Nothing can be more patent to the understanding than the fact that the basis of all our commercial or other industrial enterprises, is selfishness. The selfish desire for wealth that ease and luxury may follow and be enjoyed, or power wielded that shall administer to family pride or vain ambition, seems to have taken complete possession of the thoughts of civilized man, and well nigh fills up the sphere of his activity. Almost unconsciously selfishness has been intensified in our modern life. The inventions of our time have greatly multiplied human conveniences and luxuries. Ease that springs from affluence has been brought within the reach of a greater number of people than at any other time in the world's history; yet those who have entered within the charmed circle of the enjoyment of ease and luxury are not satisfied. Something is lacking to the completeness of their contentment. They see for one thing the instability of their wealth, and note what small affairs may wrest it from them. So that the fear of losing what is possessed is well nigh as tormenting as the inability to gain riches. The wish to permanently secure that which is possessed, and in like security have it descend to their posterity occasions as much anxiety and effort on the part of the rich, as the determination to come to the possession of wealth occasions the less fortunate--the envious poor. Instead of this wider distribution of comforts and luxuries among mankind contributing to the sum of human contentment, it has increased its restlessness; for luxury being more commonly paraded in the face of the masses has maddened all with a desire to possess it, and, failing in that, life is felt to be scarce worth the living. But possession is possible only to the few; the great mass of humanity is excluded from its attainment. This success of the few and the failure of the many divides civilized communities into two classes--the proud and the envious. It also results in the division of communities into capitalists and laborers; the former living in affluence on the proceeds of their wealth, the latter, for the most part, eking out an existence on the insufficient means secured through their labor. Capital, it must be said, feels power and forgets right; labor in its despair grows desperate and violates the law. Capital, to secure and perpetuate its interests, combines into huge corporations which control production and the markets, waters its stock, bribes legislatures, congresses and parliaments; oppresses labor in its wages, robs the people; and having thrived by its chicanery and fraud, laughs at all attempts to wrest from it the spoils in which it revels.