Mankind in the MakingWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
Mankind in the Making
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Social problems; Social sciences
premature or accidental death or temporary economic or physical
disablement, some minimum provision for old age and a certain margin for
the exercise of his individual freedom. [Footnote: An excellent account
of experiments already tried in the establishment of a Minimum Wage
will be found in W.P. Reeves’ _State Experiments in Australia and New
Zealand_, vol. ii., p. 47 _et seq_.]
So that while those who are bent on this conception of making economy
in life and suffering the guiding principle of their public and social
activity, are seeking to brace up the quality of the home on the one
hand, they must also do all they can to bring about the realization of
this ideal of a minimum wage on the other. In the case of government and
public employment and of large, well-organized industries, the way is
straight and open, and the outlook very hopeful. Wherever licenses,
tariffs, and any sort of registration occurs there are practicable means
of bringing in this expedient. But where the employment is shifting and
sporadic, or free from regulation, there we have a rent in our social
sieve, and the submissive, eager inferior will still come in, the
failures of our own race, the immigrant from baser lands, desperately
and disastrously underselling our sound citizens. Obviously we must
use every contrivance we can to mend these rents, by promoting the
organization of employments in any way that will not hamper progress in
economic production. And if we can persuade the Trade Unions--and there
is every sign that the old mediaeval guild conception of water-tight
trade limitations is losing its hold upon those organizations--to
facilitate the movement of workers from trade to trade under the
shifting stress of changing employment and of changing economy of
production, we shall have gone far to bring the possibilities of the
rising operative up to the standard of the minimum home permissible for
children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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