This is what the common run of men about us--the men of less creative
type in literature, in business, and in politics--are doing. They do not
believe human nature is changing. They are living down to a world that
is going by. They are living down to a world that is smaller than they
are themselves. They are trying to make others do it. They answer the
question "Does human nature change?" by "No!" Wilbur Wright, when he
flew around over the heads of the people in New York a few years ago, a
black speck above a whole city with its heads up, answered "Yes!"

But the real importance of the flying machine has not stopped short with
a little delicate, graceful thing like walking on the air instead of the
ground.

The big and really revolutionary thing about Wilbur Wright's flying was
that he changed the minds of the whole human race in a few minutes about
one thing. There was one particular thing that for forty thousand years
they knew they could not do. And now they knew they could.

It naturally follows--and it lies in the mind of every man who
lives--that there must be other particular things. And as nine men out
of ten are in business, most of these particular things are going to be
done in business.

The Wilbur Wright spirit is catching.

It is as if a Lid had been lifted off the world.

One sees everywhere business men going about the street expecting new
things of themselves. They expect things of the very ground, and of the
air, and of one another they had not dared expect before.

The other day in a New England city I saw a man, who had been the
president of an Electric Light Company for twenty years, who had
invented a public service corporation that worked. Since he took office
and dictated the policy of the Company, every single overture for more
expensive equipment in the electric lighting of the city has come from
the Company, and every single overture for reducing the rate to
consumers has come from the company.

The consumption of electricity in the city is the largest _per capita_
in the world, and the rate is the cheapest in the country; and,
incidentally, the Company so trusts the people that they let them have
electricity without metres, and the people so trust the Company that
they save its electricity as they would their own.

Even the man without a conscience, who would be mean if he could, is
brought to terms, and knows that if he refrains from leaving his lights
burning all night when he g