This enterprise was highly successful and exceedingly profitable, even beyond the high average of profits among enterprises in the same line of business. Out of it came one of the greater and more illustrious fortunes that have been accumulated during the past century; a fortune which has enabled one of the most impressive and most gracious of this generation's many impressive philanthropists, never weary in well-doing; but who, through this cannily gainful consumption of man-power, has been placed in the singular position of being unable, in spite of avowedly unremitting endeavour, to push his continued disbursements in the service of humanity up to the figure of his current income. The case in question is one of the most meritorious known to the records of modern business, and while it will conveniently serve to illustrate many an other, and perhaps more consequential truth come to realisation in the march of Triumphant Democracy, it will also serve to show the gainfulness of an unreservedly canny consumption of man-power with an eye single to one's own net gain in terms of money. * * * * * Evidently this is a point in the articulation of the modern economic system where a sufficiently ruthless outside authority, not actuated by a primary regard for the pecuniary interests of the employers, might conceivably with good effect enforce a more economical consumption of the country's man-power. It is not a matter on which one prefers to dwell, but it can do no harm to take note of the fact for once in a way, that these several national establishments of the democratic order, as they are now organised and administered, do somewhat uniformly and pervasively operate with an effectual view to the advantage of a class, so far as may plausibly be done. They are controlled by and administered in behalf of those elements of the population that, for the purpose in hand, make up a single loose-knit class,--the class that lives by income rather than by work. It may be called the class of the business interests, or of capital, or of gentlemen. It all comes to much the same, for the purpose in hand.