rkers in London ought to be approximately the same. In
reality, however, we find that wages range in London from _3l. 10s._
to _18s._ per week. The most skilled workers receive the highest, the
least skilled the lowest, wages. It is therefore evident that wages
are determined by the cost of subsistence only in the case of the
least skilled workers, provided an unlimited supply of such workers
and unrestricted competition among them for work drive down their
wages to the bare existence level.

Providence, thrift, and temperance are habitually attacked by
Socialists not only on "scientific" but also on moral and philosophical
grounds. For instance, Mr. Keir Hardie tells us: "As for thrift, much
which passes for such at present is little different from
soul-destroying parsimony. Men and women starve their years of healthy
activity that they may have enough to keep alive an attenuated old age
scarcely worth preserving."[854] In other words, he advises the workers
to spend all they earn and to become paupers in their old age. A very
influential Socialist writer says: "A man by starving his mind and his
body is able to save money. He borrows books instead of buying them. He
starves his emotional nature by neglecting to go to the theatre,
because to go to the theatre costs money. He doesn't go to concerts
because concerts cost money. He is a teetotaler, not so much because he
wishes to keep his stomach clean and his head clear, but because his
ideal men are teetotalers, grad-grinds, who mortify the flesh in order
to save. And the money is saved with a bad intention. The aim is either
to start independently in business, or else to secure shares in the
undertaking paying the highest dividends compatible with security. The
object of this man is to leave his class behind him, and to live _upon_
labour rather than _by_ it"[855]--According to this authority it would
be immoral for the rural labourer to save in order to be able to till
his own field and to live in his own cottage; it would be immoral for
the artisan to endeavour to have a workshop and a house of his own; it
would be immoral for the worker to put his savings into a savings-bank
or a friendly society, or some limited company, and to live upon his
savings during his old age. It would almost seem as if from the
Socialist point of view the only moral way of obtaining property was by
plundering the rich. "Waste all you earn and die in the workhouse" is
at present their adv