The cats continued to multiply, until they became a great pest to the farmers, killing their chickens, ducklings, and song-birds. Then the good Queen divided the island between her people and her cats. She gave a tenth of the island to the cats. A fence was built between the cats and the people.
The cats soon multiplied to the number of 20,000, but there was not forage enough to feed them through the next winter; consequently, half of them died during the cold weather. In the autumn of the following year there were again 20,000 cats on the island, half of which were doomed to die by starvation during the winter; but the kind-hearted Queen taxed the people for food sufficient to feed the cats, and to save as many lives as possible.
The succeeding summer being long and fruitful, the cats thrived well, and the next autumn there were 50,000 cats on the island, and as there was but forage enough to winter 10,000 cats, 40,000 must starve during the coming winter, unless fed. Again the Queen taxed her people, and the cats were saved; but, to the amazement of the Queen and her little people, the next autumn brought 100,000 hungry cats to be fed, and it had come to a point where either the people or the cats must starve.
With grief, the Queen decided in favor of the people, for it was evident that, if the people were allowed to starve to save the cats, the cats also would starve without the people. That year, 90,000 cats starved to death on the island.
Thus, the good Queen's well-meant charity, intended to save 10,000 cats from starving to death, finally resulted in 90,000 cats starving to death. Actually, her attempt to lessen cat misery multiplied that misery nine-fold.
Now, what was true of those cats applies with exactly equal truth to the rearing of paupers and incompetents in times of peace.
In all the countries of the civilized world today, there are institutions for rearing and educating idiots. Sometimes, a section of an idiot's skull is cut out, and the skull trepanned in order to give his little brain room to expand. In this way, an idiot, incapable of feeding himself, may develop intelligence enough to vote, under the instruction of the ward-heeler, or he may even develop into a public expounder of the beauties of defenselessness as a safeguard against war.