there, on the rim of things, standing on the boundary line of sky and
earth that had always been the edge of life to him before, he looked
forth upon the freedom of the world, and said in his soul, "What shall I
be in this world I see, and whither shall I go in it?" And the sky and
the earth and the rivers and the seas and the nights and the days
beckoned to him, and the voices of life rose around him, and they all
said, "Come!"

On a corner in New York, around a Street Department wagon, not so very
long ago, five thousand men were fighting for shovels, fifty men to a
shovel--a tool for living a little longer.

The problem of living in this modern world is the problem of finding
room in it. The crowd principle is so universally at work through modern
life that the geography of the world has been changed to conform to it.
We live in crowds. We get our living in crowds. We are amused in herds.
Civilization is a list of cities. Cities are the huge central dynamos of
all being. The power of a man can be measured to-day by the mile, the
number of miles between him and the city; that is, between him and what
the city stands for--the centre of mass.

The crowd principle is the first principle of production. The producer
who can get the most men together and the most dollars together controls
the market; and when he once controls the market, instead of merely
getting the most men and the most dollars, he can get all the men and
all the dollars. Hence the corporation in production.

The crowd principle is the first principle of distribution. The man who
can get the most men to buy a particular thing from him can buy the most
of it, and therefore buy it the cheapest, and therefore get more men to
buy from him; and having bought this particular thing cheaper than all
men could buy it, it is only a step to selling it to all men; and then,
having all the men on one thing and all the dollars on one thing, he is
able to buy other things for nothing, for everybody, and sell them for a
little more than nothing to everybody. Hence the department store--the
syndicate of department stores--the crowd principle in commerce.

The value of a piece of land is the number of footsteps passing by it in
twenty-four hours. The value of a railroad is the number of people near
it who cannot keep still. If there are a great many of these people, the
railroad runs its trains for them. If there are only a few, though they
be heroes and prophets, Dant