in economics as well as in ethics. What we must now
investigate is any vicious tendencies that may be found in the
money-making aim when followed normally and according to its own
accepted principles. Of such degenerative tendencies we seem to find
two: first, the tendency to that excess which becomes a vice; and
second, the tendency to a disregard of other considerations in life
through too exclusive a devotion to acquisitiveness. But upon further
thought we must see that these two tendencies flow together and become
one, for too much devotion to money-getting and too little attention to
the other purposes of life are, after all, expressions of the same
thing. Perhaps a man may err in excessive devotion to any object of
life but we must admit that in the pursuit of gain the evil tendency to
exaggerated absorption in the one aim is promoted through a cooperation
with his natural selfishness. Of all the fields of human endeavor, here
is one that peculiarly fits in with self-seeking, with disregard for
others, which may drag a man downward, making him small and mean,
unhappy and uncharitable, while apparently attaining the goal at which
he has aimed. Not every man, while concentrating upon money-making, is
consciously seeking his country's welfare, the amelioration of life for
the many, the uplift of posterity, even if he rigidly adheres to the
accepted rules of the game, to the code of business honor. This brings
us back to the popular picture of the money-maker, grasping, sordid,
narrow-minded. There are such people. I believe them to be rare, but
whether there are many of them to-day or not, it is a type tending to
disappear in the environment of modern business which offers its
inducements and rewards to him who does, who becomes, who renders
service, not to the sordid seeker for gain. Barring an occasional
exception, such an exclusive aim is not that of the man of large
affairs, the business leader, the conspicuously successful man. It is
not Harriman, nor Edison, nor Weinstock, nor Marshall Field, nor
Peabody, nor is it the heads of our big corporations of to-day. Such
men are money-makers, creators of capital, builders of large
enterprise, but their aim at profits while genuine is only incidental
to their main purpose of doing, of becoming better able to achieve, of
rendering service. When the beginner in business approaches an
experienced friend for advice, he is told to work as hard and as
faithfully as possible,