SOCIAL SUSTENANCE. 617 



the work at which he is most capable. Many men who teach school 

 are free to say that they do it only as a stepping-stone to something 

 else. A great many other occupations are occasionally or generally 

 followed for the same purpose by young men. A very large part of 

 the world's important work is "stepping-stone" work. It implies 

 versatility of talent. 



How shall woman acquire this versatility ? Her industrial pre- 

 disposition is a deeply-inherited instinct. How shall she break its 

 fetters ? Not very suddenly, we may rest assured. After long wait- 

 ing she has slowly begun to take up, with slowly increasing success, 

 those masculine tasks which the never-ceasing process of specialization 

 has placed within her grasp. She works in those factories which have 

 taken away from her general task of housekeeping some of the duties 

 included in it in her grandmother's time. She watches the spindle and 

 the loom of the factory, while the wheel and the loom of her grand- 

 mother gather and consecrate the dust of the garret. She carries her 

 inherited instinct of baby-tending into the Kindergarten and the school- 

 room. She even finds employment in those of the most mechanical 

 masculine tasks which are not too muscular. It is gratifying, as well 

 as scientifically instructive, that in all these lines her wages are gaining 

 on man's. 



Why not divide her main specialty of housekeeping? Men have 

 made, out of much narrower and simpler ones, whole families of 

 specialties. This it is that justifies our treating the woman question 

 as a question of specialization, and taking it up so early. It is not a 

 question of capital, banking, commerce, money, production, or distri- 

 bution. It is a question of specialization, and, considered in respect of 

 the number of specialists, one of the most important, since there are 

 more women than men in the countries of greatest economic interest. 



It is worthy our close attention for another reason. It is rich in 

 revelations of general economic truth. Not all branches of any 

 science are equally instructive. Some plants are botanically more 

 interesting than others. Some animals are richer than others in zoo- 

 logical phenomena, and in explanations of phenomena. Woman's 

 work, besides being everywhere present, so that we can all study it, is 

 a peculiarly rich field of economic investigation. 



It is not by any means a narrow specialty. It is intensely inbred, but 

 of itself it is too broad rather than too narrow. Compare the variety 

 of daily operations of man and woman. She must be constantly turn- 

 ing from one thing to another. She must dust, sweep, make the beds, 

 watch the pot, spread the table, wash the dishes, attend the baby, sew, 

 darn, and do so many petty things that almost any shallowness or 

 distraction of mind on her part would be excusable. 



Her husband, on the other hand, is doing one thing all day. He 

 is laying bricks, carrying a hod, heaving coal, hammering iron, watch- 

 ing a loom, or doing some other single and simple thing all day. If, 



