It is indeed highly probable that the
"unemployed" worker is on the average morally and industrially inferior
to the "employed," and from the individual point of view this
inferiority is often responsible for his non-employment. But this only
means that differences of moral and industrial character determine what
particular individuals shall succeed or fail in the fight for work and
wages. It by no means follows that if by education we could improve all
these moral and industrial weaklings they could obtain steady employment
without displacing others. Where an over-supply of labour exists, no
remedy which does not operate either by restricting the supply or
increasing the demand for labour can be effectual.
Sec. 3. Civilization ascends from Material to Moral.--The life of the
poorest and most degraded classes is impenetrable to the highest
influences of civilization. So long as the bare struggle for continuance
of physical existence absorbs all their energies, they cannot be
civilized. The consideration of the greater intrinsic worth of the moral
life than the merely physical life, must not be allowed to mislead us.
That which has the precedence in value has not the precedence in time.
We must begin with the lower life before we can ascend to the higher. As
in the individual the _corpus sanum_ is rightly an object of earlier
solicitude in education than the _mens sana_, though the latter may be
of higher importance; so with the progress of a class.
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