. It is enough to say that they are
things the modern business man must have upon his conscience. For, if
such offenses come by way of the business world, their remedies must
also come, and indeed can only come, by that same path. In our
municipal life, for example, it is the aroused interest and zeal of the
best business community for better government and better conditions
that can alone produce important results. Happily, all over the country
we find chambers of commerce, boards of trade, merchants' associations,
and other bodies of men of practical business affairs, taking their
stand for the transaction of public business upon high standards of
character and efficiency. I have no doubt or fears as to what the
result will be. All of our large cities are themselves purely the
creations of modern industrial, commercial, and transportation
conditions. And I hold that these very forces of industrial and
commercial life that have created the problems by bringing together
great masses of people in crowded communities, must and can in turn
solve the problems by the application to municipal government of the
scientific and intelligent principles which belong to the best phases
of business life.

All of this relates to my subject; but I must pass it by with a mere
statement or two. It belongs to the developed constructive imagination
and to the trained ethical sense of the modern business man to perfect
the transit systems, to improve the housing conditions, to assure cheap
sanitary water supplies, cheap illumination, and, above all, due
provision for universal education, parks, museums, and opportunities
for recreation,--in short, all possible improvements of environment
that can make life in our cities not merely endurable but beneficial
for the people. Here, then, is furnished a great field for the definite
and conscious aspirations of the successful man of business. Here lies
a great many-sided work for social and moral as well as physical and
material progress which the business man, in the quality of good
citizen and man of public spirit, is fitted better than any one else to
accomplish.

The intelligent young man who holds before himself ideals of usefulness
that extend to such projects as these, may be sure that the modern
conditions of life will bring him great opportunities, and he may feel
that he is thus lifting his business career up to the plane of idealism
that has, in the past, been reserved for a few exclu