Chapter III: The First Main Generalization of Socialism

§ 1.

The first--the chief aspect of social life in relation to which the Socialist finds the world now planless and drifting, and for which he earnestly propounds the scheme of a better order, is that whole side of existence which is turned towards children, their begetting and upbringing, their care and education. Perpetually the world begins anew, perpetually death wipes out failure, disease, unteachableness and all that has served life and accomplished itself; and to many Socialists, if not to all, this is the supreme fact in the social scheme. The whole measure of progress in a generation is the measure in which the children improve in physical and mental quality, in social co-ordination, in opportunity, upon their parents. Nothing else matters in the way of success if in that way the Good Will fails.

Let us now consider how such matters stand in our world at the present time, and let us examine them in the light of the Socialist spirit. I have already quoted certain facts from the London Education Committee's Report, by which you have seen that by taking a school haphazard--dipping a ladle, as it were, into the welter of the London population--we find more than eighty in the hundred of the London children insufficiently clad, more than half unwholesomely dirty--eleven per cent. verminous--and more than half the infants infested with vermin! The nutrition of these children is equally bad. The same report shows clearly that differences in clothing and cleanliness are paralleled with differences in nutrition that are equally striking.

"The 30 boys of the lowest class showed considerable failure
to reach the average weight for their age of the school; the
average shortage per boy for his age being as much as .7
kilogram. The effect upon weight was more striking than upon
height, as the average failure in height was one centimetre.
The 141 boys of the next class worked out at exactly the
average. The 49 well-clad boys showed an average excess per
age-weight of .54 kilogram and age-height of 1.8 centimetres."

And who can doubt the amount of mental and moral dwarfing that is going on side by side with this physical shortage?

Now, it may be argued that this is not a fair sample of our general population, that these facts have been culled from a special section of the population, that here we are dealing with the congestion of London slums and altogether exceptional conditions. This is not so. The school examined was not from a specially bad district. And it happens that the entire working-class population of one typical English town, York, has been exhaustively studied by Mr. B. S. Rowntree, and here are some facts from his result that quite confirm the impression given by the London figures.

"It was quite impossible to make a thorough examination of the
physical condition of all the children, but as they came up to
be weighed and measured, they were classified under the four
headings, 'Very Good,' 'Good,' 'Fair,' or 'Bad,' by an
investigator whose training and previous experience in similar
work enabled her to make a reliable, even if rough,
classification....

"'Bad' implies that the child bore physical traces of
underfeeding and neglect.

"The numbers classified under the various heads were as
follows:--

BOYS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Very Good, | Good, | Fair, | Bad,
| per cent. | per cent. | per cent. | per cent.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section 1 (poorest) | 2.8 | 14.6 | 31. | 51.6
Section 2 (middle) | 7.4 | 20.1 | 53.7 | 18.8
Section 3 (highest) | 27.4 | 33.8 | 27.4 | 11.4

GIRLS.