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The Social Problem in its Elements. -- Practically, we must look in another direction for substantial and reasonable grounds of hope.

Assuming that we must long deal with a certain element of dependent persons, -- though a diminishing number, let us hope, -- what must we seek? (1) We must guarantee our altruism, that fine and delicate sentiment, ornament of humanity, flower of our ethical development, fruit of our religion. We cannot sacrifice social sympathy, tenderness, acute sensibility to suffering. We must not even think of going back to that savage and brutal state of heart in which our ancestors lived, in which children could beat out the brains of toothless parents, in which fathers and mothers could without a pang expose to vultures their deformed and feeble babes. Nor can we return to that stage of culture when society can pursue a policy of torture and extermination against criminals.

(2) But, on the other hand, we cannot permit the cost and burden of defect to oppress our culture without an effort to reduce the load. The wealth which goes to prisons, insane asylums, and almshouses, is needed for higher ends.

(3) We must resist, by all available means, the deterioration of the common stock, the corruption of blood, the curses of heredity. It must be included in our plan that more children will be born with large brains, sound nerves, good digestive organs, and love of independent struggle. We wish the parasitic strain, the neuropathic taint, the consumptive tendency, the foul disease, to die out.

These are social ends, and it is the duty of philanthropists to include them in every programme.

It is popularly supposed that this Conference is merely busy about Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano, -- half brutes, drunkards, and the unfit, -- with Ophelias, mad from grief, with Falstaff's crew of rowdies. At first sight the world sees about us the blind, the insane, the beggar. We scorn not the task, but we have in this work a wider vision.

Sir George Nicholls well said, "In every country, and in all states of society, destitution has existed, and from the nature of things ever will exist; and in the relative proportion which the destitute bear to the entire population, and in the manner in which this destitute class is dealt with, the general conditions of the whole in no small degree depend." (4)

Mrs. C. R. Lowell expressed our sentiment in the Fourteenth Conference: "I wish we could find a name which would cover the idea of good done to the whole community, to the doers as well as to others. I should very much like it if some idea of good citizenship, and of the duties due by and for citizens in mutual service, could be embodied in our name." (5)

Before we descend into the maze of debate and discussion, let us place in our hands a clew. Let us marshal our thoughts and new acquisitions of knowledge about a great, unifying, co-ordinating ideal. To discern the direction of the best and most instructed thought to sharpen our critical judgment of tendencies and recommendations, to remove inconsistencies and contradictions from our reasonings, let us consider certain teachings which run through the discussions of this week. Let us bring each section of our studies into the focus of this search-light and standard, -- the effect of a method on race welfare.

I. The discussions of our wardens and superintendents reveal a steadily growing tendency and disposition to bring reformatory methods to the test of race welfare.

Leaving capital punishment out of account for the moment, what is the aim of our present system? Does it not include two master purposes: (1) limitation and restriction of evil and destructive acts; (2) the reformation and education -- so far as possible -- of the criminal himself? It is no real kindness to any moral being to give him liberty to injure his neighbors without restraint, and without efforts to train him in social habits consistent with freedom.

Law itself, though conservative and suspicious of revolutionary change, begins to bend to the highest theory. In the place of a barbarian code and an absolute principle of vindictive justice the law gradually shapes itself to the truths of evolutionary science, and somewhat reluctantly lends its aid to the aims of the educator and to social selection.

Illustrations and evidence are easy to find and note. Take, for example, the probation system of Massachusetts, the conditional release, and the manual and technical schools of Elmira Reformatory. What is the new social purpose which dominates all the minor details of these advance movements? Simply this master idea: the adaptation of educable men to a place in competitive society.

But all reformatories and prisons discern before long -- contrary to the visionary prospects of uninstructed sentimentalism -- that there is a certain refractory element which never in this world can be fitted into competitive society.