If tasks differ in importance as well as in the character of their operations, so men differ in their total industrial potencies as well as in their special aptitudes. A does not always excel Z in one kind of work only, he may excel him in several kinds or in all kinds. Nobody would hesitate to admit this if A were an able-bodied man and Z an idiotic weakling. In that case the essential difference between A and Z as industrial factors is plainly seen to be quantitative. There is more of A than there is of Z. As we are wont to say, there is more in him.
Now, the fact we have to recognize is, that all the way from A to Z there is a quantitative as well as a qualitative difference between the human beings who are helping one another to make a living. Because a man is weak in one way it does not follow that he is strong in another. Because he is strong in one way it does not follow that he is weak in all other ways. So one country may excel others in a great variety of resources as well as in one. No doubt we could find two countries of which one excelled the other in every capacity for the sustenance of man, and yet under the most absolute freedom trade would go on, and ought to go on, between the two countries.
Let us define our use of the term special aptitude. Let us use it with reference to the other aptitudes of the same person or country, not with reference to those of another person or country. When we say that a person has a special aptitude for a certain work, let us mean that, while he may not be good at that work, he is better at that than at anything else.
When a person is apter at one thing than another, it may be that he is really and positively apt at that thing, or the trouble may be only that he is inapt at the other. A special aptitude is entirely consistent with, and may even proceed from, a general inaptitude.
On what principles, then, shall the allotment of specialties be made?
1. The most important specialties will naturally and rightly command the services of the persons most competent in them.
2. The demands of those which, from the nature of the soil or its occupants, are most profitable, will and should be met.
3. Each person should do the work at which he can earn most, whether or not he is as capable as others in the same work, and whether or not he must leave to others work in which he is more capable than they.
4. The incapable must be allowed to bungle away at some kind of work rather than waste their time.
5. The same privilege must be accorded to those who, like most women, are prevented by circumstances from exercising even the industrial powers they have or might under other circumstances develop.
And speaking of woman, what we have said in another place of her inherited special aptitude must be taken in connection with what
