ise. These qualities are not yet possessed by
our skilled artisan class to the extent requisite to enable them to
readily succeed in productive co-operation; how can it be expected then
that low-skilled inefficient labour should exhibit them? The
enthusiastic co-operator says we must educate them up to the requisite
moral and intellectual level. The answer is, that it is impossible to
apply such educating influences effectually, until we have first placed
them on a sound physical basis of existence; that is to say, until we
have already cured the worst form of the malady. From whatever point we
approach this question we are driven to the conclusion that as the true
cause of the disease is an industrial one, so the earliest remedies must
be rather industrial than moral or educational.

Sec. 4. Effects of Temperance and Technical Education.--Again, we are by no
means justified in leaping to the conclusion that if we could induce
workers to become more sober, more industrious, or more skilful, their
industrial condition would of necessity be improved to a corresponding
extent. If we can induce an odd farm-labourer here and there to give up
his "beer," he and his family are no doubt better off to the extent of
this saving, and can employ the money in some much more profitable way.
But if the whole class of farm-labourers could be persuaded to become
teetotalers without substituting some new craving of equal force in the
place of drink, it is extremely probable that in all places where there
was an abundant supply of farm-labourers, the wage of a farm-labourer
would gradually fall to the extent of the sum of money formerly spent in
beer. For the lowest paid classes of labourers get, roughly speaking, no
more wages than will just suffice to provide them with what they insist
on regarding as necessaries of life. To an ordinary labourer "beer" is a
part of the minimum subsistence for less than which he will not consent
to work at all. Where there is an abundance of labour, as is generally
the case in low-skilled employments, this minimum subsistence or lowest
standard of comfort practically determines wages. If you were merely to
take something away from this recognized minimum without putting
something else to take its place, you would actually lower the rate of
wages. If, by a crusade of temperance pure and simple, you made
teetotalers of the mass of low-skilled workers, their wages would
indisputably fall, although they might