In every civilization many promising youths and the general run of utility men are apt to turn to business, for trade seems to offer the largest return in the way of money with the least amount of special knowledge. In this new country of ours the number of young men who have selected a business career during the last fifty years, from personal inclination, has been very much greater than elsewhere, and the tone and temper of the community has swept the general utility man into mere money making almost as a matter of course. The reasons for this up to this time have been obvious: The resources and industries of a vast and comparatively sparsely settled continent have been developed in the last fifty years, and the great prizes in the shape of large fortunes resulting from the process have naturally captivated the imagination of ambitious youth. We have unjustly been styled a nation of shopkeepers; but it may in all fairness be alleged that, until the last fifteen years, we have been under the spell of the commercial and industrial spirit, and that the intellectual faculties of the nation have been mainly absorbed in the introduction and maintenance of railroads and factories, in the raising and marketing of grain, in the development of real estate enterprises, and in trading in the commodities or securities which these various undertakings have produced. The resources of the country are by no means exhausted; there are doubtless more mines to open which will make their owners superbly rich; new discoveries in the mechanical or electrical field will afford fresh opportunities to discerning men of means; and individual or combined capital will continue to reap the reward of both legitimate and over-reaching commercial acumen. But it would seem as though the day of enormous fortunes, for men of average brains and luck, in this country were nearly over, and that the great pecuniary prizes of the business world would henceforth be gleaned only by extraordinary or exceptional individuals. The country is no longer sparsely settled; fierce competition speedily cuts the abnormal profit out of new enterprises which are not protected by a patent; and in order to be conspicuously successful in any branch of trade, one will have more and more need of unusual ability and untiring application.