f the people. Contrast this
with the freedom, happiness, and progress of a nation of shop-keepers.
Now this economic regime, with its individual instances of cruelty,
like the cruelties of nature, does on the whole tend to develop men,
to require their best efforts, to make them come forward and upward.
Thus, in this interplay of economic forces, wealth, or money, or
profits stands out as a primary object of attainment, and becomes the
incentive to the complex efforts which tend to benefit the individual,
the community, and the nation.

The business enterprise then directs its attention to profits,
because, from mere economic necessity, profits are the criterion of
the true success of the enterprise, that is, its serviceability to
mankind. Here we distinguish between the shortsighted man, who aims at
immediate returns, and the farsighted man, whose eye is fixed on the
future, who verily desires the profits, but desires them in the long
run. But this is only a manifestation of human nature as we find it in
every field. We always note a deficiency in the man whose life is
lived for the present, for immediate enjoyment: in him we see the
typical pleasure-seeker, peculiarly prone to temptation, to break the
rules of life, to indulge himself at the expense of others or of his
own future. He is characteristically the weakling, the wrongdoer. And
we contrast him with the man of character, who stands superior to an
immediate environment, who will not disregard the distant future, the
absent neighbor, the invisible God. And so in the economic world it is
the whole life period which is to be regarded when aims are chosen.
Profits as a goal for the long run do not antagonize moral principles.
"Honesty is the best policy" and "Do unto others as you would have
others do unto you" are maxims of good business; and that economic
principles do not conflict with them is shown by the fact that they
tend towards profits in the long run. This is not to assert that
mankind in business is perfect. In every period of economic advance
into a new environment, men try new experiments, as during the
development of the great modern corporation in the period following
the Civil War in this country and, earlier than that, in the era of
railroad building. They have tried new experiments in ethics as they
have in physics, in chemistry, in economics. They have attempted to
replace honesty by camouflage, the golden rule by self-aggrandizement.
But these