SOCIAL SUSTENANCE. 737 



specialization, which everybody might have observed by looking about 

 him. Boys and women do a great many things that men could do 

 better. The apprentice performs a task which the journeyman could 

 do better ; the journeyman, one at which the foreman excels him. 

 Boy or man, the better he performs his task, the sooner he leaves 

 it to some one who can not do it so well, while he rises to some- 

 thing higher. We all know that this is the rule. But we also know 

 that there are exceptions. The exceptions are not only numerous, 

 but interesting and instructive. They will be studied in their proper 

 place. Just now we have on hand the preliminary business of citing 

 examples of the operation of the rule. 



We find it prevailing in the army, often to the salvation of a coun- 

 try. The best soldier is the first to be made something more than a 

 mere soldier. The best captain is made a colonel, the best colonel a 

 general, the best general a commander-in-chief. The best brakemen 

 on the railroad are made conductors, the best firemen are made engi- 

 neers, the best station-agents train-dispatchers or superintendents, or 

 something still higher and further removed from their original work. 

 Whoever is promoted leaves to others work in which he excels them. 

 His very excellence in a task leads to his abandonment of it. 



We have to note, however, that in all these cases the new specialty 

 he adopts is rather nearly allied to the old one that he abandons. Suc- 

 cess in the lower implies aptitudes available in the higher. There is 

 another class of cases in which this is either not so important or not so 

 apparent. The successful farmer first acquires enough capital to engage 

 in some more agreeable business. The successful wage-worker in any 

 line first gets money to buy a farm or a store or a factory, or some- 

 thing else that will give him an employment, perhaps totally unlike 

 his own, and only more congenial because he can be its master and not 

 its underling. Let it be admitted that frugality, judgment, or what 

 not, has helped to bring about this result. They would all have failed 

 if he had lacked aptitude for his original work, and it is not necessary 

 that they should equal that aptitude in force. It is only necessary that 

 the lack of them should not squander away the rewards of the aptitude. 

 In all this class of cases capital is a prominent feature. 



The most striking case of all, in which neither promotion by merit 

 nor acquisition of capital has much to do, is that of women. That 

 man could do most of her work better than she can is beyond doubt, 

 since the experience has been tried. It may still be a question whether 

 he can do all of it better. At any rate, we daily see that he does wash, 

 iron, scrub, churn, sew, weave, knit, spin, and even cut and fit the 

 woman's own clothes and dress her hair with such success that without 

 any chance of favoritism he is able to make better wages than she can 

 in the same employment. With few if any exceptions, whatever work 

 man leaves to woman he leaves to one less capable in it, with the same 

 training, than he. It needs only observation, not labored argument, 

 vol. xxxi. 47 



