But when we come to consider that exceptional commodity, labour, we find a different result ensuing from free competition; we find the inevitable consequences to be impoverishment of the seller, deterioration of the product and increase of human misery. The underpaid worker is not only inevitably wretched and inevitably unhealthy; he is also a danger and a burden to the country in which he lives. Since he—or more often she—receives less than a living wage for his work, and since he continues to live, it is obvious that some one else is in part supporting him. I can never forget the impression made upon me in the first factory which I ever visited by a little scene of which I was a silent witness. The head of the firm had shown us over various departments, and incidentally had talked of how some of his children had just gone to the other side of the world in a yacht. He was himself a man beginning to be elderly, well grown, well groomed, fresh coloured, speaking with an educated accent and presenting that air of prosperous content which is common with elderly business men who are making money. He presently took us into a department where very young and very poor-looking little girls were employed; and one of our party shyly asked what were their wages. “Four shillings a week,” was the answer. The first speaker, himself an employer who pays high wages by choice, said deprecatingly: “But—surely—they can’t live on that!” “Oh, no!” returned their employer, cheerfully. “They live at home with their parents.” And I, new, then, to the facts of commercial life, stood staring, silent, at this well fed gentleman, with sons and daughters of his own, who frankly confessed that poor men’s daughters had to be supported by their parents in order that he might have their work for less than it cost. He seemed to me to be owning himself a thief. And that, indeed, was exactly what he was—although, strangely enough, he failed to perceive the fact. He was committing a daily robbery upon persons too weak to withstand his demands. His being, however, a variety of robbery not recognised by the laws, he pursued his course not only unremorseful and unpunished, but with great profit, and died, leaving behind him a large fortune which only a small minority of his fellow countrymen consider to have been disgracefully acquired. Yet his course was attended with much more suffering to other people than that of any highwayman. It was akin rather to that of the mediæval baron who by force of arms extracted a reluctant toll from all his poorer neighbours. The girls submitted to the extortion because it is even worse to starve than to be robbed, and because they lacked the combination that might have enabled them to resist both robbery and starvation.