We may also note the changes occurring in the spirit of the professions as they conform themselves to the dominant note of a business man’s civilization. That civilization, as we have said, cloaks its crudity under the name of service, yet even in the medical profession, perhaps as yet the least tainted, what is the service rendered as compared with a generation ago? Many articles in our magazines have dealt with the seriousness of the crisis which is overtaking whole[Pg 26] countrysides where no physician can now be found to labor for little pay, and the difficulties of finding medical service even in the cities at low cost or at moments inconvenient for the doctor, such as night calls. But if social service can be calculated in income, why not? If the theory is true, is it not a doctor’s duty to leave a whole countryside to struggle without medical care if it can pay him only three or four thousand a year when in a city he can make twenty thousand if he gets in with the right people? The same applies even more to the legal profession. The great prizes in this are for the most part now to be won only from the great business men and their corporations. A man may struggle in private practice for twenty years and not make in all that time what a more fortunate fellow may get as a retainer from a railroad or a water-power trust in one year. The business-civilization ideal of wealth as distinction would be a powerful influence tending to make the lawyer turn to business in any case, but now the new business philosophy of service measured by income makes that turning a social duty and salves the professional conscience.