on; many elements enter into the
making of prosperity. It depends on individual ability and training
for industry, on an understanding of the laws of health and keeping
the body and brain in a state of efficiency, on peaceful relations
between groups, on the successful balancing of supply and demand, and
of wages and the cost of living, on personal integrity and group
co-operation. All that the government can do is to instruct and
stimulate. This it has been doing and will continue to do with growing
effectiveness, but it has to feel its way and learn by experience, as
do individuals.

342. =How It Has Met Its Responsibility.=--This problem of prosperity
which is both economic and social, is the concern of all the people of
the nation, and any attempt to solve it in the interest of one section
or a single group cannot bring success. That is one reason for many of
the social weaknesses everywhere visible. Government has legislated
in the interests of a group of manufacturers, or the courts have
favored the rich, or trusts have been attacked at the demands of a
reforming party, or labor has been immune from the application of a
law against conspiracy when corporations were hard hit. These
weaknesses, which are characteristic of American democracy, find their
parallels in all countries where modern industrial and social
conditions obtain. But government has lent its energies to the
upbuilding of a sound social structure. It has recognized the need of
education for the youth of the land at a minimum cost, and the States
of the American Union have made liberal grants for both academic and
special training to their State universities, agricultural colleges,
and normal schools. It encourages the country people to enrich their
life and to increase their earnings for their own sake and for the
prosperity of the people who are dependent upon them. It stimulates
improved processes in manufacturing and mining, and protects business
against foreign competition by a tariff wall; it tries to prevent
recurring seasons of financial panics by a stable currency and the
extension of credits. It provides the machinery for settling labor
difficulties by conciliation and arbitration, and tries to mediate
between gigantic combinations of trade and transportation and the
public. It has pensioned liberally its old soldiers. It has attempted
to find a method of taxation that would not bear heavily on its
citizens, but that at the same time would