As regards the professions, even if the requisite education were made accessible to all, successful practitioners would still, probably, command large pay. A long technical preparation, such as is necessary for law or surgery or metallurgy, would still be a difficult and speculative enterprise, involving foresight, resolution, and risk of failure, and this barrier would make competent practitioners comparatively scarce. One cannot be sure that his abilities are of the right sort, and while many make the venture who are not qualified to succeed, so, without doubt, many who are qualified do not make it. It is often a matter of mere luck whether a man discovers what he is fit for or not, and it is not likely that vocational guidance can altogether obviate this. The result is that only a part of the potential competitors actually enter the field, and in the case of the less settled professions this is apt to be a very small part. And then such matters as the place where a man begins to practise, and the connections he makes early in his career, are largely fortuitous and have results beyond his foresight. One course of circumstances may lead him into a position where his services are indispensable to a group of wealthy clients, while another may result very differently. Men with an ill-paying practice are not necessarily men of less ability than those who are getting rich. Still less can we expect that exorbitant gains in business could be obviated by any possible equality of opportunity. In general such gains imply not only ability but a fortunate conjunction of circumstances which could not have been foreseen with any certainty when the man was making his start. There is an element of luck and speculation in the matter, the result of which is that of a thousand who started with equal abilities and opportunities, perhaps only one or two will be on hand at the right place and time, and with the right equipment to make the most of an opening. When it appears there is commonly a small group of men in range of it who are there rather by good fortune than foresight. Of these the ablest, by endowment and training, will grasp it. So long as the movements of life are free and unanticipated in anything like the present measure, the individual will be like a swimmer upon the surface of a torrent, able to make headway in this direction or that according to his strength, but still very much at the mercy of the stream. If he finds himself near a boat he may reach it and climb aboard, but ninety-nine others who can swim just as well may have all they can do to keep their heads above water.