can be paid; the second, to get a fair allocation and distribution of
the profit made. Increased benefit will also be a stimulus to better
work.

For a crowded country like ours to maintain a leading position in
industry is obviously a necessary condition either of welfare or
progress. It is of first importance to secure work of high quality. A
highly civilised and trained nation must hold its own by the superior
quality of the articles produced as well as by being able to supply both
its own needs and to compete in prices with others by the quantity of
output. It may be possible, for example, to hold the market for fine
spinning when other countries are well able to supply coarse yarns from
their own factories. Hitherto this country has been able to maintain a
lead in industry largely through causes which are no longer operative.
Thus, we had (1) a settled Government when Germany and Italy were
divided into a number of small and inefficient and often very badly
governed States, when France was exhausted and unsettled, and when
America was only in its infancy; and (2) the advantage due to the fact
that the great discoveries and inventions which advanced industry were
mostly made in Britain, when industry was developing at the close of the
eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. Many of these
inventions were made by manual workers who, by intuitive genius, saw
what was needed to meet the requirements that arose in practice. There
was not then that fund of accumulated scientific knowledge and
experience in existence which anyone must have before he can make any
advance or improvement to-day. There was an interesting print published
some forty years ago giving portraits of the Englishmen who had made
contributions to practical science and who might have been assembled
together in one room in 1808. It included many who made their inventions
as manual workers. Murdock, who invented a new lathe, and developed the