1 84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



industry is least, their tenure of employment is most easily imperilled. 

 The past two winters with armies of unemployed in every large city, 

 recruited largely, we are told by competent observers, from the un- 

 skilled, bear witness to this fact. 



A consequence of economic insecurity is a weakening of moral tone 

 and grip ; this is the greatest of all dangers to society. " Every great 

 industrial crisis leaves behind it," says Dr. Warner, " a legacy of indi- 

 vidual degeneracy and personal unthrift." 4 " Involuntary idleness 

 intensifies and perpetuates incapacity." Nothing so begets failure as 

 the consciousness of failure. The discipline of regular and continuous 

 occupation is a support which few can do without. At the recent 

 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a 

 member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws held that pauperism 

 arises mainly from the casual worker class, that is, in the main, the 

 unskilled class whose security of employment is slightest and whose 

 mental attitude is therefore least hopeful and healthy. To live on the 

 edge of social existence blinds the eyes to the social order which is not 

 near the edge. Hopefulness of mind is a social force impossible to 

 measure. It is hope which marks the difference between slavery and 

 freedom, between stagnation and progress. But insecurity weakens and 

 destroys hope, and if employment continues to be insecure, the result 

 must be an increasing body of hopeless men and women, feeding, in- 

 evitably, the ranks of criminal and pauper degeneracy. 



Viewed from this point, the significance of unskill becomes tre- 

 mendous. Lack of skill stands as the bar to mental progress even in 

 an unskilled age; but in an age demanding skill, the lack of it is itself 

 a condition leading to degeneration. Through unskill, labor is con- 

 demned to low wages, a narrow outlook, an inability to meet the modern 

 demands of industry; by remaining economically unfit, men become 

 socially unfit and are forced for themselves and their children into the 

 ceaseless round of struggle for bare subsistence, with consequent hope- 

 lessness, bodily decay and resultant misery. It should be clear that in 

 refusing to meet the industrial needs of our age for skilled workers the 

 nation is condemning a considerable part of its population to an in- 

 evitable economic unfitness and resultant mental sterility, since eco- 

 nomic well-being is essential to mental stability and progress. Degen- 

 eracy, thus, is born of the unskilled hand and the untrained mind. 



There is one further position which needs to be considered. It is 

 becoming clear, as investigation into social life proceeds, that human 

 progress depends largely upon society's creative minds, its " inventors," 

 its originators, whose fertile ideas are passed on to the mind of the mass 

 of mankind. It is these suggestive and fruitful ideas which mark the 

 stages of advancement and which constitute the essence of civilization. 



4 A. G. Warner, "American Charities," pp. 103 and 97. 



