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