Let us glance at another side of this problem—the attempts which are being made to improve social conditions in newer countries, as they are called, say, Australia. In Australia the working classes have got everything that they are asking for here; it is called the working-man’s paradise. Every boy of twenty-one can vote; think of the magnificent freedom of it! Every girl of twenty-one can vote; what more would you have? No need of agitation there. But, unluckily, the boys care much more about football than they do about questions in Parliament, and the girls, perhaps, are thinking more of bonnets and hats than of the way in which their votes ought to be cast. They have all got the vote and they do not know what to do with it, and that is a very common thing. It does not occur only in Australia. Has it ever struck you that you are paying in happiness for what you call liberty, if you mean by liberty the right to cast a vote? No matter what your qualifications, that is quite outside the question; no matter whether you know anything about the questions, that is not of the least importance; no matter if your head is as empty as ever it can be, it counts just as much at the polling-booth as the head of the wisest statesman, thinker, most highly trained economist or historian. It is an admirable way of governing when you come to look at it from the outside standpoint. Let us see how it works in Australia where they have it: you have not got it yet; you are on the way to it. All these people have votes, and the great majority, as is always the case, are ignorant. There has been class legislation over here, and they have class legislation over there—it is not a good thing, only there it is just the other way up; and the effect of ignorant class legislation is even worse than the effect of educated class legislation. Let us see how it works. First, it works for a gradual diminution of efficiency along the ordinary lines of work, on which, remember, the whole prosperity of the country depends. The boy who is a free man does not care to be an apprentice, and it does not to do tell the boy he has done his work badly, because he is a free Australian, and off he goes, and he won’t work any more if you tell him he has not worked well. But, you know, nature is a very awkward thing to come striking up against in your political and social life, and her laws do not get modified as you might think they should. The boy who won’t learn becomes the workman who is wanting in skill, and so the level of efficiency in production is getting lower and lower. If they want a piece of good machinery they have to send over here to get it—although there is a very heavy price put upon importing it into Australia—because the work there is so badly done that the machines won’t work properly after they are made, and that is one of the results that we are seeing at the present time. Another one is, that unemployment is increasing. There are men in the streets there just as