ous and highly complex industrial development which went on
with ever accelerated rapidity during the latter half of the nineteenth
century brings us face to face, at the beginning of the twentieth, with
very serious social problems. The old laws, and the old customs which
had almost the binding force of law, were once quite sufficient to
regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth. Since the
industrial changes which have so enormously increased the productive
power of mankind, they are no longer sufficient.

The growth of cities has gone on beyond comparison faster than the
growth of the country, and the upbuilding of the great industrial
centers has meant a startling increase, not merely in the aggregate of
wealth, but in the number of very large individual, and especially of
very large corporate, fortunes. The creation of these great corporate
fortunes has not been due to the tariff nor to any other governmental
action, but to natural causes in the business world, operating in other
countries as they operate in our own.

The process has aroused much antagonism, a great part of which is wholly
without warrant. It is not true that as the rich have grown richer the
poor have grown poorer. On the contrary, never before has the average
man, the wage-worker, the farmer, the small trader, been so well off
as in this country and at the present time. There have been abuses
connected with the accumulation of wealth; yet it remains true that a
fortune accumulated in legitimate business can be accumulated by the
person specially benefited only on condition of conferring immense
incidental benefits upon others. Successful enterprise, of the type
which benefits all mankind, can only exist if the conditions are such
as to offer great prizes as the rewards of success.

The captains of industry who have driven the railway systems across
this continent, who have built up our commerce, who have developed our
manufactures, have on the whole done great good to our people. Without
them the material development of which we are so justly proud could
never have taken place. Moreover, we should recognize the immense
importance of this material development of leaving as unhampered as is
compatible with the public good the strong and forceful men upon whom
the success of business operations inevitably rests. The slightest study
of business conditions will satisfy anyone capable of forming a judgment
that the personal equation is the