186 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



The imperfectly employed. By imperfectly employed labor 

 is meant that which is employed productively, but less produc- 

 tively than it might be. Wherever there is a man doing un- 

 skilled work who might, had he received the proper training, 

 be doing skilled work, or doing skilled manual work who might 

 be doing the more highly skilled and more needed work of 

 managing and directing, there is a case of imperfectly employed 

 labor. It is as great a waste of productive energy as it would be 

 to have good garden land used for pasturing Longhorn steers. 

 Here again is a statesman's opportunity for enriching his na- 

 tion by providing the means for economizing to the greatest 

 degree the labor power of the people. Much of it is now go- 

 ing to waste in the sense that it has to be utilized in ways which 

 are of little value merely because of its oversupply, while other 

 kinds of work are suffering because of the scarcity of competent 

 men. As a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so an in- 

 dustry can expand only as far as its scarcest factor will permit. 

 The scarcest factor is managing ability, and any policy, educa- 

 tional or moral, which will increase the supply of managing 

 ability will enable industry to expand and to absorb greater 

 numbers of the unemployed. Incidentally this would do more 

 than anything else to equalize the distribution of wealth. 



The voluntarily idle. The voluntarily idle are of two classes, 

 those who have retired on a well-earned competence, and those 

 who live on wealth which they themselves have not earned. 

 The first class does not trouble us much in America, though we 

 are in some danger of being influenced by European critics, 

 who, through an aberration of the mind, have persuaded them- 

 selves that this form of conspicuous waste is a mark of gentility 

 or even of " culture." Until recently we have not been very 

 much troubled with the second class, but our own prosperity is 

 creating it and we need to look to the future. Those who live 

 on inherited wealth and on wealth accruing from a rise in land 



