nd or Germany the distribution of income in the United States
permits a high standard of living and creates a vast demand for the use
of capital in industries for home consumption.

There is, however, a danger that these conditions may grow worse. An
unrestricted growth of the population {191} either through natural
increase or immigration would tend to increase monopoly profits and
reduce real wages, thus accentuating the inequality of distribution and
forcing an enormous surplus capital to be devoted to foreign trade and
foreign investments. On the other hand there is an opportunity to
improve our conditions. There is still a wide margin for a real
increase in wages, for shorter hours, better labour conditions,
improved education, improved recreational facilities, and in general a
deflection of a large part of the national dividend to the improvement
of the conditions of life of the whole population.

For a long time Americans ignored the necessity of any such social
policy. We were almost as wasteful of our human as of our physical
resources. From birth to burial we regarded our men and women as human
accidents, who died or lived, languished or grew great, as
circumstances decreed. Though in recent decades we have approached to
a keener sense of collective national responsibility, we still suffer
not only from a high infantile death-rate but also from a disastrous
neglect of children who survive. Our educational system is still
rudimentary, conventional, and ill adapted to our economic needs.
There is little industrial education, less vocational guidance, and
almost no care at all for the adjustment of the educational system to
the later needs of the children. Millions of children, who in the next
generation are to decide questions of war or peace, are growing up,
anemic, underfed, intellectually sterile, and without morale, firmness
or strength. Our slums, our low wages, our evil conditions in mines
and sweat-shops unite to give us the tramp, the corner loafer, the
exploiter of vice, the criminal. Such conditions are in every sense
dangerous to our peace as also to our well-being. They mean a low
economic efficiency, a restricted consumption, a barrier to the proper
capitalisation of our country. {192} Apart from this, the corruption
arising out of such conditions menaces our national character. We hear
praise to-day of the iron discipline of the German army, but we hear
less of the discipline of the G