74 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



we have just said of the relativity of the term aptitude. No matter 

 how much stronger she may be morally, she is industrially weaker 

 than man, and even in her own special aptitude, which nevertheless is 

 a special aptitude, she is weaker. An exception may he made in re- 

 gard to her care of children, so far as it is an industrial task to be in- 

 cluded in the study of political economy ; but at any rate the cooking 

 and the children keep her at home, and, as a rule, she must either 

 chore about the house or do nothing most of her time, leaving unsatis- 

 fied the instinct of mutual help in social sustenance, and leaving hu- 

 manity that much short of its amplest possible life. 



What we are striving for is that both the competent and the incom- 

 petent shall be employed and to the best advantage. The competent 

 must therefore do the work at which he most excels the incompetent, 

 and the incompetent must toil and sweat over a task which the com- 

 petent could do better and more easily. It is the competent, the rich, 

 the fortunate, the versatile, who leaves to others work that he could 

 do better than they. Mediocrity sticks to one task through life. This 

 is the rule. We promised to point out the exceptions. They are the 

 men of one aptitude or one acquired skill highly developed, but barred 

 by bad habits, lack of enterprise, lack of judgment, or some other simi- 

 lar lack, from rising to a higher and more profitable task. If that one 

 aptitude is itself a high one, we can hardly call the man mediocre. If 

 it is a somewhat lower one, we may say that he is a prodigy in his way. 

 Going on down, we reach a point where we have no hesitation in say- 

 ing that no attainable development of the one faculty could lift the 

 man above the average of his fellows. 



But, as a very general rule, the man who from choice leaves to 

 another work in which the first excels the second is the one of the two 

 who is to be most congratulated. The other is still to be congratu- 

 lated, for it gives him a job. Both parties are benefited. We never 

 think of commiserating a man, no matter how capable he may be at 

 his work, who has a chance to earn more at no matter how different a 

 task, leaving his former one to no matter how sad a bungler. Why 

 should we deplore the fact that nations are able to do the same thing ? 

 The statesmen at Washington who consider it a disgrace that America 

 should import things for whose domestic production it has plenty of 

 skill and ample natural resources, would let the scrubbing and care of 

 the building in which they say these things be ever so badly botched 

 before they would take hold and do the work themselves. No doubt 

 the least able-bodied of them could, with an hour's practice every day, 

 soon do it better and more easily than it is done, at least that part of 

 it that is done by women. 



He not only never thinks of trying it ; he never feels it the slight- 

 est disgrace to let a woman do for him work that he would be ashamed 

 to admit his inability, with a tenth of the training, to do better than 

 she. In many cases, perhaps a majority, he could do it without any 



