Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[149] to tie impossibility of enlisting the organizing mind on the side of co-operation. There is, he says, such a thing as “a capitalist talent,” and the existence of this is fatal to co-operation, because workmen themselves cannot be relied upon either to find out this talent or to trust it. The objection does not seem quite conclusive, when we remember that Carlyle and others have considered all republican government impracticable on the same ground — that human beings could not or would not of themselves select their ablest men to rule them. In governmental affairs this has been partly compensated by the fact that men have at least learned better to rule themselves. For some reason or other this principle does not apply itself so readily in business as in politics. Perhaps it is because business, which concerns every man's bread, is more intense and absorbing than politics, and hence is reorganized more slowly.

Undoubtedly the practical quality that needs most to be developed in women is the organizing mind. Not merely for the keeping of boarding-houses, but for all other purposes, what they need the most is the power of headship, the capacity of managing a large enterprise, and having other workers to labor under their direction. It is idle to say that they are wanting by nature in this faculty; the State has always assumed that it was a thing to be expected