Gubernatorial Messages 



every gain there is a penalty, and the great strides in 

 the industrial upbuilding of the country, which have 

 on the whole been attended with marked benefit, 

 have also been attended by no little evil. Great for- 

 tunes are usually made under very complex" condi- 

 tions both of effort and of surrounding, and the mere 

 fact of the complexity makes it difficult to deal with 

 the new conditions thus created. The contrast of- 

 fered in a highly specialized industrial community 

 between the very rich and the very poor is exceed- 

 ingly distressing, and while under normal conditions 

 the acquirement of wealth by an individual is neces- 

 sarily of great incidental benefit to the community 

 as a whole, yet this is by no means always the case. 

 In our great cities there is plainly in evidence much 

 wealth contrasted with much poverty, and some of 

 the wealth has been acquired, or is used, in a manner 

 for which there is no moral justification. 



A profound political and social thinker has recent- 

 ly written : "Wealth which is expended in multiply- 

 ing and elaborating real comforts, or even in pleas- 

 ures which produce enjoyment at all proportionate 

 to their cost, will never excite serious indignation. 

 It is the colossal waste of the means of human hap- 

 piness in the most selfish and most vulgar forms of 

 social advertisement and competition that gives a 

 force to passions which menace the whole future of 

 our civilization." But in continuance this writer 

 points out that the only effectual check lies in the 

 law of public opinion. Any attempt to interfere 

 by statute in moral questions of this kind, by fetter- 



