THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE : A PROGRAMME. 743 



it is said that the carrying out of such arrangements as those indicated 

 must enhance the cost of production, and thus handicap the producer 

 in the race of competition, I venture, in the first place, to doubt the 

 fact ; hut if it be so, it results that industrial society has to face a 

 dilemma, either horn of which threatens impalement. 



On the one hand, a population whose labor is sufficiently remu- 

 nerated may be physically and morally healthy and socially stable, 

 but may fail in industrial competition by reason of the dearness of its 

 produce. On the other hand, a population whose labor is insufficiently 

 remunerated must become physically and morally unhealthy, and so- 

 cially unstable ; and though it may succeed for a while in industrial 

 competition, by reason of the cheapness of its produce, it must in the 

 end fall, through hideous misery and degradation, to utter ruin. 



Well, if these are the only possible alternatives, let us for ourselves 

 and our children choose the former, and, if need be, starve like men. 

 But I do not believe that a stable society made up of healthy, vigor- 

 ous, instructed, and self-ruling people would ever incur serious risk of 

 that fate. They are not likely to be troubled with many competitors 

 of the same character, and they may be safely trusted to find ways of 

 holding their own. 



Assuming that the physical and moral well-being and the stable 

 social order, vv^hich are the indispensable conditions of permanent in- 

 dustrial development, are secured, there remains for consideration the 

 means of attaining that knowledge and skill, without which, even then, 

 the battle of competition can not be successfully fought. Let us con- 

 sider how we stand. A vast system of elementary education has now 

 been in operation among us for sixteen years, and has reached all but 

 a very small fraction of the population. I do not think that there is 

 any room for doubt that, on the whole, it has worked well, and that 

 its indirect no less tlian its direct benefits have been immense. But, 

 as might be expected, it exhibits the defects of all our educational 

 systems — fashioned as they were to meet the wants of a by-gone con- 

 dition of society. There is a wides-pread, and I think well-justified, 

 complaint that it has too much to do with books and too little to do 

 with things. I am as little disposed as any one can well be to narrow 

 early education and to make the primary school a mere annex of the 

 shop. And it is not so much in the interests of industry as in that of 

 breadth of culture, that I echo the common complaint against the 

 bookish and theoretical character of our primary instruction. 



If there were no such things as industrial pursuits, a system of 

 education which does nothing for the faculties of observation, whicli 

 trains neither the eye nor the hand, and is compatible with utter ig- 

 norance of the commonest natural truths, might still be reasonably 

 regarded as strangely imperfect. And when we consider that the 

 instruction and training which are lacking are exactly those which are 



