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49
But, in the mean time, the self reliance of the community has
been greatly weakened. The parent conceives it the duty of the
municipality to relieve him of unpleasant tasks, and the shiftless
incapacity of the average town bred and school educated mother
of the London suburbs is stupendous.
The fact is that the State has been heaping benefits on certain
classes of the community, and has exacted no service, and fixed no
responsibility in return. If the public welfare is our real objective
we should not fix our attention too exclusively on death rates. A
drunken and idle person has, under present methods, his life prolonged
by all the resources of science, whilst he gives no
service in return. A shiftless mother sends her child to a school,
devised and managed by the best intellects of the country, to learn
drawing and "nature study," with a filthy body and a verminous
head. Cajolery, diplomacy, and all the sanitary and clerical personnel
of the district have to be brought into play before that child
can be got decently clean. When domestic dirt has bred disease,
and obstinacy has aggravated its spread, the unfortunate patient is
removed to hospital and given advantages which are hardly within
the grasp of an emperor's offspring. Yet, under our existing
statutes, nothing is exacted in return by way of service to the
State, and in not the most trivial way can responsibility be
attached to those who evade parental duties, cheerfully carried
out by races that the Englishman looks on as barbarian and
uncivilized.
There is not one of the many sanitary boons which the State
or municipality now affords that one would wish withheld; but
surely the time is coming when, in the interests of economy, in the
interests of the thrifty and industrious, in the interest of national
character, and in the interests of public health, it should be seen to
that, if there be giving there should be taking.