¶¶¶The noblest of all forms of government is self-government; but it is also the most difficult. We who possess this priceless boon, and who desire to hand it on to our children and our children’s children, should ever bear in mind the thought so finely expressed by Burke: “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society can not exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there be within the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds can not be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”[14] A Square Deal and The Business Man The American business man is of a peculiar type; and probably the qualities of energy, daring, and resourcefulness which have given him his prominence in the international industrial world find their highest development in the West. It is the merest truism to say that in the modern world industrialism is the great factor in the growth of nations. Material prosperity is the foundation upon which every mighty national structure must be built. Of course there must be more than this. There must be a high moral purpose, a life of the spirit which finds its expression in many different ways; but unless material prosperity exists also there is scant room in which to develop the higher life. ¶The productive activity of our vast army of workers, of those who work with head or hands, is the prime cause of the giant growth of this nation. We have great natural resources but such resources are never more than opportunities, and they count for nothing if the men in possession have not the power to take advantage of them.... In such development laws play a certain part, but individual characteristics a still greater part. A great and successful commonwealth like ours in the long run works under good laws, because a people endowed with honest and practical common-sense ultimately demands good laws. But no law can create industrial well-being, although it may foster and safeguard it.