ted as they have all
been by modern industrial conditions during the past century, brought
their distinctive evils. There was overcrowding in ill-built tenement
houses; and long hours for women and children in the factories. Yet
with these and many other disadvantages, the new industrial system made
for discipline and for intelligence, and above all for a new kind of
solidarity and for a sense of brotherhood among workers.

In due time the worst evils began to be mitigated, largely through the
application of those very methods of organization which had
characterized the new kind of industry itself. Thus for men who had
applied steam power to manufacturing and had begun to build railroads,
it was soon perceived to be a matter not only of sanitary and social
service, but of pecuniary profit, to provide water supplies, public
illumination, and other conveniences to the crowded city dwellers.
Moreover, with the progress of industry and the development of
railroads and steam navigation, production and trade took on an
ever-increasing volume.

Then the world began to be less poor. There had been no rich men in the
modern sense, and of course no such thing as capitalized corporations
for production. The richest man in the United States at the time of his
death, a little more than a hundred years ago, was George Washington,
with his land and his slaves; and so in England and France there were
no rich men in the modern sense--that is to say, no men who controlled
great masses of productive capital. The men of wealth were those who
held landed estates. The chief business of all countries was
agriculture. The capitalistic system in industry and trade existed in
its rudiments and in limited measure; but all its great achievements
were yet to be wrought.

All modern business life, then, is the result of this growth of
productive capital, and its application and constant reapplication to
the production of wealth. It made its way by virtue of an intense
individual initiative and a fierce competitive struggle. But unlovely
as were these things, many of their phases were necessary at a certain
stage. It was this fierce competition that compelled capital to pay the
lowest possible wages in order to market cheap goods. But the same
situation stimulated the use, one after another, of new labor-saving
inventions in order to increase the per capita productivity. This
process was attended by the higher efficiency of the worker and an
incr