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really more capable than he is himself.
And taking all this out of the shop and into the broader fields, it is not necessary for the rich to
love the poor or the poor to love the rich. It is not necessary for the employer to love the
employee or for the employee to love the employer. What is necessary is that each should try to
do justice to the other according to his deserts. That is real democracy and not the question of
who ought to own the bricks and the mortar and the furnaces and the mills. And democracy has
nothing to do with the question, Who ought to be boss?
That is very much like asking: Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet? Obviously, the man
who can sing tenor. You could not have deposed Caruso. Suppose some theory of musical
democracy had consigned Caruso to the musical proletariat. Would that have reared another tenor
to take his place? Or would Caruso's gifts have still remained his own?
CHAPTER XIX. WHAT WE MAY EXPECT
We are unless I do not read the signs aright in the midst of a change. It is going on all about
us, slowly and scarcely observed, but with a firm surety. We are gradually learning to relate cause
and effect. A great deal of that which we call disturbance a great deal of the upset in what have
seemed to be established institutions is really but the surface indication of something
approaching a regeneration. The public point of view is changing, and we really need only a
somewhat different point of view to make the very bad system of the past into a very good
system of the future. We are displacing that peculiar virtue which used to be admired as hard-
headedness, and which was really only wooden-headedness, with intelligence, and also we are
getting rid of mushy sentimentalism. The first confused hardness with progress; the second
confused softness with progress. We are getting a better view of the realities and are beginning to
know that we have already in the world all things needful for the fullest kind of a life and that we
shall use them better once we learn what they are and what they mean.
Whatever is wrong and we all know that much is wrong can be righted by a clear definition of
the wrongness. We have been looking so much at one another, at what one has and another lacks,
that we have made a personal affair out of something that is too big for personalities. To be sure,
human nature enters largely into our economic problems. Selfishness exists, and doubtless it
colours all the competitive activities of life. If selfishness were the characteristic of any one class
it might be easily dealt with, but it is in human fibre everywhere. And greed exists. And envy
exists. And jealousy exists.
But as the struggle for mere existence grows less and it is less than it used to be, although the
sense of uncertainty may have increased we have an opportunity to release some of the finer
motives. We think less of the frills of civilization as we grow used to them. Progress, as the world
has thus far known it, is accompanied by a great increase in the things of life. There is more gear,
more wrought material, in the average American backyard than in the whole domain of an
African king. The average American boy has more paraphernalia around him than a whole
Eskimo community. The utensils of kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and coal cellar make a list
that would have staggered the most luxurious potentate of five hundred years ago. The increase in
the impedimenta of life only marks a stage. We are like the Indian who comes into town with all
his money and buys everything he sees. There is no adequate realization of the large proportion
of the labour and material of industry that is used in furnishing the world with its trumpery and
trinkets, which are made only to be sold, and are bought merely to be owned that perform no
service in the world and are at last mere rubbish as at first they were mere waste. Humanity is
advancing out of its trinket-making stage, and industry is coming down to meet the world's needs,
and thus we may expect further advancement toward that life which many now see, but which the
present good enough stage hinders our attaining.
And we are growing out of this worship of material possessions. It is no longer a distinction to be
rich. As a matter of fact, to be rich is no longer a common ambition. People do not care for
money as money, as they once did. Certainly they do not stand in awe of it, nor of him who
possesses it. What we accumulate by way of useless surplus does us no honour.
It takes only a moment's thought to see that as far as individual personal advantage is concerned,
vast accumulations of money mean nothing. A human being is a human being and is nourished by
the same amount and quality of food, is warmed by the same weight of clothing, whether he be
rich or poor. And no one can inhabit more than one room at a time.
But if one has visions of service, if one has vast plans which no ordinary resources could possibly
realize, if one has a life ambition to make the industrial desert bloom like the rose, and the work-
a-day life suddenly blossom into fresh and enthusiastic human motives of higher character and
efficiency, then one sees in large sums of money what the farmer sees in his seed corn the
beginning of new and richer harvests whose benefits can no more be selfishly confined than can
the sun's rays.
There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he
can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if
only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world's ills will be cured.
They are both on the wrong track. They might as well try to corner all the checkers or all the
dominoes of the world under the delusion that they are thereby cornering great quantities of skill.
Some of the most successful money-makers of our times have never added one pennyworth to the
wealth of men. Does a card player add to the wealth of the world?
If we all created wealth up to the limits, the easy limits, of our creative capacity, then it would
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