you called the crusts charity?

"Ah, Mr. West," Dr. Leete continued, as I did not respond, "what I do
not understand is, setting aside all considerations either of justice
or brotherly feeling toward the crippled and defective, how the workers
of your day could have had any heart for their work, knowing that their
children, or grand-children, if unfortunate, would be deprived of the
comforts and even necessities of life. It is a mystery how men with
children could favor a system under which they were rewarded beyond
those less endowed with bodily strength or mental power. For, by the
same discrimination by which the father profited, the son, for whom he
would give his life, being perchance weaker than others, might be
reduced to crusts and beggary. How men dared leave children behind
them, I have never been able to understand."

Note.--Although in his talk on the previous evening Dr. Leete had
emphasized the pains taken to enable every man to ascertain and follow
his natural bent in choosing an occupation, it was not till I learned
that the worker's income is the same in all occupations that I realized
how absolutely he may be counted on to do so, and thus, by selecting
the harness which sets most lightly on himself, find that in which he
can pull best. The failure of my age in any systematic or effective way
to develop and utilize the natural aptitudes of men for the industries
and intellectual avocations was one of the great wastes, as well as one
of the most common causes of unhappiness in that time. The vast
majority of my contemporaries, though nominally free to do so, never
really chose their occupations at all, but were forced by circumstances
into work for which they were relatively inefficient, because not
naturally fitted for it. The rich, in this respect, had little
advantage over the poor. The latter, indeed, being generally deprived
of education, had no opportunity even to ascertain the natural
aptitudes they might have, and on account of their poverty were unable
to develop them by cultivation even when ascertained. The liberal and
technical professions, except by favorable accident, were shut to them,
to their own great loss and that of the nation. On the other hand, the
well-to-do, although they could command education and opportunity, were
scarcely less hampered by social prejudice, which forbade them to
pursue manual avocations, even when adapted to them, and destined them,
whether fit or unfit, to th