Many people who would gladly see working people better paid, honestly believe that a general rise in wages is not commercially possible. Any attempt at giving a fair wage all round would, they declare, so diminish trade as to throw out of work an additional number of persons whose added competition would inevitably reduce the average wage to below its original level: or who, if their competition were effectually barred by the existence of a legal minimum wage, would be left without employment, in a state more wretched than before. It may be remarked that this view involves an admission that we live under commercial conditions which render dishonesty not only the best, but actually the only possible, policy. Such a belief would appear to furnish an unanswerable argument in favour of the destruction of such commercial conditions, and it is difficult to understand how any human being can hold it and not become a convinced revolutionist. Yet, strange to say, it is from the mouth of upholders of things as existing, that this doctrine is most frequently heard. In some quarters, indeed, there would seem to be actual hostility to the idea of bettering the workman’s lot, an inclination to grudge him any greater share than he now possesses of the comforts and conveniences of modern life. This attitude—to some extent, it must be supposed, a feudal survival—indicates a very ugly spirit of class selfishness which may possibly be dangerous, and is certainly ignorant. Dull, indeed, must be the man or woman upon whom modern conditions of life do not impress the closeness of human interdependence. Never, since the beginnings of history, has the daily life of every man been so wonderfully interwoven with that of all his fellows: never was there a time when the deeds of each were so much a part of his neighbour’s pains or pleasures. Consider for a single moment how changed would be one’s own life, if there were no longer in Great Britain any person very poor, very dirty or very ill mannered, if, in short, no one fell below the standard of that skilled artisan class which is not only the most solidly virtuous, but also, in essentials, the most truly courteous section of our society. Is there one of us, however selfish, however callous, from whose daily existence a burden would not be lifted?