatives and a more rational method of election.” (See Fabian Tract No. 70.)

There are two lines of action certain to be pursued by a Parliament growing yearly more democratic. One is the line of protection of labour, the other is that of an active service of the people. Now State interference with trade—in the interests of workers—is condemned by the laissez-faire school of economists. Such action is scoffingly termed “grandmotherly legislation.” It is deprecated as injurious to society as a whole, as an outrage on the liberty of the British subject, and an impious desecration of the capitalistic fetish, “Freedom of Contract.” But when the knowledge of facts proves that on one side this so-called freedom signifies freedom of choice between dire starvation and the distasteful terms of an absolute master, surprise is not felt that intelligent men prefer what the ignorant may regard as a species of State bondage. This preference is a feature of the times clearly visible. No doubt, where social equality reigns, individual liberty is a noble attainment; but with inequality in the means of life and the fundamental conditions of social happiness, a State that is honestly striving to restore the balance is a very fount of justice. The quest of the workers is not that of individual liberty, but of a collective liberty, embracing every man, woman and child within the ranks of their own order.

There is no moral principle that condemns State interference, although we may admit that occasionally it has wrought evil instead of good. Failures have been caused by ignorance alike in the rulers and the ruled. But as knowledge of the real problem advances, errors in governing will become less frequent, and the action of the State be marked by a wise adaptation to human needs in view of the greatest happiness possible.

State regulation is simply a matter of power and expediency. At the present low stage of civilization, for just so long as the ruling power is exercised by a propertied minority, it will prove injurious to the majority; but when the power passes over to the people the evils from which the majority suffer—in so far as they are remediable by society—will be slowly and surely redressed. Our County, District and Parish Councils are important instalments of democracy. These elected bodies, with their increasing powers, are potent to make of the community an ever larger and larger employer of labour, until, at the will of the people, all industries become absorbed, and the collectivist system of labour organization is gradually established. It is evident that the instruments of a thoroughly democratic administration are rapidly perfecting in Great Britain; and when the ideal of socialism dominates the national mind, these will present a ready means of realizing the ideal in practice. Ignorance of the ideal leads many minds into the false assumption that the raising of wages, and to do this the impoverishing of capitalists, is the socialistic sine quâ non in State action. But as Mrs. Bosanquet explains: “In our nineteenth century cry for higher wages we are apt to lose sight of the fact that many things are more important to the working-man than a few shillings added to his weekly income. A good supply of water, well-paved and lighted streets, a market in which he can always obtain wholesome food, and properly guarded sanitary conditions, will do more to raise his standard of living above that of his ancestors than any increase of mere money income. With those he can lead a healthy, orderly life on comparatively small wages; without them no rise in wages, however desirable in itself, will enable him to escape danger and disease.” (Rich and Poor, by Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet.)

This puts the case for municipal socialism in a nutshell. No amount of philanthropy, no amount of individual action is likely to provide a parish with a good water supply, properly paved and lighted streets, sanitary dwellings and a well-managed market. (Fabian News.) Yet these are fundamental requisites of general well-being, and another requisite for well-being and progress, dependent upon State action, is education of the people. If the power of the masses and their independence of arbitrary authority grow out of accord with their real knowledge of things, disastrous and bloody revolutions become possible. That in some sort the State must educate the masses is a principle already acknowledged and acted upon. We know, too, with how little success! But as Government loses its evil characteristics and grows enlightened, our State education will be directed to new ends. Its aim will be to impress such knowledge on the rising generations as will prepare them for social life, and instruct them in the means of averting misery and increasing happiness. It will educate them in the science of society and true meliorism, in the best methods for repressing anti-social feelings, in the formation of noble ideals of conduct, and in that religion which unites mankind in the region of the heart and makes of their union a living and growing social organism.

But while this is the aim of State education, the exact means adopted may vary. Where parents are superior much may be left in their hands, but inferior parents can never be permitted to train up children in inferior ways at the risk of lowering social purity and health.

I believe the time will arrive when Government, acting on its right of force and expediency, will take up and sequestrate the small class of social units who, defective by nature and evil conditions, are unable to control the injurious tendency to propagate their kind. This degraded minority will be kindly dealt with and allowed all liberty not inconsistent with the careful guarding of public safety. The object to attain would be simply the putting an end to their evil stock.

