“The mistake of this lies principally in the industrial and social pace of the present. Young men, influenced by the city life about them, spend a good deal more money on their living and enjoyment than they did in the days of my own youth, and in their keen desire to keep in the hunt, so to speak, they seek the goal of wealth cross-lots instead of by the more roundabout but much safer highway. The young women who become their wives have great power in the matter of keeping them away from the dangerous short-cuts. A wife should have an intimate knowledge of the varying conditions in her husband’s business, in order that she may properly adjust her expenditures to these conditions. This seems obvious, but the wife’s failure in this respect has been the cause of the undoing of many a man. “The spirit of materialism and commercialism which is so marked has been, perhaps, a necessary factor in the development of the resources of this continent, but I believe that it is gradually losing its position as the commanding influence in our New World civilization, and that it will become a subordinate element in a broader and higher attitude toward life.” “This development will come sooner, I think, in the United States than in Canada, for the reason that the former country has had the start of us in the evolution. The rough work of subduing rebellious nature, of clearing land, of breaking virgin soil for agriculture, of building railroads, has been nearly completed across the border, while on our side it is just beginning. We have a great Northwest, still in large degree a wilderness, to cover with farms and homes and the other appurtenances of civilization. We have yet large sections of our East to dot with the towns and the industries which this territory will bountifully support.