Strikes and social problems by Nicholson J. Shield (Joseph Shield) 1850-1927

Author:Nicholson, J. Shield (Joseph Shield), 1850-1927
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Strikes and lockouts, Labor and laboring classes, Economics
Publisher: London, A. and C. Black
Published: 1896-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

vated ability or special education to choose occupations for which the competitive wage is high owing to the small number of possible competitors." Well, take as an example of cultivated ability or special education the employers of labour generally. Surely their higher wages, if they happen to be high, are not due to absence of competition. The competition is notoriously so fierce that any initial advantage is soon neutralised unless there is also initial ability. The men who make money in business are in the main those who conduct their business best, and who make or adopt improvements of various kinds. Take the professions: no doubt special education is required, but it is certainly not the small number of possible competitors that makes wages high. As a matter of fact the competitors are so numerous that a professional man of only ordinary ability may often make no wages at alL The most potent cause of inequality of wealth is inequality in brain-power. There are a few who in almost any occupation would rise to the top, and many who would equally sink to the bottom. There are certain kinds of brain-capacity, the outcome of a conjunction of natural ability, education, experience and, it may be, opportunity, which are comparatively rare, and, like other rare things, command a scarcity value; intellects of this sort also directly or indirectly save much labour, or increase the eflSciency of labour, or more generally add to the wealth of society, and therefore (taking an average) deserve this scarcity value. It is to minds of the creative order that the industrial progress of society is originally due; by new ideas they break through routine, and open up new markets, new in-

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dustries, new methods. There are again men of lesser creative power, but capable of carrying out these ideas— men of great force of character and practical wisdom. For one George Stephenson there are many railway managers, and for one manager many porters. It is not necessary to illustrate further the descending scale of capacity, but it is necessary to insist on the general principle; for the idea is still prevalent that all that any person requires to rise in the industrial world is opportunity in the shape of capital, and that in brains, so far as any are required, all men are equal But in industry, as in science, in war, in literature, in art, there is no such equality. It is not merely a difference of degree that may be balanced by greater perseverance. No amount of perseverance will make a short-sighted man see so far as an ordinary person, or an ordinary person so far as a man with a telescope. The industrial world is full of opportunities, but the difl&culty is to see them.

It may seem that I have wandered far from my subject, and that the relative capacities of brains have little to do with the relative importance of living and dead capital. But it seems to me that

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