Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/758

738 to prove this. If we seem here to be contradicting something said in another place, the apparent contradiction will be fully explained farther on.

Thus far the true theory is capable of demonstration. Beyond this point we either see it or seem to see it exemplified every day. We hire a man to do a job of work which we have not time to do ourselves. How often rightly and how often wrongly we do not know, but at any rate quite often sincerely, we think to ourselves that with the same training we could have done it better. In some cases we know we could, as well as we know anything not fully tested; and in some cases we know it even by the successful result of a sufficiently thorough test.

Adding all these demonstrable and reasonable cases together, we are safe in saying that by far the larger portion of the world's work is done by those not most capable of doing it, either by means of their own aptitudes or of the natural resources with which they are surrounded. It remains to ask and answer the question, why this is so. Why should it be the rule rather than the exception, that we must leave to others work that we can do better than they? Certainly there can not be a more important economic question than this.

It is not compulsory that we shall be tedious, but it is compulsory that we shall be somewhat analytical. We are considering the relation of a man to a task. If we were asked to give a cold, intellectual opinion as to whether a certain man should wed a certain woman, we should have to inquire into the nature of the man and the nature of the woman. So in this case we have to inquire into the peculiarities of human beings on the one hand and of tasks on the other. If the analogy seems trivial, it is worth while to remember that a man's devotion to his chosen occupation has often caused an estrangement between him and his wife.

Directing our attention first to the tasks, we find that they are not all alike in importance. Humanity as a mass can better afford to have some kinds of work bundled and slurred over than others. So can the manager of an enterprise, and he is always looking out where best to reduce his force, if he finds he must reduce it somewhere. He may make a mistake in his choice of a victim, but he makes no mistake in judging that the retention of good men in some positions is more essential to his success than in others. It is not only more important that those positions should all the time be filled, but it is more important that they should be filled by men who will do their work rightly and make no mistakes. The mistakes of the office-boy are not so damaging as the mistakes of the head-clerk. The difference between a good and a bad fireman is of more consequence to the factory than the difference between a good and a bad journeyman. We can better afford to have a worthless or a bad Congressman than a worthless or a bad President. And so on, all the way round.