470 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



ment which can raise the average, all the factors tending to 

 make it fall remain ; fall, therefore, it certainly will. Many 

 employers of skilled labour who are competent judges upon this 

 point 'are of opinion that the average has already fallen and is 

 continuing to fall. It does not appear that the so-called leaders 

 among the working classes are amongst the most diligent and 

 skilful at their various trades. The best men still have a practical 

 certainty of employment, at any rate in trades requiring skilled 

 labour ; many that I have met feel that they might be much 

 better off in the absence of union scales of wages, as doubtless 

 they would. But when the employer of skilled labour is obliged 

 to get a large quantity of work done for a certain sum — being 

 limited by the price he, in his turn, can obtain — he is obliged also 

 to pay a minimum if not a uniform wage ; the obvious result 

 must be that the least efficient man is paid more than he is 

 worth, the most efficient man less. From the point of view of 

 selection and the maintenance of a high standard of efficiency in 

 the race, there cannot be the slightest doubt that it would be 

 far better for the inefficient to be sweated and the efficient to be 

 paid too much. From the point of view of present-day sentiment, 

 the poor inefficient is to be saved from suffering and even from 

 discomfort at any cost. The cost must obviously be paid in 

 some form or other by the efficient and the ultimate result 

 must certainly be the lowering of the general efficiency of the 

 nation. 



It is probable that the highest standard of efficiency is in the 

 professional and upper middle class generally, where selection 

 acts most quickry. Unfortunately, this class is the busiest ; 

 moreover, it is not often subject to the efforts of the agitator 

 and is not combined in a political sense. Men of this class con- 

 fine their attention to a great extent to their work and though in 

 them lies the overwhelming proportion of the mental capacity 

 of the nation, they play but a small part proportionately in the 

 government. Unfortunately, also, the sentimentality of the age 

 is as strongly developed in this class as in any other and 

 apparently no consideration is given by them to the ultimate 

 effects of indulgence in this weakness. Failures, including 

 criminals, as well as the children of failures are more and more 

 protected and kept alive to breed more failures. Failure in 

 competition for a livelihood means, in the overwhelming majority 

 of cases, that the individuals are so much below the average in 



