This principle might be extended. The consequent better organization of labour and its improved capacity would secure larger wages for efficient workers and probably reduce the cost of production for the benefit of consumers, but doubtless the number of the unemployed would be increased. Their inefficiency would not earn the minimum wage. For these, training or a refuge would have to be provided in farm colonies, industrial schools, or detention colonies, in accordance with the suggestion of the Poor Law Commissioners. The law might, by taxing the holders of the accumulated wealth of the nation, subsidize education, so that no child by want of food and clothing should be driven from school before the age of fifteen or sixteen. It might, by securing for the poor as well as for the rich an abundant provision of air-space and water for the healthy and adequate care and attention for the sick, reduce the death-rate among the 39,000,000 poor people to the level of that which now obtains among the 6,000,000 richer people. “Health before all things” has long been on the banner of politicians, and though much has been done much more remains to be done. There is no reason why the death-rate of a poor district should be higher than that of a rich district. Law, to offer one other example, might do more “to nationalize luxuries”. In an article on “Practicable Socialism,” which, as the first-fruits of an experience gained by my wife and myself in ten years of Whitechapel life, the Editor of this Review accepted in April, 1883, I suggested that legislation might provide for the people not what they _want_ but what they _need_. Much has been done in this direction during the last thirty years; but still there is not the free and sufficient provision of the best music in summer and winter, of the best art, of the best books--there is not even the adequate supply of baths and flower-gardens, which would bring within the reach of the many the enjoyments which are the surest recreations of life. It is thus possible to give examples of laws which would bring to the poor the use of a larger share of the national income. It is not easy to frame laws which, while they remove the burden and the danger of poverty, may by encouraging energy and self-respect develop industrial resourcefulness. But it ought not to be beyond statesmen’s power to devise such measures. The point, however, which I desire to make clear is that if the poor are to become richer the rich must become poorer. Increase of production followed by an increased national income has under the present laws--as has been shown in the booming trade of recent years--meant that the rich have become richer. The present income is sufficient to assure the greater health and well-being of the whole population, but the rich must submit to receive a smaller proportion.