This reference to "talent" makes it well to consider here a factor which necessarily complicates, though it does not substantially affect, the whole argument of the present chapter. There are differences of natural ability, which no education or training can obliterate, which it should rather be their business to excite. These differences are associated to a great extent with differences of occupation; they _should be_ so associated far more closely than in fact they are. They are also associated with differences of remuneration even within the same occupation; "what should be" here is a question which we may excuse ourselves from discussing. The principle which, however vague, is sufficient for our present purpose is that the same _natural ability_ should command the same reward in all occupations, subject to differences which should not exceed the differences of educational cost and initial waiting they involve. We cannot assert, as an economic law, that this is generally true in fact. If ever it becomes true, it will be due not to "_laissez-faire_," or "free competition," but to social arrangements, which express a sense of what is right. §7. _The Apportionment of Labor among Occupations_. When we pass to the apportionment of labor among different occupations in the same social grade, the same principle as to "what should be" applies in a simpler form. Equal natural ability should command an equal reward in all occupations; assuming that differences in cost of training can be ignored. The reward must, of course, be interpreted not in terms of money only but of "real wages," with allowance for the varying amenities of different tasks. Now it was here that the extreme advocates of _laissez-faire_ made one of their cardinal mistakes. They assumed that this ideal would be best secured by "perfect competition." The employer would choose the worker who would come for the lowest wage; the worker would choose the employer who would pay him the highest wage; and so, by a process similar to the higgling of a commodity market, the desirable uniform wage-level would become established. But in fact the conditions of the labor market differ greatly from those of a commodity market. People are ignorant, do not look ahead, cannot afford to risk the loss of a job, however wretched, which they happen to have got. For reasons such as these, a considerable departure from _laissez-faire_ is necessary in order to realize the theoretical results of _laissez-faire_. To prevent the putting of boys in large numbers into "blind alley" occupations, you must supplement the foresight of parents with Juvenile Employment Exchanges and After-Care Committees. To secure a proper uniformity of wages within the same occupation, you must have trade unions. To secure a proper uniformity between different occupations, you must have again trade unions, or, failing them, Trade Boards.