Here is found the germ of the idea, which has been elaborately worked out by Mr. Cairnes(175) in his theory of non-competing groups of laborers: “What we find, in effect, is not a whole population competing indiscriminately for all occupations, but a series of industrial layers superposed on one another, within each of which the various candidates for employment possess a real and effective power of selection, while those occupying the several strata are, for all purposes of effective competition, practically isolated from each other.” (Mr. Mill certainly understood this fully, and stated it clearly again in Book III, Chap. II, § 2.) The changes, however, now so rapidly taking place in usages and ideas, are undermining all these distinctions; the habits or disabilities which chained people to their hereditary condition are fast wearing away, and every class is exposed to increased and increasing competition from at least the class immediately below it. The general relaxation of conventional barriers, and the increased facilities of education which already are, and will be in a much greater degree, brought within the reach of all, tend to produce, among many excellent effects, one which is the reverse: they tend to bring down the wages of skilled labor. § 3. Effect on Wages of the Competition of Persons having other Means of Support. A modifying circumstance still remains to be noticed, which interferes to some extent with the operation of the principles thus far brought to view. While it is true, as a general rule, that the earnings of skilled labor, and especially of any labor which requires school education, are at a monopoly rate, from the impossibility, to the mass of the people, of obtaining that education, it is also true that the policy of nations, or the bounty of individuals, formerly did much to counteract the effect of this limitation of competition, by offering eleemosynary instruction to a much larger class of persons than could have obtained the same advantages by paying their price.