If it is shown that low wages for low labour keeps that labour always low, and indeed makes it lower; that out of the impoverished environment we inevitably breed defectives and degenerates, diseases and crimes; and that farther, because a hard and unfavourable environment promotes fecundity, therefore this low rate of wages tends to increase the birth rate of the lowest people, thus making a vicious circle of social stagnation and deterioration—if these things are proved to us, we say it cannot be helped—it is a condition of human nature. These inferior people are the bulk of humanity; they cannot do high-grade labour; it would not be fair to pay the plentiful “cheap labour” as much as the scarce and therefore more expensive kind, so there you are! As a way of escape from this position “the brotherhood of man” tries to uplift the lowly, but the majority do not accept this brotherhood theory. Or they say, “Brother or not, these are such hopelessly inferior brothers that we will not consent to any levelling which would reduce us to their grade, and they cannot be raised to ours.” Now here is the true position. “Unskilled labour” is a product of social evolution. Among savages there is no unskilled labour. Each man must be skilled in several lines to keep himself alive. In his pre-social condition of individualism, his life depending immediately upon his own exertions, he necessarily develops skill in his essential activities. No heavy-eyed, slow-witted, hod-carrying grade of efficiency could maintain itself in a status of individual savagery. The “man with the hoe” comes later—much later. He is produced, developed, maintained, by a highly differentiated society. The nobleman evolves the serf—they are parts of one fighting organisation. The mill-owner and his “hands” are part of one working organisation. The individual savage is swift, alert, vigorous, sentinelled by the keenest of senses, served by prompt and varied abilities of many sorts. But his action, though more perfect, is on a lower grade in industrial evolution. He would not be capable, though under never so dreaded penalties, of working, his life long, in one fractional line of social service. The more society develops the more widely differentiated become its labours. In its differentiation there comes to be an immense proportion of very simple things to do; simple because they are tiny parts of something extremely complex. The savage’s life is anything but “simple.” His elaborate and exciting monologue requires of him the whole gamut of individual capacity in constant shock and change. But in the peace and power of a great civilisation, in the organic spread of social functions, there are more and more kinds of labour which are so infinitely simplified that a dolt can do them.