Leaving the questions which this statement opens up, for later consideration, let us consider the other classes of occupations in which men engage for the purpose of gain, and see if this far-reaching movement towards the destruction of competition has infected them, and whether it has proved, or can prove, so successful there as it has in the industries considered in preceding chapters. The third great class of occupations, rendering professional or personal service, gives employment to over four million persons (4,074,328), and includes in its members those in widely separated ranks of society. It is, of course, true that the competition in the professions is far more a competition of ability, real or supposed, than it is a competition of price; and the former is a competition which is never likely to be done away with. Yet in all occupations, to a greater or less degree, there tends to arise more or less competition in relation to price, and the professions are not entirely exempt. Lawyers, indeed, seem never to have felt the necessity of fixing any minimum tariff of fees; and so far as is known, clergymen have never combined to advance their salaries. But the medical profession has its well known code of ethics which debars its members from "pushing their business," and has, in certain places and times at least, prescribed a minimum tariff of fees. It should be clearly understood, however, that this is not cited with the intention of putting any aspersion upon the medical profession in any way. The services which are freely rendered to the poor, and the disgusting indecencies and insults which are thrust upon the public by some who choose to ignore this code of medical ethics, would make us ready to forgive very much worse things than a possible tendency among members of the profession to refrain from "cutting under each other" in the matter of fees.