In short, associated work and factory work: that is to say, the sort of work that makes it possible for our great modern civilized populations to exist, would be impossible if every worker could begin when she liked and leave off when she liked. In many factories the pace is set for the lazy and energetic alike by the engine. The railway service would not be of much use if the engine driver and the guard were to stop the train to look at a football match when they felt inclined that way. Casual people are useless in modern industry; and the other sort: those who want to work longer and harder than the rest, find that they cannot do it except in comparatively solitary occupations. Even in domestic service, where the difference between the unpunctual slacker and sloven and the model servant is very perceptible, the routine of the household keeps everybody up to a certain mark below which a servant is discharged as unemployable. And the slacker neither accepts lower wages nor can be cured by higher. No external incentive is needed to make first-rate workers do the best work they can: their trouble is that they can seldom make a living by it. First-rate work is done at present under the greatest discouragement. There is the impossibility of getting paid as much for it as for second-rate work. When it is not paid for at all, there is the difficulty of finding leisure for it whilst earning a living at common work. People seldom refuse a higher employment which they feel capable of undertaking. When they do, it is because the higher employment is so much worse paid or so unsuitable to their social position that they cannot afford to take it. A typical case is that of a non-commissioned officer in the army refusing a commission. If the quartermaster-sergeant’s earnings and expenses came to no more than those of the officer, and both men were of the same class, no inducement in the way of extra money would be needed to make any soldier accept promotion to the highest rank in which he felt he could do himself credit. When he refuses, as he sometimes does, it is because he would be poorer and less at home in the higher than in the lower rank.