But this content is not sufficient to stimulate the imagination of the
trade unionists with the thought that the world of industry is the
field of creative adventure. Their conception born of experience is
not so flattering. It would be a brave man who would undertake to
convince the twentieth century adult wage earner, involved in modern
methods of machine production, that his poverty is less in his
possession of wealth than in his growth and in his creative
opportunity.

The industrial changes which the labor movement proposes to make are
on the side of a better distribution of goods. A better distribution
would have a dynamic significance in wealth production, if the
actual increase which labor secured in wages and leisure were a real
increase. But exploiting capital provides for such exigencies as high
wages by increasing the price of products, thus reducing the wage
earners' purchasing power to the former level. High wages fail to
disturb the relative portion of capital and labor even more than they
fail to affect the purchasing power of the worker.

It is often suggested that if the state assumed control of industry
the blight of business could be removed. But in the transfer we would
not necessarily gain opportunity to enjoy the adventure which industry
holds out. Industry as a creative experience, it is safe to predict,
would be as rare a personal experience and as foreign an influence
in social existence under state management as it is under business
management. The state would curb the amount of wealth exploitation
possibly, but would not alter the universal attitude toward wealth
production, which is to take as much and give as little as one can get
off with.

Although political socialism may be the economic sequel of private
capital there is no foundation for the belief that it will of itself
induce creative effort or stimulate creative impulse. The faith back
of the socialist movement that desirable attributes like the creative
impulse, which men potentially possess, will begin to operate
automatically and universally as soon as there is sufficient
leisure and food for general consumption, is blind and historically
unwarranted. The signs are that a socialist state would lean
exclusively on the consumption desire for production results, just as
the present system of business now does. Neither fat incomes nor large
leisure have furnished the world with its people of genius. In spite
of the inhibiting in