e like them, many known but
most unknown, who spend their days and nights in the search for truth.
They deserve and get the greatest of rewards which is the respect and
admiration of their fellowman. As for material things, they desire and
get very little. Following them are the magnates of applied science,
the Watts, the Stephensons, the Bells, the Edisons, and their like,
who apply to beneficial use the discoveries of the great lights of pure
science often with prodigious material profit to themselves. The patent
offices know them all, big and little. They perform a magnificent
service, are highly esteemed in their day and generation and their
material rewards are great. And upon the whole the world does not grudge
them what they get.

But there are others. Next after the magnates of applied science in
public estimation, but of equal economic importance, I would place the
Captains of Industry. Without their grasp of human necessity and desire
and their organizing and directing ability, Labor would grope blindly
in the dark by wasteful methods to the production of insufficient
quantities of undesirable products. The Marxian[2] conception of an
economic surplus wrongfully withheld from Labor which produces it is
the disordered fancy of a fine intellect hopelessly warped by the
contemplation of human misery and humanitarian sympathy with human
distress. All economic discussion is worthless if tainted by human
sympathy. The surplus value in production is trifling and seems large
only because concentrated in comparatively few hands. The surplus of
ages is concentrated in the structures which we see all about us, and
in the commodities ready or partly ready for consumption and which
will disappear in a short time. The annual accretions are small for an
enormous amount of human effort is wastefully directed. That more effort
is not wasted is due to the increasing necessities of an increasing
population stimulating the most competent by the hope of personal gain
to provide new means and new methods whereby those necessities may be
served. No stimulus other than the hope of personal gain has ever
been found effective to inspire this effort, or make it successful.
Government administration invents nothing. It copies tardily
and administers wastefully. Direction falls to those who compete
successfully in talk not to those who demonstrate resourcefulness and
masterfulness in forseeing human requirements, utilizing available means