It is instructive to note the transformation that is thus taking place in one county after another of the Carolinas, or Georgia, or others of the Southern States, because the conditions make it possible to witness within a single decade the triumph of those business forces which, while they have even more truly and completely transformed the prosperous parts of America and Europe, have operated more gradually through longer periods, and therefore in a less easily perceived and dramatic fashion.
Our modern ideals have required, not the refinement and the culture of the select few, but the uplifting and progress of the multitude. This could only be possible through a general development of wealth, so vast in comparison with what had previously existed as to constitute the most highly revolutionary fact in the history of human civilization and progress. The man, therefore, who has a clear perception of those laws of mind and of society under which modern economic forces have been set at work, cannot for a moment think that the end and outcome of this modern business system is a new kind of human bondage, "the rich growing richer and the poor growing poorer"; or that it can mean any such thing as the elevation of property at the expense of manhood.
Even if it were a part of my subject to discuss the growth of vast individual fortunes as an incident of this modern development of wealth, which it is not, there would be no time for more than a passing allusion. And in making such an allusion, I might be content to call attention to my earlier dictum, that progress is not upon direct lines, but tangential or zigzag. When the factory appears on the Piedmont slopes of the Appalachian country, it may indeed make a fortune for the missionary of civilization who planted it there. But meanwhile it has given the whole neighborhood its first chance to relate itself to the civilized world. I am content for the present to leave that neighborhood in possession of its opportunities, serenely confident that it will in due time work out its own completer destiny.
When the capitalist has retired from the scene of his exploitation, will the day arrive when the regenerated neighborhood will own that factory, and others, too, for itself? Very likely. In any case, the neighborhood has been emancipated from its worst disadvantages.
In short, I have little doubt but that the further progress of our civilization will give effect to certain economic laws and tendencies, and to certain social rules and principles, that will make for a higher measure of equality in the distribution of realized wealth. Meanwhile wherever a practical step can be taken to remedy an evil, let us do what we can to promote that step. Let us recognize the already great possibilities for useful participation in the social and public life that belong to an honorable business career.
From the standpoint of the intellectual interest of the young man going into business, let it be borne in mind that there are scientific principles underlying every branch of trade or commerce or industry, and that there is almost, if not quite, as much room for the delightful play of the faculty of imagination in the successful conduct of a soap business as in writing poetry or in making statuary groups for world's fairs. The cultivation of public spirit in the broad sense, and the determination to be an all-round good and efficient citizen and member of the community, will often help a man amazingly to discern the opportunities for usefulness that lie in the direct line of his business work. The more thoroughly he studies underlying principles—whether of a technical sort as related to his own trade, or of a general sort having to do with the organization and general methods of commerce—the less likely he will be to take narrow and anti-social views of business life. The high development of his intelligence in relation to his own work will show him the value in his business—as in all else in life—of the standard thing, the genuine thing, the thing that will bear the test as contrasted with the shoddy, or the inferior, or the spurious.
Our technological schools, our colleges of mechanic arts, our institutes of agriculture and their related experiment stations,—these are all teaching us many valuable object-lessons regarding the way in which the wealth of the individual and that of the community can both, at the same time, be advanced by scientific methods. Thus it is coming about that business life is ever more ready to welcome the most highly trained kinds of intelligence, inasmuch as it is perceived that specialized knowledge is henceforth to be the most valuable commodity that a man can possess.
I have already said that the delicate problems of distribution must be faced ever more frankly and liberally by the modern business world. Thus, those who control capital, or administer capitalized enterprises, cannot afford any longer to be without a knowledge of the history and significance of the labor movement. We should not have had the desperate struggle between anthracite coal corporations and the miners in Pennsylvania, a year or so ago, if there had been a full understanding on the part of the capitalists of the honorable and valuable nature of trade agreements, and particularly of the history of the relations of capital and labor in the bituminous coal districts of the United States. I am speaking now from the standpoint of the business man. There is much to be said, doubtless, in respect to the shortcomings and the sometimes fatuous and even suicidal methods of the labor organizations. But for the modern business man who cares to take his place influentially in commerce, in social life, and as a man among men in his city or his commonwealth, it is no longer justifiable to be unfamiliar with the labor question in its economics and its history.
Herein lies one great service that the university can perform (and our best colleges and universities are today performing it with marked intelligence and ability), the service, namely, of providing very liberal courses for young men who expect to go into business, in the general science of economics, in the history of modern economic progress, in the development of the wage system, in the history and methods of organized labor, and in very much else that helps to place the life of a practical man of business affairs upon a broad and liberal basis. In the early days of our history it was the especial function of the college to train young men for the ministry. In a somewhat later period it was notably true of institutions like Yale and Princeton that their training seemed to fit many men for the law and for statecraft. We had, you see, passed from that theocratic phase of colonial New England life to the political constructive period of our young republic.
But we have been passing on until we have emerged in a great and transcendent period of commercial expansion and scientific discovery and application. It is a hopeful sign, therefore, that our universities are finding out and admitting the demand that present-day conditions impose, and are training many men in the pursuit of modern science, while they are training many others in the understanding of the application of social and economic principles to modern life. All this they are doing and can well do without ignoring the value of the older forms of scholarship and culture.