The dependence of wages on the number of the competitors for employment is so far from hard of comprehension, or unintelligible to the laboring-classes, that by great bodies of them it is already recognized and habitually acted on. It is familiar to all trades-unions: every successful combination to keep up wages owes its success to contrivances for restricting the number of competitors; all skilled trades are anxious to keep down their own numbers, and many impose, or endeavor to impose, as a condition upon employers, that they shall not take more than a prescribed number of apprentices. There is, of course, a great difference between limiting their numbers by excluding other people, and doing the same thing by a restraint imposed on themselves; but the one as much as the other shows a clear perception of the relation between their numbers and their remuneration. The principle is understood in its application to any one employment, but not to the general mass of employment. For this there are several reasons: first, the operation of causes is more easily and distinctly seen in the more circumscribed field; secondly, skilled artisans are a more intelligent class than ordinary manual laborers; and the habit of concert, and of passing in review their general condition as a trade, keeps up a better understanding of their collective interests; thirdly and lastly, they are the most provident, because they are the best off, and have the most to preserve. § 5. Twofold means of Elevating the Habits of the Laboring-People; by Education, and by Foreign and Home Colonization. For the purpose, therefore, of altering the habits of the laboring people, there is need of a twofold action, directed simultaneously upon their intelligence and their poverty. An effective national education of the children of the laboring-class is the first thing needful; and, coincidently with this, a system of measures which shall (as the Revolution did in France) extinguish extreme poverty for one whole generation. Without entering into disputable points, it may be asserted without scruple that the aim of all intellectual training for the mass of the people should be to cultivate common sense; to qualify them for forming a sound practical judgment of the circumstances by which they are surrounded. [But] education is not compatible with extreme poverty. It is impossible effectually to teach an indigent population. Toward effecting this object there are two resources available, without wrong to any one, without any of the liabilities of mischief attendant on voluntary or legal charity, and not only without weakening, but on the contrary strengthening, every incentive to industry, and every motive to forethought.