4. The moral qualities of the worker are increasingly important as society grows more complex. 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 broncho-buster of Arizona is not a Sunday-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 these qualities (it is fortunate that it is so), but these are the poorer places. Many men fail to examine the qualities necessary for success, and do not understand the causes of their own failure. Blind to their own faults, they are dropped down one notch after another in the scale of industry, and, equally blind to the virtues of their successful rivals, they rail against the unjust fates.

5. Skill and capacity in industrial tasks is a resultant of many qualities. The simplest task calls for a combination of force and judgment, - even the digging of a ditch, the raising of a window, or the fitting of a stovepipe. For most industrial tasks rarer combinations of qualities are required. The retail clerk must be neat, punctual, polite, and long suffering. A confidential clerk must have discretion, judgment, and other moral qualities in an unusual 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 fitness 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 often is no stronger than its weakest link. A strong motive for training is offered by the fact that supplying some one lacking quality may raise the total efficiency in a remarkable degree.

The union of many qualities needed.

6. Biologic studies have of late made clearer the existence and continuation of the inequality of talents. The political philosophy of the eighteenth century was based on the idea of natural rights and natural equality. Adam Smith, accepting 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 political 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, making possible selection and adaptation. Men in all their qualities of mind and body display this kaleide-scopic variety. 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 the man 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 shown by biologic studies.

This fact does not force to the conclusion that industrial inequality as it exists today, 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. A crude socialism is possible only to those who are blind to the enormous differences in human capacity.

Scarcity of labor is essential to wages.

7. The scarcity of human services, relative to wants, is the fundamental fact in the problem of wages. It is clearly seen that some qualities of service are scarce. Most women will confess that they cannot warble as Patti could, most men will admit that they have not the mercantile ability of John Wanamaker. The man of mediocre capacity recognizes even through the fog of his self-esteem that there is a reason for the high value of certain rare services. 1 But it must also be recognized that the commonest services have value only because they are scarce. There are many things to be done if there were labor enough to do them. There is no need to "make work," in the popular sense; it is here, but labor is lacking to do it. It is true there may be a temporary superfluity of human labor at a time of an indus-trial crisis. There is at all times a superfluity of "useless" human agents whose qualities are such that they have no) net utility. The ignorant, insane, feeble-minded, vicious, drunken, and debauched, can give to the world only negative utilities. But services that are in any degree useful are nearly always in demand, and the higher services are so rare that they are in great demand. The proverb, "There's always room at the top," is seen to be true when conditions are thus analyzed. There is a large, though limited, supply of the commoner kinds of services at the bottom of the scale, but in every branch of human effort there is a never-ending lack of that higher qualification and training required for the best results.

Unlimited demand for labor.

Questions On Chapter 20. Labor And Classes Of Laborers

1. Is dancing labor? Is the dancing of a dancing-master labor? If he would rather dance than eat, is it labor?

2. Enumerate some kinds of labor necessary to produce bread.

3. "Washing of clothes is unproductive labor; therefore as little of it should be done as possible." Criticize the argument.

4. Would you say that differences in ability at manual trades are due to practice or to native talent? If to both, in what proportion?

5. Do sons usually follow the father's trade? Is it more or less common than formerly for them to do so?

6. Do you know from personal observation whether a Mexican, a German, or an American, is the best workman?

7. What important personal traits are needed to make a man an efficient market-gardener?

8. Which would be of the greatest economic advantage, to increase by 50% the intelligence, the physical strength, or the integrity of the workers of this country?