THE CONDUCT OF INDUSTRIES 317 



It is the initiation of a retrograde movement of humanity 

 which has its limit only in barbarism. 



The social effects of industrial war are simply the natural 

 outcome of economic inefficiency, of moral retrogression; the 

 inevitable and always to be expected outcome of the infraction 

 of those principles, practices, and methods which have been 

 the slow evolution of the later centuries. It is not that the 

 classes and the masses become sharply distinguished, but that 

 the masses submerge the best classes, and with no possible 

 chance, as now, of the advancement of the deserving to higher 

 positions in the community and of the skillful, wise, indus- 

 trious, and frugal to independence. 



When a ship is wrecked on the rocks of a dangerous coast 

 and its crew is cast into a boisterous sea, the only safety for 

 the many is the prompt attainment by the few of a safe posi- 

 tion on the shore from which to reach out a helping hand 

 to the others. In any ship of state the best chances for the 

 people come from the exertions of the able and competent and 

 well disposed who have secured, by their skill, energy, ambi- 

 tion, and general efficiency, positions of security from which 

 they may, and must, inevitably, through the operation of 

 natural industrial laws, lend a helping hand to their fellows. 

 Precisely as only the existence of men of learning can promote 

 the education and the fitting of the teacher of the people, and, 

 through them, the intelligence and knowledge needed by the 

 people as a body, so it is only through the work of great men of 

 business and the operations of great capitalists that the suc- 

 cess of the people in gaining pecuniary independence can be 

 assured in maximum amount. The legal aspects of the case 

 are already well settled by the later decisions of the courts at 

 law. The right of every man to act, individually or in co- 

 operation with however many others, is assured by the laws 

 of the state and by the dictates of good sense and good feeling, 

 as well as by the law itself, up to that limit at which the indi- 

 vidual or the association of individuals begins to infringe upon 

 the rights of others. At that point limitation is necessary, 

 and the enforcement of that limitation is essential to the life 

 of the nation, as well as to the freedom and independence of 

 the citizen. 



