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Now if this gain can be increased by more labour-saving devices and a shorter working-day, the human cost of labour can be sensibly reduced. This should mean a tendency towards equalisation of the payments required to evoke and maintain the different sorts of labour throughout the economic system. So far as hard and narrow drudgery is still needed for some necessary productive processes, its payment will take shape partly in larger leisure, but there will be a general tendency for the wage-level in such occupations to rise in a community where equality of access to all other occupations is achieved. On the other hand, the high incomes earned by skilled work in the professions and the arts will be reduced by the increased numbers seeking entrance into these more interesting and prestigious occupations. There will, however, still remain the possibility for persons of outstanding merit or reputation in those skilled callings, to extort high rents for the work they do as operative surgeons or counsel, as painters or singers, or in other activities where scarcity of value can be asserted in pecuniary claims. The belief that such