“No,” answered Thorwald, “not as men looked at it then. There was a great deal of downright knavery in business, but there was another class who satisfied their consciences by being as honest as they could. The thoughtful ones knew the system was wrong but felt themselves utterly unable to replace it by a better one, and feeling no responsibility for it, they were satisfied to smother their sensibilities and drift along. They had their living to make, and, though they were not making it in an ideal way, they did not know that any other kind of work would be more satisfactory to their uneasy consciences.” “Excuse me, Thorwald,” I said; “I am dull. What was there wrong in their manner of doing business?” “Can you see nothing wrong,” he answered, “in a system where one man’s fortune was built on the ruins of another’s, or perhaps a score of others, or where a business was started and increased solely by drawing from another one already established?” “Why,” said I, “that is competition, which they no doubt thought better than monopoly. I can imagine that they argued that a man’s first duty was to himself and his family, that one had a right to go into any legitimate business, and that others must take care of themselves. The evil, if there was any, they probably felt was incident to the nature of business and could not be helped. I would like to ask how society could exist with any other business rules.” As I closed it struck me that I had spoken pretty fast and without much discretion, and the impression was not removed as Thorwald answered with dignity: “I am telling you the state of things on this planet thousands of years ago, and it is a sufficient answer to your question to say that society at the present day is not governed on any such principles; still, we seem to exist. It was a favorite saying in those days that ‘a man must live,’ and one that was used as an argument or excuse for questionable practices. The premise was wrong; it was not necessary to live: death would have been far better for the world and for the individual than a dishonorable life. So with society at large; better a change in the social structure, caused by an awakened conscience, than a state of peace founded on wrong principles. Our history proves that no particular plan of society is necessary to the world and that no order based on selfishness or injustice can long endure. But do not imagine such changes were easy or swift in accomplishment. They came, not by violence nor by the device of crafty men, but only through the universal betterment of the race, whereby a state of things that had been considered good enough, and then endured as the best attainable, became at last positively wrong and was slowly pushed aside by a growing sense of right.