o be brought
sharply home to me) struck at the root of the terribly rapid production
of degenerates, by virtue of its relation to pauper children--that is,
the children to whom the State, through its boards of guardians, stood
in the light of parents, because their natural parents were dead, or in
prison, or in lunatic asylums, or hopelessly far gone in the state of
criminal inactivity which qualified so many for all three estates.

Huge institutions were built at great expense for the accommodation of
these little unfortunates. Here they were housed in the most costly
manner, the whole work of the establishment being carried on by a highly
paid staff of servants and officials. The children were not allowed to
do anything at all, beyond the learning by rote of various theories
which there was no likelihood of their ever being able to apply to any
reality of life with which they would come in contact.

They listened to lectures on the making of dainty dishes in the best
style of French cookery, and in many cases they never saw a box of
matches. They learned to repeat poetry as parrots might, but did not
know the difference between shavings and raw coffee. They learned vague
smatterings of Roman history, but did not know how to clean their boots
or brush their hair. It was as though experts had been called upon to
devise a scheme whereby children might be reared into their teens
without knowing that they were alive or where they lived, and this with
the greatest possible outlay of money per child. Then, at a given age,
these children were put outside the massive gates of the institutions
and told to run away and become good citizens.

It followed as a matter of course that most of them fell steadily and
rapidly into the pit; the place occupied by the criminally inactive, the
"public-house props." So they returned poor, heavy-laden creatures, by
way of charity, to the institutions of the "rates," thus completing the
vicious circle of life forced upon them by an incredibly wrong-headed,
topsyturvy administration.

For the maintenance of this vicious circle enormous sums of public money
were required. Failing such vast expenditure, Nature unaided would have
righted matters to some extent, and the Poor Law guardians would have
become by so much the less wielders of power and influence, dispensers
of public money. Some of these Poor Law guardians gave up more or less
honest trades to take to Poor Law guardianship as a busin