make the boarding out of pauper children a regular rural industry.
There will arise in many rural homes a very strong pecuniary inducement
to limit the family. Side by side will be a couple with eight children
--of their own, struggling hard to keep them, and another family with,
let us say, two children of their own blood and six "boarded-out,"
living in relative opulence. That side consequence must be anticipated.
For my own part and for the reasons given in the second of these
papers, I do not see that it is a very serious one so far as the future
goes, because I do not think there is much to choose between the
"heredity" of the rural and the urban strain. It is nonsense to pretend
that we shall get the fine flower of the cottage population to board
pauper children; we shall induce respectable inferior people living in
healthy conditions to take care of an inferior sort of children rescued
from unhealthy disreputable conditions--that is all. The average
inherent quality of the resultant adults will be about the same
whichever element predominates.

Possibly this indifference may seem undesirable. But we must bear in
mind that the whole problem is hard to cope with, it is an aspect of
failure, and no sentimental juggling with facts will convert the
business into a beautiful or desirable thing. Somehow or other we have
to pay. All expedients must be palliatives, all will involve
sacrifices; we must, no doubt, adopt some of them for our present
necessities, but they are like famine relief works, to adopt them in
permanence is a counsel of despair.

Clearly it is not along these lines that the capable men-makers we
suppose to be attacking the problem will spend much of their energies.
All the experiences of Charities and Poor-Law Authorities simply
confirm our postulate of the necessity of a standard of comfort if a