n is materialistic in its nature or in its aims. I was
very glad, the other day, to read the wholesome and understanding words
of a distinguished Boston clergyman who is just now coming to New York
to take charge of an important parish. He declared that this nation was
founded on an ideal, and that the most powerful influences in its life
today are working toward noble ideals. The moral and spiritual tone of
the country, he asserted, is higher than ever, in spite of the
accidents of wealth and poverty. He declared that the great host of men
and women who cherish our ideals will continue to stamp idealism upon
the minds and hearts of our youth, and that they in turn "will convert
wealth to the service of ideals."

Such views are not merely the expressions of a comfortable optimist.
They are true to the facts of our current progress. There are vast
portions of this country today in which the enterprising business man
who can succeed in selling to the farmers an honest and effective
commercial fertilizer is the best possible missionary of idealism,--is,
in fact, a veritable angel for the spread of sweetness and light. There
are regions where the capitalist or the company that will build a
cotton mill or some other kind of factory is rescuing whole communities
from degradation. It is poverty that has kept the South so backward,
and it is poverty alone that explains the illiteracy and the
lawlessness not merely of the Kentucky mountains, but of great areas in
other States as well. Good schools cannot be supported in regions like
those, for the palpable reason that the taxable wealth of an entire
school district cannot yield enough to pay the salary of a teacher. But
when modern business invades those uplands, utilizes the water-power
now wasted, opens the mines, builds cotton factories or foundries, the
situation changes almost as if by magic.

There will, indeed, ensue a brief period of disturbance due to changed
social conditions,--to women and children in factories, and other
things of incidental or serious disadvantage. But, as against a
survival of the sort of life that was widely prevalent a century or two
ago, all the phenomena of our modern industrial life make their
appearance, in full development. The one-room cabin gives place to the
little house of several rooms. There is rapid diffusion of those minor
comforts and agencies which make for self-respect and personal and
family advancement. The advent of capital, t