stocks, whose position is made artificially unfavourable.  These doles are at present paid by the minority, and this method may be expected to continue until the looting of the propertied classes comes to an enforced end.  This will not take long, for it is certain that the amount of wealth available for plunder is very much smaller than is usually supposed.  It is easy to destroy capital values, but very difficult to distribute them.  The time will soon arrive when the patient sheep will be found to have lost not only his fleece but his skin, and the privileged workman will then have to choose between taxing himself and abandoning socialism.  There is little doubt which he will prefer.  The result will be that the festering sore of our slum-population will dry up, and the gradual disappearance of this element will be some compensation, from the eugenic point of view, for the destruction of the intellectual class.  This process will considerably, and beneficially, diminish the population:  and there are several other factors which will operate in the same direction.  High wage industry can only maintain itself against the competition of cheaper labour abroad by introducing every kind of labour-saving device.  The number of hands employed in a factory must progressively diminish.  And as, in spite of all that ingenuity can do, the competition of the cheaper races is certain to cripple our foreign trade, the trade unions will be obliged to provide for a shrinkage in their numbers.  We may expect that every unionist will be allowed to place one son, and only one, in the privileged corporation.  A man will become a miner or a railwayman ‘by patrimony,’ and it will be difficult to gain admission to a union in any other way.  The position of those who cannot find a place within the privileged circle will be so unhappy that most unionists will take care to have one son only.  Another change which will tend to discourage families will be the increased employment of women as bread-winners.  Nothing is more remarkable in the study of vital statistics than the comparative birth-rates of those districts in which women earn wages, and of those in which they do not.  The rate of increase among the miners is as great as that of the reckless casual labourers, and the obvious reason is that the miner’s wife loses nothing by having children, since she does not earn wages.  Contrast with these high figures (running up to 40 per thousand) the very low birth-rates of towns like Bradford, where the women are engaged in the textile industry and earn regular wages in support of the family budget.  If the time comes when the majority of women are wage-earners, we may even see the pressure of population entirely withdrawn.  Thus in every class of the nation influences are at work tending to a progressive decrease in our national fertility.  It must be remembered, however, that at present the annual increase, in peace time, is 9 or 10 per thousand, so that it may be some time before an equilibrium is reached.  But if our predictions are sound, a positive decrease, and probably a rapid one, is likely to follow.  For our ability to exchange our manufactures for food will grow steadily less, as the self-indulgent and ‘work-shy’ labourer succeeds in gaining his wishes.  If the coal begins to give out, the retreat will become a rout.