Since the condition of
unskilled or low-skilled workers forms the chief ingredient in poverty,
such a "levelling up" may be regarded as a valuable contribution towards
a cure of the worst phase of the disease.
This brief investigation of the working of moral and educational cures
for industrial diseases shows us that these remedies can only operate in
improving the material condition of the poorest classes, in so far as
they conduce to raise the standard of living among the poor. Since a
higher standard of comfort means economically a restriction in the
number of persons willing to undertake work for a lower rate of wage
than will support this standard of comfort, it may be said that moral
remedies can be only effectual in so far as they limit the supply of
low-skilled, low-paid labour. Thus we are brought round again to the one
central point in the problem of poverty, the existence of an excessive
supply of cheap labour.
Sec. 5. The False Dilemma which impedes Progress.--There are those who seek
to retard all social progress by a false and mischievous dilemma which
takes the following shape. No radical improvement in industrial
organization, no work of social reconstruction, can be of any real avail
unless it is preceded by such moral and intellectual improvement in the
condition of the mass of workers as shall render the new machinery
effective; unless the change in human nature comes first, a change in
external conditions will be useless.
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