448 TECHNICAL EDUCATION xvn 



other condition than this, any social condition in 

 \ which the development of wealth involves the 

 I misery, the physical weakness, and the degrada- 

 [tion of the worker, is absolutely and infallibly 

 I doomed to collapse. Your bayonets and cutlasses 

 will break under your hand, and there will go on 

 accumulating in society a mass of hopeless, 

 physically incompetent, and morally degraded 

 people, who are, as it were, a sort of dynamite 

 which, sooner or later, when its accumulation be- 

 comes sufficient and its tension intolerable, will 

 burst the whole fabric. 



I am quite aware that the problem which I have 

 put before you and which you know as much about 

 as I do, and a great deal more probably, is one 

 extremely difficult to solve. I am fully aware 

 that one great factor in industrial success is 

 reasonable cheapness of labour. That has been 

 pointed out over and over again, and is in itself an 

 axiomatic proposition. And it seems to me that 

 of all the social questions which face us at this 

 present time, the most serious is how to steer a 

 clear course between the two horns of an obvious 

 dilemma. One of these is the constant tendency 

 of competition to lower wages beyond a point at 

 which man can remain man below a point at 

 which decency and cleanliness and order and 

 habits of morality and justice can reasonably be 

 expected to exist. And the other horn of the 

 dilemma is the difficulty of maintaining wages 



