such as the present, for this reason, if for no other, that, as
has been said already, the evils in question are not one but many, each
demanding special and separate treatment, just as ophthalmia demands a
treatment other than that demanded by whooping-cough. But one general
observation may be fitly made, in conclusion, which will apply to all of
them. These remedies cannot be included under the heading of any mere
general augmentation of the pecuniary reward of labour taken in the
aggregate. The portion of the national dividend which goes to labour
now, in progressive countries such as Great Britain, Germany, and
America, is immensely greater than it was a hundred years ago, and
unless industrial progress is arrested its tendency is to rise still
further. The main evils to which a scientific statesmanship should
address itself arise from the incidental conditions under which this
dividend is spent--conditions, largely improvable, which at present
deprive it of its full purchasing power. Of this I will give one
example--the present structure of great industrial towns. It cannot be
doubted that, if the sums now spent on the construction and maintenance
of insanitary slums and alleys were employed in a scientific manner, a
rent which has now to be paid for accommodation of the most degrading
kind would suffice to command, on the strictest business principles,
homes superior to those which, if its amount were doubled, would hardly
be forthcoming for the labourer in most of our existing streets; while
the purchasing power of the existing income of labour would be increased
concurrently, and perhaps to a yet greater extent if much of the
education, which now has no other effect than of generating
impracticable ideas as to the abstract rights of man, were devoted to
developing in men and women alike a greater mastery of the mere arts of
household management.

But in merely mentioning these subjects I am transgressing my proper
limits. I mention them only with a view to reminding the reader once
more that the object of this volume is not to suggest, or supply
arguments for maintaining that existing conditions are perfect, or that
socialists are visionaries in declaring that they are capable of
improvement. Its object has been to expose that radical misconception of
facts which renders demands visionary that would not be visionary
otherwise, and to stimulate all sane and statesmanlike reformers by
helping them to see, and als