or
in the use of the product, but in the reward, as wage workers have
hired out for the day's work or continued during their adult life in
their trade without interest in its development, because like their
employers they wanted the highest cash return, wealth exploitation
has come to be synonymous in the minds of men with wealth creation. A
creative concept which could survive and inhibit the predatory concept
must rest on such elements of creative force as are now absent from
our industrial institution.

It is almost axiomatic to say that a system of wealth production which
cultivated creative effort would yield more in general terms of
life as well as in terms of goods, than a system like our own which
exploits creative power. It is obvious that the disintegrating
tendency in our system is due to the fact that production is dependent
for its motive force on the desire to possess. It is also obvious that
a rational system of industry which sought to give that desire among
all men full opportunity for satisfaction would also undertake to
cultivate the creative impulse for the sake of increasing creative
effort The result would be an increase in production. As logical
as this observation may be, it is not so obvious how such a social
transformation as this implies, may be effected.

Every advance in wealth creation which has become an institutional
part of an economic system has been impelled and sustained by the
material interests of people who at the time held the strategic
position in the community. The world has progressed, or retrogressed,
as the most powerful interests at any time adjusted the institutions
and customs governing wealth production to their own advantage. As
the controlling interests in our present scheme are the business
interests, it is the business man, not the workman, who directs
industry and determines its policy as well as the general policy of
the nation in which it operates. It is to the advantage of private
business run for private gain, to control creative effort for the
purpose of appropriating the product, and to inhibit free creative
expression as an uncontrollable factor in the enterprise of
exploitation.

The appalling and wanton sacrifice of life which are incident to the
evolution of machinery and the division of labor seem to demand at
times their elimination. In weariness we are urged to retrace our
steps and go back to craftsmanship and the Guilds. But it is idle to
talk abo