9 8 THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 



densely peopled streets, to provide baths, washhouses, 

 and gymnasia, to facilitate habits of thrift, to furnish 

 some provision for instruction and amusement in public 

 libraries and the like, is not only desirable from a philan- 

 thropic point of view, but an essential condition of safe 

 industrial development, appears to me to be indisputable. 

 It is by such means alone, so far as I can see, that we 

 can hope to check the constant gravitation of industrial 

 society towards la misere, until the general progress of 

 intelligence and morality leads men to grapple with the 

 sources of that tendency. If it is said that the carrying 

 out of such arrangements as those indicated must en- 

 hance the cost of production, and thus handicap the 

 producer in the race of competition, I venture, in the 

 first place, to doubt the. fact ; but if it be so, it results 

 that industrial society has to face a dilemma, either 

 alternative of which threatens destruction. 



On the one hand, a population the labour of which 

 is sufficiently remunerated 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 the labour 

 of which is insufficiently remunerated must become 

 physically and morally unhealthy, and socially 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 the stable society made up of healthy, vigorous, 

 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, 



