ss-blowers proportionate
to the needs of the glass-blowing industry than there are ditch-diggers
proportionate to the needs of the ditch-digging industry. And not only
this, for it requires a glass-blower to take the place of a striking
glass-blower, while any kind of a striker or out-of-work can take the
place of a ditch-digger. So the skilled trades are more independent,
have more individuality and latitude. They may confer with their
masters, make demands, assert themselves. The unskilled laborers, on the
other hand, have no voice in their affairs. The settlement of terms is
none of their business. "Free contract" is all that remains to them.
They may take what is offered, or leave it. There are plenty more of
their kind. They do not count. They are members of the surplus labor
army, and must be content with a hand-to-mouth existence.

The reward is likewise proportioned. The strong, fit worker in a skilled
trade, where there is little labor pressure, is well compensated. He is
a king compared with his less fortunate brothers in the unskilled
occupations where the labor pressure is great. The mediocre worker not
only is forced to be idle a large portion of the time, but when employed
is forced to accept a pittance. A dollar a day on some days and nothing
on other days will hardly support a man and wife and send children to
school. And not only do the masters bear heavily upon him, and his own
kind struggle for the morsel at his mouth, but all skilled and organized
labor adds to his woe. Union men do not scab on one another, but in
strikes, or when work is slack, it is considered "fair" for them to
descend and take away the work of the common laborers. And take it away
they do; for, as a matter of fact, a well-fed, ambitious machinist or a
core-maker will transiently shovel coal better than an ill-fed,
spiritless laborer.

Thus there is no encouragement for the unfit, inefficient, and mediocre.
Their very inefficiency and mediocrity make them helpless as cattle and
add to their misery. And the whole tendency for such is downward, until,
at the bottom of the social pit, they are wretched, inarticulate beasts,
living like beasts, breeding like beasts, dying like beasts. And how do
they fare, these creatures born mediocre, whose heritage is neither
brains nor brawn nor endurance? They are sweated in the slums in an
atmosphere of discouragement and despair. There is no strength in
weakness, no encoura