s a _pari passu_ progress; or perhaps more
strictly it goes by the analogy of a game of draughts; the normal state
is a series of alternate moves; but when one side has gained a victory,
that is, taken a piece, it can make another move.

Sec. 8. Relation of Low-skilled Labour to the wider Movement.--The relation
in which this large industrial evolution stands to our problem of the
poor low-skilled worker is not obscure. In comparing the movement of
capital with that of labour we saw that in one respect the former was
clearer and more perfect. The weaker capitalist, he who fails to keep
pace with industrial progress, and will not avail himself of the
advantage which union gives to contending pieces of capital, is simply
snuffed out; that is, he ceases to have an independent existence as a
capitalist when he can no longer make profit. The laggard, ill-managed
piece of capital is swept off the board. This is possible, for the
capital is a property separable from its owner. The case of labour is
different. The labour-power is not separable from the person of the
labourer. So the labourer left behind in the evolution of labour
organization does not at once perish, but continues to struggle on in a
position which is ever becoming weaker. "Organize or starve," is the law
of modern labour movements. The mass of low-skilled workers find
themselves fighting the industrial battle for existence, each for
himself, in the old-fashioned way, without any of the advantages which
organization gives their more prosperous brothers. They represent the
survival of an earlier industrial stage. If the crudest form of the
struggle were permitted to rage with unabated force, large numbers of
them would be swept out of life, thereby rendering successful
organization and industrial advance more possible to the survivors. But
modern notions of humanity insist upon the retention of these
superfluous, low-skilled workers, while at the same time failing to
recognize, and making no real attempt to provide against, the inevitable
result of that retention. By allowing the continuance of the crude
struggle for existence which is the form industrial competition takes
when applied to the low-skilled workers, and at the same time forbidding
the proved "unfittest" to be cleared out of the world, we seem to
perpetuate and intensify the struggle. The elimination of the "unfit" is
the necessary means of progress enforced by the law of competition. An
insistence