It is as unscientific to expect all women to be successful wives and mothers as it would be to expect all men to be successful farmers. It is as tragic to expect an untrained girl to be a successful wife and mother as it would be to expect an untrained boy to be a successful physician and surgeon.
EXECUTIVES AND DETAIL WORKERS
A very broad division of misfits is into those who are fitted to do detail work, trying to do executive work, and those who are natural-born executives compelled to do detail work. This is a very common cause of unfitness.
Some men love detail and can do it well. They naturally see the little things. Their minds are readily occupied with accuracy in what seem to others to be trifles, but which, taken together, make perfection. They are careful; they are dependable; they can be relied upon. Such people, however, do not have a ready grasp for large affairs. They cannot see things in their broader aspect. They are not qualified by nature to outline plans in general for other people to work out in detail. They are the men upon whom the world must depend for the careful working out of the little things so essential if the larger plans are to go through successfully.
On the other hand, there are some people who have no patience with details. They do not like them. They cannot
attend to them. If depended upon for exactitude and accuracy, they are broken reeds. They forget detail.
There are many executives holding important positions and making a sad failure of them because they are, by natural aptitudes, excellent detail men but poor planners and executives. The following story illustrates, perhaps, as well as anything we could present, the qualities of these overworked, busy, busy executives who have no right to be executives, but ought to be carrying out the plans of someone else:
HOW SOCRATIC HELPED BRAINERD BUILD BUSINESS
People sometimes bring their business troubles to a friend whom we shall call Socratic. And Socratic helps them out for a consideration. His time is valuable and he bought his wisdom at a high price.
Some months ago a pompous fellow dropped in. We recognized him as Brainerd, one of the leading business men of a small city. His story was this: He had built up a big enterprise during the pioneer boom days of easy money and negligible competition. Now, when margins were closer, the pace hotter, and a half dozen keen fellows were scrambling for their shares of a trade he had formerly controlled jointly with one other conservative house, he found sales falling off and his profits dwindling to a minus quantity.