In the matter of State education, as well as in that of State interference with trade, objections are made on the ground of injustice. “Why,” it is asked, “should a man without children be taxed to educate the children of others? Is it not unjust that the earnings of the prudent should be taken to save the imprudent from the consequences of their own folly?” My answer is that besides being expedient, it is not socially unjust and the argument rests on the fact that the rewards of life depend upon the economic conditions of society much more than upon individual effort or merit. The amount of a man’s income is determined by forces not created by justice, and over which he has no personal control. A clever physician may command the fee of a guinea a visit. Let another competent man appear in the neighbourhood and charge half a guinea, the first has to lower his fee or lose his patients, and if he lowers his fee, the sum of the incomes of the two physicians sharing the patients between them will be less than the amount of the single income originally derived from that source. A man’s gains are what the competitive system ordained by society permits him to seize, whether he be working hard or not at all. Within these non-moral conditions an appeal to justice is irrelevant. Outside the non-moral conditions, what justice requires is that all men should be socially equal in respect of two things, viz. liberty and the ordinary comforts of life.

If employers do not deem it unjust to lower wages, neither should they deem it unjust were the State to lower their incomes to the precise amount their employés receive. Society has in the past arbitrarily arranged conditions that favour the few; why should it not now arbitrarily rearrange these conditions favourably to the many? If we take the average amount of all incomes to represent the sum each worker might justly receive, we find that a number of people have far more than this sum. The surplus represents then an “unearned increment” obtained by force of circumstance. A still larger number of people, on the other hand, are wholly unable to win, by any effort they may make, the above average amount, even if they work hard and well all their lives. Is it not just and reasonable that the more fortunate are required to give up a portion of their “unearned increment” in order that in the interests of society the children of the less fortunate should be educated? And, again, the improvident and immoral are nature’s defective children. Does not the highest religion demand that they should be tenderly dealt with and spared—if that be possible—all the tortures that nature unaided would bring upon them.

I believe that, under conscious evolution, the State will become in its action more and more philanthropic, simply for this reason—its members will become more and more humane and public-spirited.

Voluntary and State agency, however, will continue to co-exist. Each has its peculiar merits and demerits, and each individual case to be dealt with has its peculiar conditions. Science and experience must in each case therefore decide which agency applies best. There is no foregone conclusion that under State Socialism all private industries will collapse. The principle of the system is that no method of industry, hurtful to society as a whole, may exist, and the power of the State shall be rigorously used to protect the interests of the whole, as against conflicting individual interests. Even now it is felt, through the growing democratic spirit, that for our public bodies to take advantage of the struggle for employment of starving, hard-pressed men and women, is a national disgrace. It will soon be a point of honour with the nation to fix a minimum wage for public employés much above the competitive rate. Some County Councils have already been moved to direct that workers employed by them, or under their contracts, should be paid trade-union wages. Parliament has in some cases acted similarly, and when we remember that Government at this moment is the largest employer of labour in the kingdom, we realize that its example in giving wages determined more by equity than by competition will have a raising effect upon wages in private employment.

There is not any danger, however, that the movement of taking over the industries of the country by the State will stop short of the most favourable point. As I write this chapter, the following paragraph has appeared in a socialist journal of to-day: “It is proposed to establish a gigantic trust to control the entire iron-producing interests of the United States. This, of course, is eminently proper from an economic view, as it is a clearly demonstrated fact that production on a large scale is cheaper than production on a small scale. Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan, proposers of the iron trust, are, from a certain standpoint, benefactors of the race, inasmuch as they will demonstrate the practicability of the co-operative idea on a national scale in production. In due time the people will recognize the folly of allowing these men to reap the whole profits, and the system will be readjusted.”

