Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/641

Rh effective, but it also opens the way, so far as specialization can help us on toward that end.

But it can do so only when it crowds the world with people who have the means and the inclination to purchase the services or the wares of the specialist. A given specialty can be earlier divided into sub-specialties in a rich than in a poor community of the same numerical population. Hence, the circumstance which promotes sustenance is likely to promote specialization. And since specialization promotes sustenance, it promotes itself. It is a case of "to him that hath shall be given." It is a case where two and two make more than four.

It follows, in turn, that what promotes specialization is likely to promote social sustenance. We have spoken of density of population. Let us analyze this expression. What do we mean by saying that population is dense? The answer is extremely obvious, but for the sake of the argument let us treat it as if it needed to be given. We mean that our human beings are close together. World-crowding is the only way to get them close together in person while occupying all the soil and mines.

Nevertheless, there is another way to accomplish the same practical object. If we can not bring them together in person, we can bring their products together. We can remove the obstacles to their communication with one another. The railroad, the steamship, the telegraph, the organization of carriage and commerce, have all helped to bring people together just as effectually, in an economic sense, as world-crowding does. Facile communication has ceased to depend wholly on density of population; facile communication means facile specialization, and it also means more beneficent specialization.

World-crowding was Nature's first crude and cruel method of bringing her highest creatures together, and specializing and civilizing them. Once acquired, the habit of specialization has been facilitated and its field extended by the more kindly method of commerce. The cruel and the kindly method have co-worked to stimulate industry. Whether the cruel process will go on when it is no longer needed, and partially rob us of the fruits of the kindlier process, is a question which we may leave to the prophets and to the future. In any case, what we of the nineteenth century are permitted to witness is probably only the infancy of specialization.

Meantime, let us turn to its other form—the creation of new specialties. Much of what we have already said applies here with equal force. Still, it may be worth our while to reflect that, besides dividing up the old work, we may, by searching, find out new work. Is it likely that all the ways of catering to the wants of society have been found and utilized? There is room here for the inventive faculty. A few generations ago the now highly-specialized profession of journalism did not exist at all, even in its simplest form. It has been but a few years since the specialties of making and attending to