SOCIAL SUSTENANCE. 615 



III. But the man who pursues a specialty to success often learns 

 rules of bis art which he can impart to others, or even can not help im- 

 parting, since, like the peculiarities of the general form of a violin, they 

 remain embodied and visible in the product of his art. He invents 

 new machines or processes which survive him and are permanently 

 added to the world's industrial power. This advantage of specializa- 

 tion is the last to be realized, and is probably the greatest. 



Under which head shall we place the utilization of pre-existing 

 special aptitudes ? Under the first, on the ground that part of the 

 advantage gained from them is immediate, under the second because 

 they are susceptible of development by exercise, or under the third on 

 the theory that they are due to heredity ? They may be a part of the 

 legacy of past specialization. Presumably this is true in general, and 

 particularly in the most prominent of all specializations that which 

 separates man's work from woman's. 



This brings us to an important practical subject which we may as 

 well pause to consider. We all want a solution of the vexed problem 

 of woman's industrial status. She wants it vitally and primarily, and 

 is clamoring for it. She wants to know how best to make her living. 

 In the great scheme of mutual helpfulness which constitutes the sub- 

 ject-matter of economic science, she wants her best possible place, as 

 we all want ours. And we, in turn, aside from our sympathy for her, 

 are interested in having such industrial capacities as she possesses, and 

 is in a position to exercise, made the most of. I have stated as a gen- 

 eral and vital economic truth that " the better living others make the 

 more they help us to make ours." And yet half the population belongs 

 to a sex which feels that it is denied, either by prejudice or some other 

 cause, or both, the privilege of making the best living of which it is 

 capable. If this be true, the first step toward reform is to find 

 out why it is true. If we incidentally discover, in taking this first 

 step, that reform is difficult or even impossible, none the less must we 

 take it ; for it will save us the waste of toilsome, futile steps in wrong 

 directions. 



A painstaking inquiry into the relations subsisting between special- 

 ization, heredity and special aptitudes can not fail to furnish us a clew 

 to some part of the trouble. We often speak of the various differences, 

 mental and otherwise, between man and woman. Among them all 

 there is none more striking than this, that man's work has been highly 

 specialized, while woman's has not. True, several s])ecialties have 

 been evolved out of her original specialty as weaving, spinning, bak- 

 ing, etc. But these new specialties have mostly been given to men, 

 not women. To all intents and purposes woman has now, as always, 

 one specialty housekeeping. 



Hence the intense heredity of it. It is bred in the bone. The 

 carpenter's son may fail to develop a special aptitude for working in 

 wood ; but the son of a long line of carpenters, whose male ancestors 



