SOCIAL EVOLUTION 279 



classes against employers of labour, but in the main, 

 a rebellion against their fellow-labourers. There is 

 something very obscure and little understood in the 

 question of currency in relation to commodities, for 

 this is always the issue. It is questionable if the 

 economics of the trade union is the true remedy. 

 Get more money and give less in return is the cry. 

 Moreover the operative should in part look backward 

 and compare his estate with the conditions of his pre- 

 decessors. Kings and queens a short time ago would 

 have paid large sums to be in possession of a watch an 

 average working man carries about, and which now 

 only costs a few shillings. Many other tilings are in 

 this proportion in relation to the past. 1 It would seem 

 that the raising of the lower orders must be effected by 

 other means than striking for higher wages. Will it 

 not be by creating a demand for more healthy 

 external conditions for the lower classes? 2 



1 "As for luxury, a small tradesman at the present day is more 

 luxurious than a king in ancient times. It has been wisely and 

 wittily remarked that Augustus Caesar had neither glass panes to his 

 windows, nor a shirt to his back ; and, without exaggeration, the 

 luxury of the Roman senators may be compared with that of the 

 West Indian Creoles in the last century." (" The Martyrdom of 

 Man," Winwood Reade, 1890, p. 31.) 



2 " Our most earnest philanthropists and zealous workers in the 

 fields of sin and misery in crowded cities are coming, more and more 

 every day, to the conviction that an improvement in the physical 

 conditions of life is the first indispensable condition of moral and 

 religious progress. More air, more light, better lodging, better food, 

 more innocent and healthy recreation, are what are wanted to make 

 any real impression 011 the masses who have either been born and 

 bred in an evil environment, or have fallen out of the ranks and are 

 the waifs and stragglers left behind in the rapid progress and intense 

 competition of modern society." ("A Modern Zoroastrian," S. Laing, 



