SOCIAL SUSTENANCE. 613 



they would be no better off if they did ; but, for human beings, it is 

 never doubted that specialization is a very profitable thing. 



It manifests itself in two ways : 1. By the division and subdi- 

 vision of existing specialties. 2. By the creation of new ones. The 

 first is called division of labor, the second diversification of industry. 

 It will be interesting to consider these in their order. 



The practice of medicine offers us, in some respects, a good object- 

 lesson. We talk most about specialties in medicine, for the very reason 

 that it was one of the last occupations to be sub-specialized. Even 

 now we have in the country, and especially in new countries, the gen- 

 eral practitioner who attends to all the ills that flesh is heir to. He 

 pulls teeth, amputates limbs, " doctors " the eyes and ears, and does, or 

 tries to do, everything that all the medical specialists of a great city 

 do. And yet his profession was itself, until within a few generations, 

 an undivided and apparently indivisible specialty. The sub-specialties 

 into which it has been divided may, in future, be still further divided 

 and subdivided. 



It would be interesting, if it were possible, to take some one great 

 industry or profession, and trace out the pedigree of the specialties 

 into which it has been divided. For an experiment in that direction, 

 we might take the newspaper. It is now a very minutely subdivided 

 specialty. Not only each political party, each religious denomination, 

 each open and secret organization, but each line of business of any 

 considerable importance, has its daily, weekly, or monthly journals de- 

 voted to its interests. And the number and variety of specialty jour- 

 nals are daily increasing. A list of their names would suffice for a 

 chapter on industrial specialization. With the dates of their founding 

 it would be a chart of the growth of the process. We should see here 

 a process which, by reminding us of the division of the fertilized fowl's 

 egg into feathers, bones, muscle, nerves, blood, skin, fat, etc., connects 

 the science of political economy with all the other biological sci- 

 ences. 



But not only is journalism as a whole thus specialized ; the pro- 

 cess is going on within each newspaper-office. The work is more and 

 more divided, as the journal grows in circulation, size, and variety of 

 contents. I shall attempt a diagram, on the plan of a royal pedigree, 

 and it will be all the more instructive if it is not carried out to its act- 

 ual limits, as exemplified in a metropolitan newspaper. Start with the 

 original " journalist," who may yet be found in some Western county 

 capitals, writing all his local items and general editorials, setting all his 

 type, doing his own press-work, mailing or carrying his papers, solicit- 

 ing subscriptions and advertisements, keeping and collecting his ac- 

 counts in fact, publishing the leading county paper, and " no thanks 

 to anybody." He is the life-size presentment of "independence." 

 He is still a specialist, but we know by the experience of others, even 

 if we could not see at a glance, that his specialty is capable of indefi- 



