sists upon his position as a mere
labourer as though it were some precious thing, he guards himself from
improvement as a virtuous woman guards her honour, he works for
specifically limited hours and by the hour with specific limitations in
the practice of his trade, on the fairly sound assumption that but for
that restriction any fool might do plumbing as well as he; whatever he
learns he learns from some other plumber during his apprenticeship
years--after which he devotes himself to doing the minimum of work in
the maximum of time until his brief excursion into this mysterious
universe is over. So far from invention spurring him onward, every
improvement in sanitary work in England, at least, is limited by the
problem whether "the men" will understand it. A person ingenious enough
to exceed this sacred limit might as well hang himself as trouble about
the improvement of plumbing.

If England stood alone, I do not see why each of the new mechanical and
engineering industries, so soon as it develops sufficiently to have
gathered together a body of workers capable of supporting a Trade Union
secretary, should not begin to stagnate in the same manner. Only England
does not stand alone, and the building trade is so far not typical,
inasmuch as it possesses a national monopoly that the most elaborate
system of protection cannot secure any other group of trades. One must
have one's house built where one has to live, the importation of workmen
in small bodies is difficult and dear, and if one cannot have the house
one wishes, one must needs have the least offensive substitute; but
bicycle and motor, iron-work and furniture, engines, rails, and ships
one can import. The community, therefore, that does least to educate
its mechanics and engineers out of the base and servile tradition of the
old idea of industry will in the coming years of progress simply get a
disproportionate share of the rejected element, the trade will go
elsewhere, and the community will be left in possession of an
exceptionally large contingent for the abyss.

At present, however, I am dealing not with the specific community, but
with the generalized civilized community of A.D. 2000--we disregard the
fate of states and empires for a time--and, for that emergent community,
wherever it may be, it seems reasonable to anticipate, replacing and
enormously larger and more important than the classes of common workmen
and mechanics of to-day, a large fairly homo