?

In the first place, since the workers must compete for employment, it
inevitably follows that it is the fit and efficient who find employment.
The skilled worker holds his place by virtue of his skill and efficiency.
Were he less skilled, or were he unreliable or erratic, he would be
swiftly replaced by a stronger competitor. The skilled and steady
employments are not cumbered with clowns and idiots. A man finds his
place according to his ability and the needs of the system, and those
without ability, or incapable of satisfying the needs of the system, have
no place. Thus, the poor telegrapher may develop into an excellent
wood-chopper. But if the poor telegrapher cherishes the delusion that he
is a good telegrapher, and at the same time disdains all other
employments, he will have no employment at all, or he will be so poor at
all other employments that he will work only now and again in lieu of
better men. He will be among the first let off when times are dull, and
among the last taken on when times are good. Or, to the point, he will
be a member of the surplus labor army.

So the conclusion is reached that the less fit and less efficient, or the
unfit and inefficient, compose the surplus labor army. Here are to be
found the men who have tried and failed, the men who cannot hold
jobs,--the plumber apprentice who could not become a journeyman, and the
plumber journeyman too clumsy and dull to retain employment; switchmen
who wreck trains; clerks who cannot balance books; blacksmiths who lame
horses; lawyers who cannot plead; in short, the failures of every trade
and profession, and failures, many of them, in divers trades and
professions. Failure is writ large, and in their wretchedness they bear
the stamp of social disapprobation. Common work, any kind of work,
wherever or however they can obtain it, is their portion.

But these hereditary inefficients do not alone compose the surplus labor
army. There are the skilled but unsteady and unreliable men; and the old
men, once skilled, but, with dwindling powers, no longer skilled. {3}
And there are good men, too, splendidly skilled and efficient, but thrust
out of the employment of dying or disaster-smitten industries. In this
connection it is not out of place to note the misfortune of the workers
in the British iron trades, who are suffering because of American
inroads. And, last of all, are the unskilled laborers, the hewers of
wood and drawers of water