The future historian, whatever his interest in the first indications of that profound revolution through which we are so rapidly passing, will most certainly fix upon that one point as the cardinal landmark of our times. The legislator surveying the Capitalist State proposes as a remedy for certain of its evils the establishment of two categories in the State, compels the lower man to registration, to a tax, and the rest of it, and further compels the upper man to be the instrument in enforcing that registration and in collecting that tax. No one acquainted with the way in which any one of the great changes of the past has taken place, the substitution of tenure for the Roman proprietary right in land, or the substitution of the mediaeval peasant for the serf of the Dark Ages, can possibly misunderstand the significance of such a turning point in our history. Whether it will be completed or whether a reaction will destroy it is another matter. Its mere proposal is of the greatest possible moment in the inquiry we are here pursuing. Of the next two groups, the fixing of a Minimum Wage and the Compulsion to Labour (which, as I have said, and will shortly show, are complementary one to the other), neither has yet appeared in actual legislation, but both are planned, both thought out, both possessed of powerful advocates, and both upon the threshold of positive law. * * * * * The fixing of a Minimum Wage, with a definite sum fixed by statute, has not yet entered our laws, but the first step towards such a consummation has been taken in the shape of giving legal sanction to some hypothetical Minimum Wage which shall be arrived at after discussion within a particular trade. That trade is, of course, the mining industry. The law does not say: "No Capitalist shall pay a miner less than so many shillings for so many hours' work." But it does say: "Figures having been arrived at by local boards, any miner working within the area of each board can claim by force of law the minimum sum established by such boards." It is evident that from this step to the next, which shall define some sliding scale of remuneration for labour according to prices and the profits of capital, is an easy and natural transition. It would give both parties what each immediately requires: to capital a guarantee against disturbance; to labour sufficiency and security. The whole thing is an excellent object lesson in little of that general movement from free contract to status, and from the Capitalist to the Servile State, which is the tide of our time. The neglect of older principles as abstract and doctrinaire; the immediate need of both parties immediately satisfied; the unforeseen but necessary consequence of satisfying such needs in such a fashion--all these, which are apparent in the settlement the mining industry has begun, are the typical forces producing the Servile State. Consider in its largest aspect the nature of such a settlement.