And there are some things that tend to keep this share at a minimum. Industrial organization is not simply a case of competition between capital and labor, but capitalists are competing with capitalists as well as with laborers, and laborers with each other as well as with capitalists. The result is that the weakest parties to this fray get hit hardest, and their only hope would seem to be the addition of some other check to competition that will prevent the present distressful consequences. This is not to say, as Socialists argue, that competition is to be abolished entirely, for we have seen that it may really have excellent effects for the workman. Rather it is to be harnessed and guided into beneficent channels, as a miller directs a stream to turn a wheel. He does not destroy the stream but makes it do his will. An analysis of industrial society will show, I think, that despite the good work the stream of competition is doing, there is a little eddy undermining the bank and working havoc in some places. The description of one phase of competition, even though it be isolated from the rest, will probably give a correct enough idea of how this force while working out to the advantage of some, is resulting in harm to others. The considerations that must be omitted in a short sketch do not change the matter essentially. They limit the hardship wrought, but they do not prevent a considerable number of workmen from being mercilessly ground down. Modern industry, then, is organized for sale, not use. Business men care nothing about what they manufacture so long as they can find a profitable sale for the article. The typical employer makes shoes not because he likes to, as an artist may paint a picture. He does it because he thinks a sufficient number of purchasers will want this commodity at a price paying him for his trouble. But to get these purchasers he must (unless he have some sort of monopoly) offer his product at a price no higher than other manufacturers are willing to take for the same article. If he deviate only a few cents, the expert buyers of retail stores will know it and go elsewhere. There is a constant demand for cheapness, a universal eagerness to "get your money's worth"; and factories and retail firms must meet it, or see their trade taken away by competitors. The intense desire of individual buyers for minute savings of a cent here or a fraction of a cent there, becomes, in the aggregate, an irresistible Demand with a capital D, "a blood-power stronger than steam," compelling the retailer (who in his turn reacts upon the manufacturer) to sell cheap. "The phenomena of sweating are a standing warning against the dangers that are inherent in unregulated competition.... The underlying cause of the evil," affirms a noted English economist, "is certainly to be found in the indiscriminate preference of the public for that which is low-priced."[41]