608 Presidential Addresses 



nient. This well-being is due to no sudden or acci- 

 dental causes, but to the play of the economic forces 

 in this country for over a century ; to our laws, our 

 sustained and continuous policies; above all, to the 

 high individual average of our citizenship. Great 

 fortunes have been won by those who have taken 

 the lead in this phenomenal industrial development, 

 and most of these fortunes have been won, not by 

 doing evil, but as an incident to action which has 

 benefited the community as a whole. Never before 

 has material well-being been so widely diffused 

 among our people. Great fortunes have been ac- 

 cumulated, and yet in the aggregate these fortunes 

 are small indeed when compared to the wealth of 

 the people as a whole. The plain people are better 

 off than they have ever been before. The insurance 

 companies, which are practically mutual benefit so- 

 cieties especially helpful to men of moderate means 

 represent accumulations of capital which are 

 among the largest in this country. There are more 

 deposits in the savings banks, more owners of farms, 

 more well-paid wage-workers in this country now 

 than ever before in our history. Of course, when 

 the conditions have favored the growth of so much 

 that was good, they have also favored somewhat the 

 growth of what was evil. It is eminently necessary 

 that we should endeavor to cut out this evil, but let 

 us keep a due sense of proportion ; let us not in fix- 

 ing our gaze upon the lesser evil forget the greater 

 good. The evils are real and some of them are 

 menacing, but they are the outgrowth, not of misery 



