Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/258

 have thinned the ranks of the unskilled. At the same time the inducements to honesty and steady industry will have been enormously increased through the universality of the profit-sharing system; and the position of the steady worker will have become so greatly more attractive than that of the casual thief, that only the utmost stupidity can tempt anyone to the latter's course of life. Self-respecting labour for a share in the profits of labour, instead of mechanical toil for wages that do not bear any relation to profits nor to anything else except the fluctuations of the labour-market, will so elevate the average of industrial character that it will be rare for workmen to drift into crime. At the same time, and similarly, the restraint placed upon undue accumulation of wealth will diminish temptation to crimes of greed at the other extremity of social life. It will no longer be worth anyone's while to organise colossal schemes of dishonest company-promoting. Thus, crimes against property are certain to become relatively infrequent, because the greatest temptations to them will have been removed.

Apart from the largely preponderating number of cases in which offences against the person—assaults and the like—arise now out of intoxication, the tendency to crimes violence will also diminish as the temper of