hat is to say, of taxable
property, is speedily followed by the good schoolhouse and the good
teacher.

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