Unlike government by Progress, government by business, by the semi-sacred intermediaries between the will to increase and the rest of us, began to disintegrate before the war; which merely completed the process. Let us consider what has happened in the last few years to government by business, that government which the smoking compartment philosopher has in mind when he says so hopefully of Mr. Harding: "_They_ will see to it that he gets along all right." The first manifestation of nationality in this country was the nationality of business. Before industry became national nothing was national. The United States was a pleasant congeries of localities. It was held together by reading everywhere the story of the Battle of Bunker Hill in the same school history, which sometimes bore a different author's name but which was always the same history. "Don't fire till you can see the whites of their eyes" and "If we don't hang together we shall all hang separately" were the unifying bond, and they were enough. We had the same sense of identity as an infant has when it becomes aware that the delightful toe and the delightful mouth where it is inserted appertain vaguely to the one ego. The local factory and the local bank subtended the entire arc of economic consciousness. There was one single-track railroad which ran from Podunk to Peopack and another from Peopack to Peoria, unrelated, discontinuous. In those simple times when business was local the local factory owner, banker, or railroad builder was the hero of his neighborhood. It was he who "put the town on the map." He gave it prosperity. He built it by attracting labor into his employment. He gave it contact with the outside world. If you owned town lots it was he who gave them value and it was he who might take away their value if he was offended. If you had a general store it was he who added to its patronage by adding to the population. If you raised farm products nearby it was he who improved your market. He built the fine house which it was your pride to show visitors. Your success and happiness was bound up in his. He conferred his blessings for a consideration, for you were careful to make no laws which restricted the freedom of his operations. You permitted him a vast unofficial "say" in your local government; you gave him a little the best of it in the assessment for taxes. You felt a little lifted up by his condescension in calling you by your first name and stopping to ask about your family on the street corner. You were jealous of his rights because after all the value of your own depended upon his use of his.