Another important public event was the introduction into the British Parliament of an Employer’s Liability Bill. “This Bill proceeds,” said its introducer, “on the principle that when a person for his own profit sets in motion agencies which create risks for others, he ought to be civilly responsible.” (The Scotsman Report, May 4, 1897.) Now it goes without saying that the iron trust, and all trusts and commercial rings and monopolies, create the risk of a disastrous rise of prices to the general public, and a consequent greater inequality of wealth possession than even that from which we are suffering acutely to-day. A logical executive, holding the above principle, will inevitably annex to the State these huge outgrowths of the competitive system, will keep down prices to the level required by the general interests, and apply profits to the good of all.

That the time is not far distant when nationalization of the land will take place, appears from the fact that many others besides socialists advocate the measure. But we must not suppose that rent will be abrogated. The State will impose a charge on the fertile and well situated lands to create conditions that are fair not only to consumers but to cultivators, whose labour in view of a given result must vary according to the superiority or inferiority of soils and situations. District Councils will in all probability organize agricultural labour, the State only drawing a rent; while to present owners of the land compensation will be made, and, if accustomed to work on the land, salaried positions in the new order offered.

The rent exacted by the State may become the single form of taxation necessary for purposes of administration and for organized labour engaged on such service of the people as does not bring in any profit. But when routine industries bearing on universal needs belong to the State, profits will flow into the national exchequer. It will be possible to gradually increase the State’s payment for labour as the workers become more capable of elevating their standard of life and consuming wisely; while the surplus profits will be available for the organizing of new services to be rendered free.

The carriage and distribution of letters is a comparatively long established State industry. The carriage of human beings should equally become so. The State’s taking over of railways and the municipalities’ taking over of tramways cannot be much longer delayed.

Bread baking and distributing by Government employés is pre-eminently desirable, to put an end to adulteration in a primary necessary of life and to prevent the waste of energy which takes place in the present disorganized system. Already there is such a general complaint of the quality of bakers’ bread, that an approved method of baking from pure flour under State control would be welcomed by all who perceive how the racial blood is more or less poisoned and its vitality lowered by what is called “the staff of life.” (A prolonged process of baking breaks up the starch granules, and renders bread more digestible. The extra expense and trouble precludes the adoption of this method by private bakers.)

Again, the health of the nation suffers cruelly from poison germs carried in the medium of milk. But when district councils have organized agricultural labour, dairy produce will be distributed under strict Government control. Emulation will spring up among local authorities all over the country to excel one another in the arts of rapidly acquiring and skilfully managing all industries that affect general health, and thus raising the tide of life within the bounds of their jurisdiction. With this aim broadly accomplished, the minor industries might safely be left for some time in private hands and under a competition modified in a greater degree than now by State inspection for the benefit of workers and consumers.

Among services to be made free to the public, those of transit bulk largely and should probably come first—free railway and steamship service, free tramway and cable-car service, to be followed in time by a more or less complete service of free entertainments calculated to develop art and promote a happy, joyous life.

If we cast our thoughts forward and try to realize the action and interaction of these altered social conditions upon society, we can hardly mistake the nature of the changes humanity itself will undergo. With the destruction of the frightful incubus of poverty, human hearts will no longer be wrung by anguish, bitterness, despair. With opportunity freely afforded for regular employment and its ample reward, for decent and wholesome living, and a civic life brightened by many pure pleasures, the degrading and false excitements will cease to allure. Drunkenness, vice, crime will greatly diminish. Instead of the desperate struggle for bread and all that appertains to an animal life pure and simple, a new struggle will arise—a benign, inspiring emulation to attain to and acquire the noble qualities of humanity, the distinctive characteristics of, not the lower animal, but the higher spiritual man.

Respecting the form of government in a Socialistic State, I cannot do better than quote Mr. J. A. Hobson: “A developed organic democracy will have evolved a specialized ‘head,’ an expert official class, which shall draft laws upon information that comes to them from innumerable sources through class and local representation, and shall administer the government, subject to protests similarly conveyed.” “The conditions of a really effective expert officialism are two: such real equality of educational opportunities as shall draw competent officials from the whole people; and such a growth of public intelligence and conscience as shall establish the real final control of government for society in its full organic structure.” (Contemporary Review, February, 1902.)

PART II THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE SUBJECT

The laws of heredity constitute the most important agency whereby the vital forces, the vigour and soundness of the physical system, are changed for better or worse.—NATHAN ALLEN, M.D., LL.D.