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.
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