THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 245 



sidered, that every individual, not a sot or an imbecile, 

 who seeks a place in the labour market finds one, and 

 if he does not obtain the post to which he aspires, he 

 gets one which enables him to live, and which, if he 

 has anything in him, gives him a starting-point for 

 higher achievement. This is the fact that beyond all 

 doubt proves that not more people are born fit for 

 posts in the labour market than are required to supply 

 its demand. If there are born persons unfit when 

 they are grown up to take posts in the labour market, 

 the posts which they are unfitted to occupy are 

 occupied by young men who obtain their place in the 

 labour market sooner than they would have done, if 

 the persons who are unfitted to occupy them had been 

 fit to occupy them. 



But in our great towns the manifold eventualities 

 that arise in the industrial world are productive of 

 much individual suffering and misery. Among such 

 eventualities may be reckoned ill-health that in- 

 capacitates for his daily work, it may be for life, the 

 wage-earner of a family, and business failures that 

 throw many men out of employment. In the latter 

 case, where multitudes are discharged from their 

 situations, owing to no fault or failure of their own, 

 the search for other situations on the part of those 

 who are discharged is very often long and arduous, if 

 it prove not an altogether hopeless task. Especially 

 are elderly clerks and elderly craftsmen at a dis- 

 count ; for in the demand younger men obtain the 

 preference. Those who devote their lives and energies 



