§ 6. Parallelism of the Movements in Capital and Labour.--Now this movement in labour, irregular, partial, and incomplete as it is, is strictly parallel with the movement of capital. In both, the smaller units become merged and concentrated into larger units, driven by self- interest to combine for more effective competition in larger masses. The fact that in the case of capital the concentration is more complete, does not really impair the accuracy of the analogy. Small capitals, when they have co-operated or formed a union, are absolutely merged, and cease to exist or act as individual units at all. A "share" in a business has no separate existence so long as it is kept in that business. But the small units of labour cannot so absolutely merge their individuality. The capital-unit being impersonal can be absolutely merged for common action with like units. The labour-unit being personal only surrenders part of his freedom of action and competition to the Union, which henceforth represents the social side of his industrial self. How far the necessity of close social action between labour-units in the future may compel the labourer to merge more of his industrial individuality in the Union, is an open question which the future history of labour-movements will decide. The slow, intermittent, and fragmentary manner in which labour-unions have been hitherto conducted even in the stronger trades, is a fact which has perhaps done more to hide the true parallelism in the evolution of capital and labour. The path traced above has not yet been traversed by the bulk of English working men, while, as has been shown, working women have hardly begun to contemplate the first step. But the uneven rate of development, in the case of capital and labour, should not blind us to the law which is operating in both movements. The representative relation between capital and labour is no longer that between a single employer and a number of individual working men, each of the latter making his own terms with the former for the sale of his labour, but between a large company or union of employers on the one hand, and a union of workmen on the other. The last few years have consolidated and secured this relation in the case of such powerful staple industries in England as mining, ship-building, iron-work, and even in the weaker low-skilled industries the relation is gradually winning recognition.