afforded has been slight and superficial-by no means generally diffused-and from want of afterleisure it has remained unimproved and undeveloped. As to immorality, prevention is a far more effectual corrective than repression. It must be attacked at its source, and the causes of it and the temptations to it must be removed by moral influences. Penal repression does not interfere with it till its growth has reached a certain stage. Up to that point, it leaves it unchecked and uncurbed, and meanwhile it has become habitual and almost ineradicable.

We have shown (see p. 63) that education and morality promote, and are at the same time promoted by, wealth-creation. The converse is equally true. Ignorance and immorality both counteract, and are counteracted by, the abundant production and consequent abundant distribution of wealth. This latter agency by dispelling abject poverty dispels ignorance, and removes from immorality its chief incentives and temptations. Thus does it subdue its two opponents: ignorance, which, even if industrious, docs not direct its industry in the best way to the best ends, and immorality, of which the work is directed to evil.

These instances are exemplifications of the mode in which moral progress comes to be the result of material well-being. School learning is not education; it is only the ground-work and preparation for it. Education, in its truest and widest sense, is the formation of opinions and beliefs from study and experience, both which founts of instruction are inexhaustible, and hence

POVERTY OBSTRUCTS ITS OWN CURE. 225

no man ever lived whose education was complete. All men, some passively and slowly, others diligently and fruitfully, continue, throughout their lives, collecting data affecting their opinions and beliefs. But the great bulk of the human race, from absence of leisure, and the pressure of incessant physical toil, have but few opportunities for useful study and suggestive observation. For want of books, and of time to read them, they are debarred from a full and correct knowledge of facts, and from the means of comparing the thoughts of deep thinkers with their own. Nor can they, from want of practice, acquire that habit of thinking logically which so copiously fructifies the teachings of personal experience. They are compelled to reason, and draw their conclusions, from incomplete and possibly erroneous data; and their convictions are moulded, not on the high standard of the best thinkers, but on the low standard of those minds with which they habitually come into immediate contact.

As long, therefore, as there is an insufficiency of the wealth requisite to meet the wants of all, whether it proceeds from causes that impede wealth-creation and distribution, or from the waste of wealth on useless or pernicious objects, so long must poverty continue to exist, and, as deplorable but necessary consequences, ignorance and the prevalence of those conditions which favour the growth of immorality. But while ample wealthcreation is the best cure for poverty, on the other hand, poverty repels that cure and prolongs its own existence by helping to impede the creation

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of wealth. It does so in a variety of ways, of which we will only quote one as an example. The ignorance which poverty fosters prevents the bulk of the world's people (the labour-sellers) from appreciating, requiring, and insisting on, as they otherwise might and would, a system of free interchanges for the produce of their labour. This submission to, and complicity with, a great economic fallacy costs them dear. The hands, brains, and capital of a state are compelled by the Government to cease producing what they can produce cheaply and abundantly, and to work instead at what they can only produce expensively and sparingly; which destructive system is called the protective system. What is the consequence? Far less is produced than might be produced by the same expenditure of capital and labour, and there is less to distribute among the same number of human beings. It is the poor who suffer from this deficiency. It is they and not the wealthy whose rations are curtailed, when the supplies run short. Thus do poverty and ignorance, by their silence, support and virtually promote, the very system by which their own existence is prolonged.

In a similar manner the poverty-begotten ignorance of the people allows the war system to tear them from their families and occupationsfrom the plough and the loom—in order to convert them into unproductive and sometimes destructive consumers. Were the people enlightened, the war system, which not only wastes wealth but arrests its creation, would soon come to be deemed, as the cognate practice of duelling is in England, absurd

MAN'S INFLUENCE OVER HIS DESTINY. 227

and illogical. Thus do poverty, ignorance, and immorality act and re-act on each other. They form an unholy alliance to which they staunchly adhere, and one is rarely found isolated from the others. Instances are no doubt to be met with of wealthy ignorance, of learned poverty, and of criminal wisdom and opulence, but they occur only as exceptions, which tend to prove how general the rule is.

CHAPTER XIX.

Utilisation of Female Labour.-Competition; its Uses and Abuses. -Communism.-Waste on Intoxicants and Narcotics.

We have now gone through the list which we had sketched out at p. 14 of the chief aids and impediments to wealth-creation, and have endeavoured to trace their influence, favourable or adverse, on the progress of human welfare. But that list only professes to embrace the most prominent of those influences, for, indeed, their number is infinite. There hardly lives a civilised man whose overt deeds and spoken thoughts have not some bearing, infinitesimal though it may be, directly or indirectly, by action, example, or precept, for good or for evil, on the course of human events; and it is the sum total of these influences that finally determines the destinies of mankind. In free and comparatively enlightened communities, each individual exercises more while under despotic governments each individual exercises less-of this

individual action on the common weal.

No force, whether physical or moral, is ever exercised totally in vain. However minute and feeble it may be, it has done its work such as it is. Whether it has helped, or has impeded, it has contributed its mite to the general aggregate of forces, just as each single, separate drop has its place and plays its part in the mighty rush of the Niagara waters. Who can pretend to enumerate, or to gauge the relative strength of, the multitudinous causes by which human progress is accelerated or retarded? All that can be done is to take in hand and examine those of them which are most potent and universal in their operation. But in making a selection it is difficult to draw the line and to know where to stop. Hardly yielding in importance to the topics with which we have already dealt are a number of others, to a few of which, by way of sample, we shall briefly advert, leaving the rest as too secondary and too numerous to receive separate treatment in this work.

We shall therefore proceed to notice

I. The utilisation of female labour. Every advance in scientific discovery tends to substitute the agency of nature's forces for human muscular exertion. In the earliest stages of his progress, man supplemented his own bodily strength by that of animals-horses, oxen, camels, &c. Subsequently, he to some extent emancipated himself from the necessity of using brute force by improved tools and mechanical appliances. And to-day, steam, electricity, and other natural forces supply most of the motive power requisite for