ETHICS AND ECONOMICS. 775 



tends to raise it in otiiers, and eventually in all directions, and 

 while this may not increase the individual's power of production 

 directly, it may do so indirectly, by raising the scale of intelli- 

 gence, and creating new desires, particularly for those immaterial 

 products which it is the peculiarity of a high civilization to fur- 

 nish in increased proportion as compared with the elementary and 

 material utilities. We do not always class these as wealth, but 

 they are, nevertheless, some of its highest forms, and are impor- 

 tant factors in advancing civilization. 



But let us now suppose that the standard of living is lowered, 

 through a succession of bad harvests and bad years, or through 

 the importation, in numbers large enough to seriously affect the 

 labor market, of laborers from outside, with a much lower stand- 

 ard of living, and who can work for much lower wages, or from 

 both causes combined, or from many others, such as bad laws, 

 lack of sympathy for our fellow-men, etc., and what will be the 

 result ? 



In the struggle for existence, the weaker go to the wall, and 

 are killed and removed from further participation in the con- 

 flict. The fittest only survive, and the result of the conflict is to 

 leave them more capable of taking care of themselves. But this 

 is not a necessary outcome of the struggle for subsistence, unless 

 it should be carried on long enough to become a veritable struggle 

 for existence, which rarely occurs. On the contrary, men are not 

 killed and thus got rid of as further competitors. They are made 

 miserable, less fit to work, and incapable of that mobility which, 

 if present, enables the social organism to so distribute the blows 

 that fall upon it as to cause it the least trouble, and to render 

 recuperation easier. " When the mobility of labor becomes in a 

 high degree impaired, the reparative and restorative forces do not 

 act at all." On the contrary, " industrial injuries, once suffered, 

 tend to remain." * The constitution of society becomss impaired. 

 The standard of living for large masses of the people is lowered, 

 but competition is not thereby destroyed ; it is more frequently 

 intensified. Unlike the struggle for existence among animals, the 

 economically and socially fit do not kill off the unfit, and so have 

 the field to themselves. 



Do not understand me as condemning competition altogether. 

 Its advantages are many and great. Material progress would 

 have been impossible without it, and under certain conditions it 

 works out a moral result which it would be difiicult to bring 

 about by any other social force. But, tried by the test of social 

 well-being, competition is shown to have certain inherent limita- 

 tions which we must ever keep in mind. It is only by studying 

 economics in close relation to ethics that we can do this, and it is 



* " Political Economy," Walker, p. 275. 



