82 TiMEHRl. 



ment wages may be, and undoubtedly are, higher, but in 

 the face of corresponding increases in general prices save 

 perhaps clothing, tea and sugar, such higher wages are 

 but a relative increase; such a fortunate individual may 

 live better now than he would have done formerly, but 

 the struggle to get into the position and to keep in it 

 when there is greater than it was. This side of the 

 question belongs perhaps more to the economist than to 

 the workers in public health, yet it has an effe6live aspe6l 

 which may justly interest such workers, and it is this. 

 With an increase in the effe6live population there is also 

 as we have seen an increase in the competition to 

 procure the necessities of life, that is, for the major por- 

 tion which has to seek such thorough work. It is no 

 compensation to consider that for the minor portion 

 which neither toils nor spins such a struggle makes many 

 luxuries easier to procure and the labour of others 

 cheaper to obtain ; and in the face of such competition it 

 may be considered what these circumstances will bring 

 about, and on that point there is not much doubt, for the 

 result is to be seen already in the rapidly augmenting com- 

 munities of our towns, which are the usual resort of the 

 surplus rural population. They cause, and keep up an in- 

 crease in the exhausted nervous systems of those who have 

 to compete with brain work, whilst the manual workers 

 find themselves pressed more closely on all sides with a 

 result that both classes have their physical condition run 

 down below par and in this way, ihrough their physio- 

 logical misery, are most susceptible to the very diseases 

 which we find the Public Health Army most a6lively 

 fighting against. Again, as such competition and con- 

 ditions of life go on and indeed daily increase, will 



