Thus far, the argument has been based upon individual natural rights. If we give up the doctrine of natural rights, and assume that all the rights of the individual come to him from the State, we must admit that the State has the power to withhold and withdraw all rights from any and all persons. Its grant of rights will be determined solely by considerations of social utility. In the concrete this means that some citizens may be regarded as essentially inferior to other citizens, that some may properly be treated as mere instruments to the convenience of others. Or it means that all citizens may be completely subordinated to the aggrandisement of an abstract entity, called the State. Neither of these positions is logically defensible. No group of persons has less intrinsic worth than another; and the State has no rational significance apart from its component individuals. Nevertheless, a valid argument for the living wage can be set up on grounds of social welfare. A careful and comprehensive examination of the evil consequences to society and the State from the under-payment of any group of labourers, would show that a universal living wage is the only sound social policy. Among competent social students, this proposition has become a commonplace. It will not be denied by any intelligent person who considers seriously the influence of low wages in diminishing the efficiency, physical, mental, and moral, of the workers; in increasing the volume of crime, and the social cost of meeting it; in the immense social outlay for the relief of unnecessary poverty, sickness, and other forms of distress; and in the formation of a large and discontented proletariat.[246] The living wage doctrine also receives strong support from various kinds of authority. Of these the most important and best known is the famous encyclical, "On the Condition of Labour," May 15, 1891, by Pope Leo XIII. "Let it then be granted that workman and employer should, as a rule, make free agreements, and in particular should agree freely as to wages; nevertheless, there is a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man; namely, that the remuneration should be sufficient to maintain the wage earner and reasonable and frugal comfort." Although the Pope refrained from specifying whether the living wage that he had in mind was one adequate merely to an individual livelihood, or sufficient to support a family, other passages in the Encyclical leave no room for doubt that he regarded the latter as the normal and equitable measure of remuneration. Within a dozen lines of the sentence quoted above, he made this statement: "If the workman's wages be sufficient to maintain himself, his wife, and his children in reasonable comfort, he will not find it difficult, if he be a sensible man, to practise thrift; and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a small income."