334 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



pansive period will be forced to turn their powers 

 into somewhat different channels. Original oppor- 

 tunity with its speculative chances will be curtailed 

 and replaced by more systematic attention to the 

 improvement of existing plants and fuller study of 

 their needs and their relations to society. These im- 

 portant executive positions will be always among the 

 most honorable and highly paid in the community, 

 but they will be shorn of their capacity to greatly 

 enrich, in the present-day sense, those who fill them. 

 This curtailment of gross personal opportunity is in 

 itself an educational factor which, when joined to 

 increasing culture and the irrepressible spirit of 

 democracy, must serve to direct the thoughts of 

 forceful men more and more to the unending and 

 subtle complexities of human affairs, and somewhat 

 less toward purely mechanical problems. In short, 

 it may be safely assumed that such men will not 

 decline in vigor, but will rather redirect their energies 

 into more directly humanizing channels. Finally, 

 it is clear that the lower working classes of society, 

 having once tasted the fruits of a higher standard of 

 living than now prevails, with the opportunities for 

 self-development that come from a share of leisure 

 each day, will resist all economic tendencies that 

 threaten these precious privileges. They will resent 

 and resist, by means of the franchises which they are 

 learning to use more and more skilfully, the impor- 

 tation of labor with lower standards of living, which 

 those who are too eager for gain will always be willing 



