Labour and the Popular Welfare

by W. H. Mallock

◆1 Further, Socialists contend that Ability is the product of education, and that an equal education would equalise faculties.

◆2 But this wild theory is in absolute opposition to the most notorious facts;

◆¹ The socialistic theorist, however, even if he admits the above answer, will by no means admit that it is fatal to his own position. He will still take refuge in the proposition already alluded to, that the Ability of individuals is the child of opportunity, and that Ability is rarer than Labour, and able men are a minority, only because, under existing social circumstances, the opportunities which enable it to develop itself are comparatively few. And if he is pressed to say what these opportunities are, he will say that they may be described generally by the one word education. This argument can be answered in one way only, namely, an appeal to facts; and it is hard to conceive of anything which facts more conclusively disprove. Indeed, of much industrial Ability, it can not only be shown to be false, but it is also, on the very surface of it, absurd. It is plausible as applied to Ability of one kind only, namely, that of the inventor or the discoverer; but this, as we shall see presently, is so far from being Ability as a whole, that it is not even the most important part of it. Let us, however, suppose it to be the whole for a moment, and ask how far the actual facts of life warrant us in regarding it as the child of opportunity and education. Let us first refer to that general kind of experience which is recorded in the memory of everybody who has ever been at a school or college, and which, in the lives of tutors and masters, is repeated every day. Let a hundred individuals from childhood be brought up in the same school, let them all be devoted to the study of the same branch of knowledge, let them enjoy to the fullest what is called “equality of opportunity,” and it will be found that not only is there no equality in the amount of knowledge they acquire, but that there is hardly any resemblance in the uses to which they will be able to put it. Two youths may have worked together in one laboratory. One will never do more than understand the discoveries of others. The other will discover, like Columbus, some new world of mysteries. ◆² Indeed, equality of opportunity, as all experience shows, instead of tending to make the power of all men equal, does but serve to exhibit the extent to which they differ.

◆1 As may be seen by a glance at the lives of some of the most distinguished inventors of the world.

◆¹ But particular facts are more forcible than general facts. Let us consider the men who, as a matter of history, have achieved by their Ability the greatest discoveries and inventions, and let us see if it can be said of these men, on the whole, that their Ability has been due to any exceptional education or opportunity. Speaking generally, the very reverse is the case. If education means education in the branch of work or knowledge in which the Ability of the able man is manifested, the greatest inventors of the present century have had no advantages of educational opportunity at all. Dr. Smiles observes that our greatest mechanical inventors did not even have the advantage of being brought up as engineers. “Watt,” he writes, “was a mathematical instrument-maker; Arkwright was a barber; Cartwright, the inventor of the power-loom, was a clergyman; Bell, who afterwards invented the reaping-machine, was a Scotch minister; Armstrong, the inventor of the hydraulic engine, was a solicitor; and Wheatstone, inventor of the electric telegraph, was a maker of musical instruments.” That knowledge is necessary to mechanical invention is of course a self-evident truth; and the acquisition of knowledge, however acquired, is education: education, therefore, was necessary to the exercise of the Ability of all these men. But the point to observe is, that they had none of them any special educational opportunity; they were placed at no advantage as compared with any of their fellows; many of them, indeed, were at a very marked disadvantage; and though, when opportunity is present, Ability will no doubt profit by it, the above examples show, and the whole course of industrial history shows,[42] that Ability is so far from being the creature of opportunity, that it is, on the contrary, in most cases the creator of it.

◆1 The theory is still further refuted by the fact that moral Ability is a matter of character and temperament, rather than of intellect.

◆2 A business started by Ability of intellect is maintained by Ability of character.

◆¹ The mental power, however, which is exercised by the inventor and discoverer, as I have said, is but one kind of industrial Ability out of many. Ability—or the faculty by which one man assists the Labour of an indefinite number of men—consists in what may be called exceptional gifts of character, quite as much as in exceptional gifts of intellect. A sagacity, an instinctive quickness in recognising the intellect of others, a strength of will that sometimes is almost brutal, and will force a way for a new idea, like a pugilist forcing himself through a crowd, these are faculties quite as necessary as intellect for giving effect to what intellect discovers or creates; and they do not always, or even generally, reside in the same individuals. The genius which is capable of grappling with ideas and principles, and in the domain of thought will display the sublimest daring, often goes with a temperament of such social timidity as to unfit its possessor for facing and dealing with the world. It is one thing to perfect some new machine or process, it is another to secure Capital which may put it into practical operation; and again, if we put the difficulty of securing Capital out of the question by supposing the inventor to be a large capitalist himself, there is another difficulty to be considered, more important far than this—the difficulty dealt with in the last chapter—namely, the conduct of the business when once started. Here we come to a number of complicated tasks, in which the faculty of invention or discovery offers no assistance whatsoever. We come to tasks which have to do, not with natural principles, but with men—the thousand tasks of daily and of hourly management. A machine or process is invented by intellect—there is one step. It is put into practical operation with the aid of Capital—there is another. When these two steps are taken, they do not require to be repeated, but the tasks of management are tasks which never cease; on the contrary, as has been said already, they tend rather to become ever more numerous and complicated. ◆² Nor do they consist only of the mere management of labourers, the selection of foremen and inspectors, and the minutiæ of industrial discipline. They consist also of what may be called the policy of the whole business—the quick comprehension of the fluctuating wants of the consumer, the extent to which these may be led, the extent to which they must be followed, the constant power of adjusting the supply of a commodity to the demand. On the importance of these faculties there is a great deal to be said; but I will only observe here that it is embodied and exemplified in the fact that successful inventors and discoverers are nearly always to be found in partnership with men who are not inventors, but who are critics of inventions, who understand how to manage and use them, and who supplement the Ability that consists of gifts of intellect by that other kind of Ability that consists of gifts of character.

◆1 Equality of education and opportunity, instead of equalising characters, displays their differences.

◆2 Ability, then, is a natural monopoly; because few people are born with it.