There is an eternal law that what is good and true for us individually is good and true for us collectively. Let us be self-reliant. To take the attitude that history _does_ and _must_ repeat itself is the attitude of cowards. "The reason of idleness and crime is the deferring of our hopes; whilst we are waiting we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating and with crime." This was Rome under the rule of its monarchical aristocracy of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Centuries. Under this aristocracy, greed for position, fame, and avarice for great wealth, was unparalleled. To satisfy this greed, they built great monuments. They drew upon the entire country for labor to achieve their selfish aim and end. They not only lured the country's populace by pomp and glittering gayety, but big business controlled the land for speculation and selfish pleasure, forcing the people into urban centers. Even the smaller cities built amphitheaters and "civic centers" larger than the population. Then the gluttons of big business discovered that basilicas, monuments for supposedly great men, triumphal arches, marvelous fountains and temples of myth were a poor relief for the oppressed wageearner. When too late, they reluctantly offered their watered charity in free baths, free coffee and free soup, but the decadence of the grandeur of the eternal city had already begun. The working wage slave of the ancient Romans, so marvelously clever in his many crafts, was looked upon as being but little better than the animal which hauled the stone. There was no recognition of equality between the classes, nor consequently equal sharing of profits of production, or the creation of any public government institutions as a privilege of labor by the right of toil, to care for the bodily needs of the normal and healthy man who might need such an institution. The monarchical aristocracy of the Roman Empire did not believe in those things. But our political and industrial interests in this country are awakening to the fact that the foundation of all business is food, shelter and clothing, and that the honest demands of the people for the essentials of life shall be met and honestly distributed. They are recognizing that a reserve of unemployed labor is necessary to the progress of our industries and the promotion of our civilization, and the necessity of conserving that unemployed force. We recognize that we are builders and that we are going to have a great name--not of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Century, but of this, the Twentieth Century, _our century_,--that we have already conquered sea and sky, and have put the "girdle 'round the earth in forty minutes." But every marvelous achievement, every boasted cry of liberty to make us free, will never make us great, until we learn that our ruling power _must_ be God's law of right and love. CHAPTER XXXIV VISIONS