CHIEF WORK OF THE NATION 7 



are agriculture and manufacture. So that to 

 say the combined efforts of the workers must 

 be made in a certain direction, is to say that 

 agriculture and manufacture must be so carried 

 on as to admit of advance in that direction ; 

 the total effort must carry forward these occu- 

 pations so as not to impede progress toward the 

 ideal. 



It matters not then if we watch a nation as a 

 whole struggling, it may be half blindly, yet 

 efficiently, towards an ideal ; or if we watch 

 the agriculture and manufacture of that nation, 

 wisely, quietly, and successfully conducted — we 

 are watching two phases of the same thing. 

 The ideal is of course only an ideal, and perhaps 

 to the average workman means at present abso- 

 lutely nothing. But it may come to mean some- 

 thing to those who guide the destinies of the 

 nation ; and if so, then the higher the ideal the 

 better for the nation. A low-pitched ideal calls 

 no one forward. The ideal placed before the 

 Boy Scouts is a high ideal, so high that some 

 people think it absurd. It is not absurd, even 

 though only a scout here and a scout there can 

 come near it : for the moment upward striving 

 ceases, the road is downward. 



The general proposition is, then, that whether 

 workers know or do not know anything about the 

 ideal, the conditions in which they live and work 

 should be such that they can continue healthy 

 and thoroughly well able to work; and that 

 they should be men who have become accus- 

 tomed to discipline, and therefore able to con- 



