Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/634

616 on his mother's side were also carpenters, would be sure to. This case never occurs. Masculine specialties are numerous. Male ancestors are also numerous. Their specialties are not one, but many. Now, if it happens that one of these ancestors had a specialty particularly adapted to transmission, which had become a part of his nature before his children were born, his posterity may have inherited his special aptitude regardless of the occupations of their immediate male parents. But, of course, it would all the time be diluted by its mixture with aptitudes inherited through other strains.

In the case of woman, every circumstance conspires to make the special aptitude intensely hereditary. It is acquired before the birth of children, hence is always transmitted. It has been transmitted, undiluted, from the female side, through countless generations. In a certain sense woman inherits masculine aptitudes from her male ancestors, But almost her only use of them is to transmit them to her sons.

In a few cases they are so strong that she yields to them and utilizes them; and a part of her reward is that she is pointed to as an example that if women had the chance they would prove as capable as men. As a rule, girls inherit the industrial tendencies of their female rather than of their male ancestors, just as they do their voices, faces, and forms.

It is not worth while to quarrel with this fact, nor to quarrel about its original cause. It must be taken account of. From an unbroken line the woman inherits adaptation to a single specialty. From converging lines running back to a great variety of specialties the man inherits the capacity to turn his hand to many things, and measurably succeed in any one of quite a number. Woman has a "sphere," while man has spheres. How to bring about equality, or something more nearly approaching it, in this respect—the multiplicity of "spheres"—is the base of all there is in the famous "woman question." For, the moment woman has industrial potency, her way is clear to the realization of most of her other aspirations.

As compared with woman, man inherits versatility. But not all men are equal in this respect. Some inherit a larger assortment of capabilities than others, and with them the courage to abandon an adopted specialty the moment it becomes unprofitable or otherwise disagreeable, and take up another. Some whole communities have been so long tied to a single narrow industry that their inhabitants can hardly be trained to anything else. If that one industry for any reason ceases to be profitable, carried on in their way, they are comparatively helpless.

Grant that it is not good for a man to "have too many irons in the fire," or be "Jack of all trades and master of none"; neither is it good for him to "carry all his eggs in one basket," or "have only one string to his bow." The man who is tolerably capable at several kinds of work is the better able to make his living while he is seeking