150 
PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS — SECTION G. 
hundred thousand workmen who have contributed to the production*, 
justly, to 4 the estimation of a hair,’ to the estimation of a fineness 
far surpassing human thought. * * To buy in the cheapest and sell 
in the dearest market, the supposed concentration of human selfish- 
ness, is simply to fulfil the command of the Creator, who provides for 
all the wants of Ilis creatures through each other’s help ; to take from 
those who have abundance, and to carry to those who have need.” 
Now, it is a striking indication of the rapid advance of our 
science, that those words, spoken within our own memory as the 
deliberate utterance of a “man of light and leading ” expressing the best 
thought of his time, would now serve only to raise a smile in any 
intelligent audience ; and indeed we have to-day, perhaps, more reason 
to be on our guard against accepting opposite exaggerations, and over- 
looking such relative and partial truth as those words contain. We 
know now that the problem is more complicated than it seemed then ; 
that the answer to the question, whether interference with free con- 
tract and free competition w ill yield a balance of good or harm, varies 
according to circumstances ; and that each case must be considered on 
its own merits. Tell the economist that you propose to check or 
modify free bargaining for this or that particular group of people, here 
and now, in this or that particular way, and he may be able to conclude 
that certain results will probably follow. But his theory contains no 
rule that w ill cover all cases alike. 
Whatever may be our notion of an ideally perfect distribution, I 
suppose w r e shall all be agreed that some workers at present get low’er 
w r ages than it is desirable that they should get ; that it would be better 
if, of the total satisfaction of human wants produced by human 
efforts, those workers got a larger share and someone else a smaller. 
This is true, at least, wherever wages fall below the “ necessaries for 
efficiency”; and that is certainly the case with the wages of some 
groups of workers, even in this favoured country. 
Here, then, are certain cases in which the result of settling the 
rate of exchange by free bargaining is unsatisfactory. Can anything 
be done to mitigate the evil ? If so, what, and by whom ? 
There is, I think, only one remedy that would be entirely and 
finally satisfactory. If the rearing and education, physical, mental, 
and moral, of those groups of workers who get the lowest wages now 
could be improved — if they could be so far raised in character and 
trained intelligence as to become capable of doing more to satisfy the 
wants of their neighbours, they could then demand and get higher 
wages for themselves. Increase the average efficiency of all workers, 
and there will be a larger total of want-satisfaction produced to divide 
among them ; diminish the proportion of the population that are only 
capable of doing unskilled work, and then those who still do such 
work would be able, by free bargaining, to get a larger share of the 
total. But how to bring about this general raising of character and 
ability ? That, for the economist and the politician alike, is the 
central and all-important question ; and it is a question to which no 
one can give more than the merest fragment of an answer. But this, 
at least, is clear, that such a rise is almost impossible for any class of 
workers who now get very low w'ages ; for though a large income by 
no means ensures a good training for life and work, extreme poverty 
