factory appears on the Piedmont slopes of the Appalachian country, it may indeed make a fortune for the missionary of civilization who planted it there. But meanwhile it has given the whole neighborhood its first chance to relate itself to the civilized world. I am content for the present to leave that neighborhood in possession of its opportunities, serenely confident that it will in due time work out its own completer destiny.

When the capitalist has retired from the scene of his exploitation, will the day arrive when the regenerated neighborhood will own that factory, and others, too, for itself? Very likely. In any case, the neighborhood has been emancipated from its worst disadvantages.

In short, I have little doubt but that the further progress of our civilization will give effect to certain economic laws and tendencies, and to certain social rules and principles, that will make for a higher measure of equality in the distribution of realized wealth. Meanwhile wherever a practical step can be taken to remedy an evil, let us do what we can to promote that step. Let us recognize the already great possibilities for useful participation in the social and public life that belong to an honorable business career.

From the standpoint of the intellectual interest of the young man going into business, let it be borne in mind that there are scientific principles underlying every branch of trade or commerce or industry, and that there is almost, if not quite, as much room for the delightful play of the faculty of imagination in the successful conduct of a soap business as in writing poetry or in making statuary groups for world's fairs. The cultivation of public spirit in the broad sense, and the determination to be an all-round good and efficient citizen and member of the community, will often help a man amazingly to discern the opportunities for usefulness that lie in the direct line of his business work. The more thoroughly he studies underlying principles—whether of a technical sort as related to his own trade, or of a general sort having to do with the organization and general methods of commerce—the less likely he will be to take narrow and anti-social views of business life. The high development of his intelligence in relation to his own work will show him the value in his business—as in all else in life—of the standard thing, the genuine thing, the thing that will bear the test as contrasted with the shoddy, or the inferior, or the spurious.

Our technological schools, our colleges of mechanic arts, our institutes of agriculture and their related experiment stations,—these are all teaching us many valuable object-lessons regarding the way in which the wealth of the individual and that of the community can both, at the same time, be advanced by scientific methods. Thus it is coming about that business life is ever more ready to welcome the most highly trained kinds of intelligence, inasmuch as it is perceived that specialized knowledge is henceforth to be the most valuable commodity that a man can possess.

I have already said that the delicate problems of distribution must be faced ever more frankly and liberally by the modern business world. Thus, those who control capital, or administer capitalized enterprises, cannot afford any longer to be without a knowledge of the history and significance of the labor movement. We should not have had the desperate struggle between anthracite coal corporations and the miners in Pennsylvania, a year or so ago, if there had been a full understanding on the part of the capitalists of the honorable and valuable nature of trade agreements, and particularly of the history of the relations of capital and labor in the bituminous coal districts of the United States. I am speaking now from the standpoint of the business man. There is much to be said, doubtless, in respect to the shortcomings and the sometimes fatuous and even suicidal methods of the labor organizations. But for the modern business man who cares to take his place influentially in commerce, in social life, and as a man among men in his city or his commonwealth, it is no longer justifiable to be unfamiliar with the labor question in its economics and its history.

Herein lies one great service that the university can perform (and our best colleges and universities are today performing it with marked intelligence and ability), the service, namely, of providing very liberal courses for young men who expect to go into business, in the general science of economics, in the history of modern economic progress, in the development of the wage system, in the history and methods of organized labor, and in very much else that helps to place the life of a practical man of business affairs upon a broad and liberal basis. In the early days of our history it was the especial function of the college to train young men for the ministry. In a somewhat later period it was notably true of institutions like Yale and Princeton that their training seemed to fit many men for the law and for statecraft. We had, you see, passed from that theocratic phase of colonial New England life to the political constructive period of our young republic.

But we have been passing on until we have emerged in a great and transcendent period of commercial expansion and scientific discovery and application. It is a hopeful sign, therefore, that our universities are finding out and admitting the demand that present-day conditions impose, and are training many men in the pursuit of modern science, while they are training many others in the understanding of the application of social and economic principles to modern life. All this they are doing and can well do without ignoring the value of the older forms of scholarship and culture.

But I have a few remarks to make also upon the ethical relations of the business world of today toward the political world; that is to say, toward organized government, whether in its sovereign or in its subordinate forms. We cannot take too high a ground in proclaiming the value, for the present, at least, of the political organization of society. I should like to dwell upon this point, but I must merely state it. If the State: i.e., the political form of social organization, is valuable,—it stands to reason that it must be respected and maintained at its best. It is also obvious that it will have a higher or a lower character and efficiency, according to the attitude toward it taken by one or another of the dominant factors that make up the complex body politic.

Thus, for example, it is the feeling of men in control of the political organization in France today that the Church, as a great factor in the social structure of the nation, is essentially hostile to the spirit and purposes of a liberal republic. Hence a great disturbance of various relationships. I do not cite that instance to express even the shade of an opinion. My point is that if the political organization of society is desirable and to be maintained, it is a fortunate thing when one finds the dominant forces of society rendering loyal and faithful support to the laws and institutions of government and recognizing without reserve the sovereignty of the State. Yet in our own country there is a widespread feeling that many of the most potent forces and agencies in our business life are not wholly patriotic, in that they are not willing in practice to recognize the necessity of the domination of government and of law. I do not believe that this is permanently and generally true. It would constitute a great danger if it were a fixed or a growing tendency.

As matters stand, however, every one must admit that there is an element of danger that lies in the very fact that as a nation we are in a condition of peace, content, and prosperity, and do not find our political institutions irksome. The danger consists in this: that under such circumstances the rewards of business and professional life are for the most part so much more certain and satisfactory than those which come from the precarious pursuit of politics,