THE CONTROL OF WEALTH 45 



impossible compromise between this and the old 

 mixed mythologies. 



Let us glance at the change that has come over 

 the world with regard to the relations of man to 

 energy and matter. Instead of being between these 

 two as between a steam-hammer and an anvil, he has 

 climbed to the controlling gear and has his hand 

 upon the valve. And the hand on this valve is the 

 hand of the chemist and physicist and their executive 

 officer, the engineer. 



Power, before running to waste and making at 

 best but an idle show, at the bidding of these three 

 now works, battering raw materials into life-giving 

 commodities ; and so it is throughout the length and 

 breadth of the busy world to-day. Science has its 

 hand on the lever controlling the major physical 

 factors of our existence. 



Just as you see that a properly authenticated 

 banker has the control of your money, see to the 

 hand that has control of your wealth. If it be in the 

 hands of an honest, well-trained and capable chemist, 

 you will be surprised what unimagined wealth is 

 slipping past your very doors to waste itself, as 

 waterfalls used to do, though rarely so inoffensively 

 and picturesquely. But science the knowledge of 

 things outside of and independent of our own poor 

 selves and our imaginings though it has made the 

 world wealthy, is no soulless materialism. Those 

 who think so can know nothing of science, little 

 indeed of wealth, less still of the want of it, and of 

 all that the want of wealth has meant for humanity 

 in its upward progress towards control. " They have 

 but fed on the roses and lain on the lilies of life." 



There is just this much sardonic justification for 

 the sedulously fostered confusion between creative 

 science and sordid materialism. In the old days the 

 genius of the pure thinker and lover of wisdom for its 



H 



