Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/85

Rh perhaps a machinist's apprentice. As he sweeps the shop, carries tools, and blows the bellows, he sees the firing of the boilers, the turning of the wheels and belts, and the men at their work. In time he comes to use tools and lathe himself. His hands become deft, and his brain increases in perception of what tools and machines can be made to do; he is being trained and developed, physically and mentally, to a capacity for increased usefulness, which brings increased reward. This development perhaps may result in the invention of appliances or the discovery of methods whereby greater results may be accomplished with less effort, thereby giving to civilization that extraordinary benefit and obtaining for himself that extraordinary reward which comes to the inventor. And so, likewise, with all men in all vocations. The printer's devil, step by step, may rise to the foremanship of the composing room, or to the editorship of the paper. The office boy becomes shipping clerk, or bookkeeper, and may acquire that knowledge of commerce and that judgment which fit him to control the operations of a great manufacturing or mercantile establishment.

Throughout the field of human effort, extraordinary achievement proceeds from a correlation of ideas in an original perception of far-reaching relation of cause and effect that, through nerve and muscle, results in handiwork or delivered word that places that relation in tangible shape for the benefit of mankind. And in any line of human effort extraordinary achievement is usually attained only after years of toil, in which body and brain are trained and tempered to this perception of far-reaching relation of cause and effect and the ability to give it expression. Different individuals, however, attain different degrees of usefulness, and different degrees of reward; only the few achieve extraordinary result, the vast majority in any vocation laboring year after year without more than average achievement or more than average reward. But the work of each brings that which sustains the body; it gives body and brain the use by which they are exercised and developed; it contributes to that totality of effort by which all individuals of the civilized world are sustained; and it is by means of toil that civilization is advanced; that better machines are made; that better cloths are produced; that more nutritious food is prepared; that better houses are built; that better books are written; and better songs are better sung.

In every community different people live in different degrees of comfort. Their habitations vary greatly in size, strength, and durability. Their clothing differs greatly in warmth and adaptability, and varies in quantity. There is great variety in the kind and quantity of food which each family can afford, and the