nd independence in the worker; it is simply to recognize that
valuable as these qualities are, they must be subordinated to the first
demands of physical life. Those who can save without encroaching on the
prime necessaries of life ought to save; but there are still many who
cannot save, and these are they whom the problem of poverty especially
concerns. The saying of Aristotle, that "it is needful first to have a
maintenance, and then to practise virtue," does not indeed imply that we
_ought_ to postpone practising the moral virtues until we have secured
ourselves against want, but rather means that before we can live well we
_must_ first be able to live at all.

Precisely the same is true of the "inefficiency" of the poor. Nothing is
more common than to hear men and women, often incapable themselves of
earning by work the money which they spend, assigning as the root of
poverty the inefficiency of the poor. It is quite true that the "poor"
consist for the most part of inefficient workers. It would be strange if
it were not so. How shall a child of the slums, ill-fed in body and
mind, brought up in the industrial and moral degradation of low city
life, without a chance of learning how to use hands or head, and to
acquire habits of steady industry, become an efficient workman? The
conditions under which they grow up to manhood and womanhood preclude
the possibility of efficiency. It is the bitterest portion of the lot of
the poor that they are deprived of the opportunity of learning to work
well. To taunt them with their incapacity, and to regard it as the cause
of poverty, is nothing else than a piece of blind insolence. Here and
there an individual may be to blame for neglected opportunities; but the
"poor" as a class have no more chance under present conditions of
acquiring "efficiency" than of attaining to refined artistic taste, or
the culminating Christian virtue of holiness. Inefficiency is one of the
worst and most degrading aspects of poverty; but to regard it as the
leading cause is an error fatal to a true understanding of the problem.

We now see why it is impossible to seriously entertain the claim of Co-
operative Production as a direct remedy for poverty. The success of Co-
operative schemes depends almost entirely upon the presence of high
moral and intellectual qualities in those co-operating--trust, patience,
self restraint, and obedience combined with power of organization,
skill, and business enterpr