Similarly the net economic quality of an artizan, an engi neer, a lawyer, a business man, a worker of any kind, is a re sultant of education and native talent, which along a broad zone are interchangeable, each in some degree indispensable, each supplementing the other. Any ability may be helped by education in the broad and true sense, tho a fool cannot be made wise by training, and tho many a potential genius doubtless has been dwarfed in dusty schoolrooms by stupid teachers. Education increases adaptability and enables a trained mind to outstrip an untrained mind of greater natural power. Education makes direction easier, fits for higher tasks, and decreases the difficulty of cooperation.
By education in this connection should be understood not merely knowledge gained in schoolrooms and by the aid of books and teachers, but every sort of experience and activity of mind and body which helps the natural capacities of the man to grow and strengthen. The subjective conditions, the eager mind and the strong character, most often bred of neces sity and deprivation, are more valuable equipments for life's work than is unheeded or half-comprehended schoolroom in struction. Hence the business man's usual skepticism of the practical benefits of "higher education" in the more limited sense as applied to pampered youth with indolent minds § 10. The moral qualities required in industry. The moral qualities of the worker are increasingly important as society grows more complex. But the need of a particular moral quality is relative to the special task in hand. Honesty is needed in the bank teller, but he need not spoil a good story. The champion bronco-buster of Arizona is not a Sun day-school superintendent. So, discipline, obedience, self control, regularity, and punctuality are needed, for more and more in these days business is run by the watch. Confidence, patience, good temper, in fact all the virtues in the calendar are necessary at some time and place, and most of them are needed all the time in business. Places may be found in our developed society for those who are deficient in some of these qualities (it is fortunate that it is so), but these are the poorer places. Many men fail to recognize all the qualities necessary for success, and few are able to understand the cause of their own failures. Blind to their own faults, many are, for lack perhaps of one trait which to themselves seems insignificant, dropped down one notch after another in the scale of industry, and equally blind to the true cause of success in their rivals, they rail against the unjust fates.
§ 11. Necessary combination of qualities. Skill and ca pacity in industrial tasks is a resultant of many qualities. The simplest task calls for a combination of physical force and of judgment—even the digging of a ditch or the fitting of a stovepipe. For most industrial tasks rarer combinations of qualities are required. The retail salesman must be neat,
punctual, polite, and long suffering. A confidential clerk must have discretion, judgment, and other moral qualities in an un usual combination. The substitution of qualities is possible within limits; a rare quality may make amends for the lack of a commoner one, and a man may, because of peculiar fit ness in some regards, continue to hold a position for which in other ways he is little fitted. The rarest and most valued worker is one uniting many good qualities and fitted to deal with emergencies. The economic efficiency of the worker of ten is no stronger than its weakest link. A most frequent use for training is found in the fact that strengthening some one weak quality may raise the total efficiency in a remarkable degree.
§ 12. Inequality of talents shown by biologic studies. The political philosophy of the eighteenth century was based on the idea of natural rights and natural equality. Even so shrewd an observer as Adam Smith, misled by the prevailing view, discussed wages on the assumption that all men had equal natural ability. It is still a favorite assumption of radical social reformers that the natural ability of all men is equal, and that all the differences in success result from polit ical injustice. The study of biology of late has made patent the unending differences that prevail throughout the animate world. No two members of the same family or species are just alike; no two pigeons have wings of just the same length. Nature by numberless devices is experimenting constantly with variations on either side of the established mean. The accepted fact of biologic evolution rests on the foundation of inequality, in structure and powers, selected, adapted and transmitted by heredity. In all life there is inequality, and the whole drama of human history as well as that of biologic evolution must be meaningless or illusory to one who does not see this truth. Accustomed now to this point of view, we as inevitably think of the natural inequalities in men as did Adam Smith of their equality. Inequality of talents is a con tinuing fact. Men in all their qualities of mind and body dis play this kaleidoscopic variety.
This does not mean that industrial inequality as it exists to-day, the great disparity of incomes, correctly or justly reflects the degree of difference in men's qualities, either native or acquired. It does not follow that a thousand-dollar income represents ten times the ability of a hundred-dollar one—far from it. But to those who ignore the inequality of men, the whole problem of industrial remuneration must remain a mystery. The differences in human capacity, in respect to the rendering of services of value, is one of the fun damental factors entering into the determination of labor incomes.