The innate abilities cannot be altered by any purposeful conduct. They are the individual's heritage with which his ancestors have endowed him on the day of his birth. Miss Greta Garbo, if she had lived a hundred years earlier, would probably have earned much less than she did in this age of moving pictures. As far as her innate talents are concerned, she is in a position similar to that of a farmer whose farm can be sold at a high price because the expansion of a neighboring city converted it into urban soil. Within the rigid limits drawn by his innate abilities, a man's capacity to work can be perfected by training for the accomplishment of definite tasks.
Every special training enhances the specific character of a man's capacity to work.
The toil and trouble, the disutility of the efforts to which an individual must submit in order to acquire these special abilities, the loss of potential earnings during the training period, and the money expenditure required are laid out in the expectation that the later increment in earnings will compensate for them. These expenses are an investment and as such speculative. It depends on the future state of the market whether or not they will pay. In training himself the worker becomes a speculator and entrepreneur. The future state of the market will determine whether profit or loss results from his investment.