624 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pboncs were created out of nothing. To say that many other ways 

 might be found to serve our fellow-beings and get pay for it, would 

 be to venture into the realm of prophecy. But, if the past is any sign 

 of the future, it is not wholly unwarranted prophecy. 



We should say that in this direction there is probably work for 

 every one of those unemployed laborers of whom we have lately heard 

 so much. If they, or some capitalist for them, would forsake the old 

 ruts of specialization, and, seeking some unsatisfied want of humanity, 

 set about to satisfy it ; or if, finding no such want realized, they would 

 set about to arouse and cultivate it, they might multiply their own 

 opportunities, increase their pay, and by relieving the labor market in 

 the old, overcrowded specialties, increase also the pay of their fellow- 

 workmen remaining in those old specialties. 



It is often said that there is no such thing as general over-produc- 

 tion. I am not so sure of it. I am not sure that all existing occupa- 

 tions may not be overcrowded, and that what is needed may not 

 sometimes be the creation of new ones. The creation of tbese new 

 ones may be the very thing that will restore equilibrium to the old ones. 



A certain amount of ingenuity is, in fact, every year expended in 

 this direction. But might not more be profitably expended ? There 

 is a limit to the fertility of the soil, and to the stores of mineral 

 wealth ; but what limit is there to the diversification of human wants ? 

 We know by the experience of all history that these wants arise and 

 multiply naturally. We know that they may be artificially tempted 

 into being. 



Some of these unborn or unsatisfied wants might furnish profitable 

 employments for which women would be especially fitted, and in 

 which they could command large pay. I have no doubt the field is 

 rich. So were the deposits of coal, iron, petroleum, and natural gas, 

 which humanity needed so long before it had sense enough to want 

 them or to find them. So were chemistry and mechanics as rich fields, 

 before they were cultivated, as now. 



We have to look upon humanity as a race half blindly, but with 

 slowly opening eyes, groping after the opportunities which lie all 

 around it. These opportunities are of two kinds. They consist not 

 only in Nature's undiscovered resources for making us happy, but in 

 our own ever-multiplying ways of being made happy. We have done 

 with the old quarrel as to what is and what is not " productive " labor. 

 We are familiar with the fine reasoning by which it is proved that the 

 family doctor is a productive laborer because he increases our own 

 working days and working capacity. This reasoning was needed to 

 make him a place in the old narrow field of political economy, which 

 included only the manipulation and valuation of material wealth. 



In our wider economic field we find a place for every task by 

 which our fellow-beings make us happy by which they ease or am- 

 plify our lives. There is a place in it for the art, the music, the lect- 



