mand was generally too small for the
safe and conservative conduct of his business; and he was consequently
obliged to be adventurous, or else to be left behind in the race. He
might well be earning enormous profits one year and skirting bankruptcy
the next. Under such a stress conservatism and caution were suicidal. It
was the instinct of self-preservation, as well as the spirit of business
adventure, which kept him constantly seeking for larger markets,
improved methods, or for some peculiar means of getting ahead of his
competitors. He had no fortress behind which he could hide and enjoy his
conquests. Surrounded as he was by aggressive enemies and undefended
frontiers, his best means of security lay in a policy of constant
innovation and expansion. Moreover, even after he had obtained the
bulwark of sufficient capital and more settled industrial surroundings,
he was under no temptation to quit and enjoy the spoils of his
conquests. The social, intellectual, or even the more vulgar pleasures,
afforded by leisure and wealth, could bring him no thrill, which was
anything like as intense as that derived from the exercise of his
business ability and power. He could not conquer except by virtue of a
strong, tenacious, adventurous, and unscrupulous will; and after he had
conquered, this will had him in complete possession. He had nothing to
do but to play the game to the end--even though his additional profits
were of no living use to him.

If, however, the fluid and fluctuating nature of American economic
conditions and the fierceness of American competitive methods turned
business into a state of dangerous and aggressive warfare, the steady
and enormous expansion of the American markets made the rewards of
victory correspondingly great. Not only was the population of the
country increasing at an enormous rate, but the demand for certain
necessary products, services, and commodities was increasing at a higher
rate than the population. The American people were still a most
homogeneous collection of human beings. They wanted very much the same
things; they wanted more of these things year after year; and they
immediately rewarded any cheapening of the product by buying it in much
larger quantities. The great business opportunities of American life
consisted, consequently, in supplying some popular or necessary article
or service at a cheaper price than that at which any one else could
furnish it; and the great effort of Ame