1 48 ARISTO CRA C Y AND E VOL UT1ON 



Book ii The success of the strongest and ablest employers 

 that is to say, the heads of the most successful 

 Let us take, businesses may involve, and does involve their 

 twVdv^hotei- selection for survival as employers, and does involve 

 the extinction, as employers, though not necessarily 

 as men and parents, of their weaker and less able 

 rivals ; but it involves no struggle for existence with 

 the men employed by them that is to say, with the 

 great masses of the community. Two men, we will 

 say, start rival hotels, and each begins with a staff 

 of a hundred persons. One of the two understands 

 one becomes his business far better than the other. His hotel is 

 always full, whilst his rivals is half empty. The 



an" his* staff 1 ^ atter at ^ ast becomes bankrupt ; the former buys his 

 business, and together with his premises takes over 

 his staff. He employs two hundred persons, instead 

 of a hundred as at first ; the hotel of the bankrupt, 

 which the bankrupt ran at a loss, now yields the 

 same profit as the other ; and the aggregate takings 

 _ of the two are thus increased largely. Here we 

 have a community of two hundred and two persons 

 offering a marked example of great material progress; 

 and this progress has been the result of a genuine 

 struggle for existence. But the struggle for exist- 

 ence has been between two persons only that is 

 to say, between the two hotel-keepers. As hotel- 

 The sole keepers existence is the very thing they have been 

 between the- 6 '* struggling f r > an d the survival of the one has meant 

 the disappearance of the other ; but between them 

 and the two hundred persons employed by them 

 there has been no struggle at all. The achievement 



