244 NO STRUGGLE NO SELECTION 



office stool has ever in his mind's eye the prospect of 

 promotion The majority of office clerks are drawn 

 from the working classes, and these naturally consider 

 that in becoming clerks they have risen above their 

 origin. This has been their incentive to aspire to be 

 clerks, that they will no longer be numbered among the 

 working classes, but will have a social standing above 

 those who are engaged as factory hands or in handi- 

 crafts. But when their efforts fail to succeed in 

 getting places as clerks, many abandon the attempt, 

 and seek and have small difficulty in finding employ- 

 ment in other departments of the labour market. 



The labour market has such a diversity of employ- 

 ments, that it seldom happens that, when one fails to 

 achieve a post in the department of his first choice, 

 he does not find a post in some other department for 

 which perchance he is better qualified. 



The difficulties that are imagined to stand in the 

 way of qualified men finding employment, as they 

 exist in some minds, have their origin in the belief 

 that the principle of Malthus is constantly operative 

 and making the supply for posts in the labour market 

 always greater than the demand, arising from the 

 tendency of population to, etc. etc. It is, however, 

 the fact that, barring imbeciles and the victims of 

 their own prematurely developed vices, be it either 

 an ingrained laziness or an appetite for drink, every 

 individual willing to work, with brain or with 

 hands, according to his faculty, obtains a post of 

 employment. I insist upon this fact being duly con- 



