reative
impulses sought to embody, in some concrete form, the desires which he
felt springing up within him, and which could not be satisfied by
physical activity. He turned, therefore, to drawing, to painting, to
music, to speculation, to discussion.

The present age has not as yet developed its culture, and it seems now
as though capitalism, with its heritage of revolution, and its curse of
instability and hurry, would not persist long enough to establish a
well-defined culture. Hence, in the present society, multitudes feel
that certain finer things are excluded from their lives because the
ground is so littered with possessions, and because life is too harried
and too sordid to give them place.

These forces, the creative impulses of the artist and the builder, yearn
unspeakably for expression. Each human breast holds a void that is the
result of their suppression, and it is this, perhaps, more than anything
else, that accounts for the unrest and dissatisfaction that are so
characteristic of the present generation.

In the past only the favored few had a chance to express their most holy
aspirations. The development of modern industry, with its facility in
the production of livelihood, promises a time, and that at no very great
distance, when this opportunity may be common property, and men
everywhere may be able to participate in that unending search after
love, beauty, justice, truth--the highest of which humanity is capable.

All of these things lie outside the realm of economics, yet none of them
is possible for the masses of mankind until there is established a
system of economic life that will provide the necessaries upon which
physical health depends, together with an amount of leisure sufficient
to enable a generation to find itself.

This is the goal toward which men are working in their efforts to
organize economic life, as they strive to provide a fit dwelling-place
for the descendants of the world's seventeen hundred millions.

WHAT TO READ

No reader should accept the statements made in this book unless they
appeal to his reason and correspond with his experience, nor should he
reject them merely because they run counter to his prejudices or his
convictions. If the subject-matter of the book is as important as the
author believes that it is, the reader should not stop with these brief
chapters, but should search farther. The many recent articles, pamphlets
and books devoted to economic a