the danger of increasing prostitution by lessening one of the chief deterrents there from.]; to some extent by moral training to self-control and a sense of responsibility.  Or the State may undertake the countenance large families; if this is done (see chapter xxx), steps must of course be taken to prevent the marrying of the unfit-or, at least, their breeding.  With our rapidly decreasing birth rate, and the spread of education, which will do away with “lower” classes and fit every one in some decent degree to be a parent, this will probably be the ultimate solution.  With the disappearance of poverty, the miserable living conditions of so large a proportion of our population will automatically improve.  But much should be done directly by the State to prevent such housing conditions as make for physical or moral degeneration.  We are far behind Europe in housing-legislation, and conditions in most of our cities are going from bad to worse.  There is, however, no need whatever of unsanitary housing; it is merely the selfishness of owners and the apathy of the public that permits its existence.  The crowding-which in New York City runs up to some thirteen hundred per acre-can be stopped by simple legislation.  The lack of proper light or ventilation, of proper water supply, plumbing, or sewerage, of proper removal of ashes, garbage, or rubbish, is inexcusable.  The results of living in the dark, foul-aired, unsanitary tenements of our slums are:  a great increase in sickness and premature death; a stunting of growth, physical and mental, and an increase in numbers of backward and delinquent children; the spread of vicious and criminal habits through the lack of privacy and contagion of close contact with the vicious.

We are breeding in our slums a degenerate race,-boys who grow up used to vice, and girls that drift naturally into prostitution; we are allowing disease to spread from them, through the children that go to the public schools, the shop-girls we buy from in the stores, the servants that enter our houses, the men we rub elbows with on the street or in the street-cars.  Very salutary are the laws that require the name of the owner to be placed on all buildings; shame before the public may wring improvements from many a landlord who now takes profits from tenements unfit for habitation.  But it ought not to be left to the conscience of the individual owner; the State must exercise its primary right to forbid the crowding of tenants into houses which do not afford sanitary quarters and permit a decent degree of privacy.

III.  COMMERCIALIZED VICE?