98 CHARLES R. FLINT 



sees a dead tree in the landscape instead of looking all around 

 the horizon. While believing in great organizations; while 

 knowing that they are a necessity in order that this country 

 should become a great power in the economic world and there- 

 by continue the prosperity of the wage earners of the land, I 

 do not believe in large aggregations of wealth in the hands of 

 individuals unfitted to wisely administer them. Wealth is 

 a serious trust, and when left to those who lack experience in 

 the use of it, is often a curse instead of a blessing. Money 

 does us good only as we part with it, and there could be no 

 great gifts without great fortunes. After providing a rea- 

 sonable competency for the family, in my opinion the greatest 

 satisfaction that can be obtained with money is to build up 

 educational institutions, to facilitate aspiring young men to 

 help themselves. Fortunately, under corporate ownership 

 this can be done without liquidating or contracting great 

 business organizations whose influence is so far-reaching that 

 the}^ may properly be called great business universities, 

 and in justice to the wage earners and managers who have 

 assisted in building them up, and to the investors who are 

 dependent on their dividends for support, such organizations 

 should be sustained and improved. 



One of the features of our industrial situation is that- 

 many of the men who have built up these great organizations 

 are retiring. Those men who have blazed the way in this 

 new and rapidly developing country have been the ablest 

 industrial leaders the world has ever known; such men as 

 Carnegie and Huntington, Rockefeller and Field, Armour 

 and Vanderbilt, — the thinkers, the doers, the organizers, — 

 men whose creations are the great landmarks in American 

 industrial history. It is fortunate that we have had such 

 leaders. They did their work with the aggressive force that 

 comes of natural energy and temperate living, and with 

 the judgment that comes of experience. They have under- 

 stood and have been in sympathy with the people because 

 they have been of the people, and the example of those men, 

 rising from the ranks, gives impulse, encouragement, and high 

 aspirations to every working man in the land. They made 

 their fortunes by reducing the percentage of profits and in- 



