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If heredity were the only factor in determining character and capacity, the adjustment of the supply of workers of different grades to the demand for them would be largely outside of society's control. But most students agree that education, which includes all of the formative influences acting upon human beings from without as they pass through life, is an equally important force. Adam Smith went so far as to say that "the difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street-porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom and education." A similar view was expressed recently by a Chicago judge who had had much experience in dealing with youthful criminals. When asked if he thought that his own children would have been criminals if they had been brought up in criminal surroundings he replied: "I don't think so, I know it." Except as regards abnormalities both in the direction of genius and imbecility the view that “habit, custom and education " have more to do with differences in men than "nature" seems to be justified by observation. In any case it is chiefly through education that men act in their efforts to fit their children for industrial life.

97. Differences in Capacity Closely Connected with Differences in Standards of Living.-Education being such an important influence in molding industrial capacity, a partial explanation of differences in capacity must be sought in differences in the educational opportunities that are offered to the children of different families. Notwithstanding the self-sacrificing devotion of nearly all parents to the interests of their children and notwithstanding improvements in free public educational institutions, such differences are still great, even in the United States. Their perpetuation is due in large measure to the different standards of living which control the conduct of different industrial classes. By the standard of living is meant the mode of activity and scale of comfort which a person has

come to regard as indispensable to his happiness and to secure and retain which he is willing to make any reasonable sacrifice, such as working longer, or postponing marriage.

The influence which differences in standards of living have on the educational opportunities which children enjoy may be observed on every side. Compare, for example, the lives of typical children of well-to-do parents with those of the children of ordinary manual laborers. The former enjoy, in infancy, the watchful care of intelligent mothers and the best of medical attendance in times of illness. They are less apt to be forced in their development and more certain to be supplied with nourishing food, pure air and the other requisites to healthful growth. Arrived at school age, unless the public schools in the locality are superior, they will be sent to less crowded private schools. Even more important is the fact that the sons of the well-to-do are under no pressure to leave school when they attain the age of fourteen or fifteen, because their earnings are not needed to swell the already ample family income. They will go through the high-school, at least, before choosing their occupations, and they are very likely to take courses in college and even subsequent technical or professional courses if they have a bent in either of these directions. At length, arrived at the period when they are ready to enter some regular occupation, family influence will usually be able to command favorable openings for them and the same influence will often facilitate their advancement. Meantime the standard of living of their parents has impressed itself upon their minds and characters. They have learned to regard a large income as essential to well-being and to appreciate the advantages of property. Though the sons of well-to-do parents sometimes show a tendency to recklessness when released from the restraints of school life, most of them learn prudence without ever having tasted the fruits of improvidence. They know that a certain income

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is indispensable to what they consider decent single existence and that a somewhat larger income must be assured before marriage is to be thought of. Young men mindful of the expenditures of their girl friends are restrained by a sense of chivalry from proposing marriage until they can provide advantages at least equal to those enjoyed at home. On their side young women in the group have definite ideas in regard to the cost of maintaining a household and are quite as prudent in their attitude towards matrimony. In consequence rash matches among young people of this class are few, and young men are usually well established before they incur the responsibility of providing for a family. This postponement of marriage results in a low birth-rate for the class as a whole, which, by lessening the number trained for the higher professional and industrial positions, helps to maintain the earnings which holders of such positions are able to command.

Very different from this is the life history of typical children of the manual laboring class. In consequence of early marriages, facilitated by the fact that manual laborers attain their full earning capacity at the age of nineteen or twenty, children come in this class before the parents have themselves reached maturity. Their number, and the rude way in which the family is compelled to live, prevent the mother from giving them the attention that their best interests demand. As these children approach the age when they can go to school they are allowed to spend more and more time on the streets and to acquire that precocious knowledge so destructive of the idealism natural to childhood. In school their progress is retarded by the lack of that stimulus and encouragement on the side of parents that is so helpful to children reared in more fortunate circumstances, and, just as they are getting old enough to form judgments for themselves, their help is needed at home, or jobs are secured for them, and the formal part of their education is brought to an abrupt close. In the choice

of their occupations immediate earnings are likely to be determining and consequently, instead of being apprenticed to skilled trades, they more often than not follow their fathers and become manual laborers. Made bread-winners thus early in life, they are apt before they are twenty to find the restraints of home irksome, and to resolve to create homes for themselves as soon as their earnings come up to the low standard to which they are accustomed. Acting on such resolutions they follow in the footsteps of their parents, as their children are likely to follow in their footsteps. Thus the children of manual laborers, like the children of the well-to-do, are largely influenced in their life careers by the standards of living to which they happen to be born.

98. Inequalities in Educational Opportunities must be Removed by Community Action.-A more complete study of the characters and habits of different groups of workers would confirm the conclusion suggested by the above comparison, that the persistence of differences in industrial capacities among individuals is due chiefly to differences in educational opportunities which are due in turn to differences in standards of living. But, it may be asked, if education is so important a cause of the differences in the earning powers of different men, and if acquiring education is simply one way of investing capital for a future return, how does it come about that more capital is not invested in this way? The answer is simple. Those to whom the education would be invaluable are too young or too ignorant to appreciate the fact or are without the capital to invest. Their parents are also without capital and have, moreover, a less direct personal interest in the result. Men with capital, on the other hand, do not invest it in the education of other people's children, except as a charity, because there is no form of contract under which they could claim a part of the return. Those needing education cannot, as minors, legally contract, nor can their parents bind them,

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except within certain limits, during the period of their minority.

It follows from the above considerations that for all but the children of the wealthy such education as is enjoyed must be public and free. For the community as a whole, the investment of capital in educational opportunities tending to add to the industrial capacity of boys and girls is a certain means of adding to the collective wealth. Capital so used, especially to inculcate higher standards of living and efficiency among children of the poor, yields a princely return and will continue to do so until the present inequalities disappear. It is therefore to the community, and to improvements in the free schools, free colleges and free universities that we must look for the removal of the disadvantages under which children of the poorer classes now labor. To remove them completely it will be necessary not only to improve schools, colleges and universities covering all branches of technical and professional training, but to raise the standards of parents so that they shall be eager to have their children enjoy the best advantages and to provide in some way for the maintenance of children whose parents cannot afford to support them during their years of study and preparation. The mere mention of these needs re-enforces what has been said of the present lack of equal educational opportunities.

Summing up the results of our analysis, we must conclude that the industrial population consists of various groups of workers whose differences in fortune and in standards of living are reflected in unequal educational opportunities which serve to perpetuate, generation after generation, the differences in wages explained in previous sections. The picture drawn appears somewhat exaggerated for the United States at the present time, because the country is comparatively new and undeveloped. The exploitation of natural resources still offers a wide field for the adventurous and prevents, while it continues, that rigid