Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/88

80 of multitudes of clerks, who, by helping purchasers to secure desired commodities, by writing letters and keeping accounts, contribute to the benefit of society effort that requires a considerable degree of intelligence in addition to manual labor. Their contributions to the totality of effort, and likewise those of artisans, such as carpenters and machinists, to the performance of whose work is necessary a considerable degree of intelligence, training, and experience, meet with ampler reward than those whose efforts spring from physical exertion alone. To those who direct the efforts of others toward results of great benefit to a great number of people still greater reward is given. The manufacturer, who employs the services of numerous employees in producing commodities of a design and quality that cause them to be of use to multitudes of people throughout an extended territory, and the transportation manager and the merchant who utilize the efforts of legions of subordinates in effecting their distribution, frequently amass fortunes. Those from whose brains spring ideas that are of extraordinary benefit to mankind, and those who have made practical utilization of such ideas, have received extraordinary reward. Instance after instance occurs of inventors whose devices have wonderfully cheapened and facilitated production and distribution, and who have thereby reaped immense personal gain. And likewise throughout the professions and the arts. There is a vast difference between the remuneration accruing to the lawyer of slight and unimportant practice and that to him who contributes to the adjustment and maintenance of vast and important interests; between the reward given the actor of little histrionic ability and that flowing in upon a Jefferson or a Booth. At the extreme end of the scale are the vagabond and the tramp, who, contributing nothing to the well-being of any one, are entitled to nothing in return.

Out of the different capacities of different men that have been accentuated by the increasing specialization by which alone it has been possible to administer to the growing and varied needs of mankind has arisen the present industrial system. Each man, to obtain the satisfaction of his own needs, must contribute to the needs of others; each man, in the endeavor to obtain the most for himself, strives for higher wages and salaries and for greater fees and profits; and all men, that they may supply their own needs to the fullest extent, strive to obtain services and commodities for the lowest price. Therefrom arises the great force of competition that, acting through the merchant who sells, upon the manufacturer who produces articles of use and consumption, compels production in best adapted localities, the adoption of economical appliances and thrifty methods, the placing of particular functions in charge of those best fitted to their performance. The