Let us consider, briefly, the evolution of our present-day economic or business life, and then take note of the necessary place that particular classes of business men must hold in the structure of our society. I, for my part, look upon this last century of economic progress,--under the sway of what is often called "capitalism" as a term of reproach,--as an immeasurable boon to mankind. It began with the practical utilization of several great inventions, notably that of steam power, which broke up the old household and village industries, gave us the modern factory system, and along with the development of railroads gave us the modern industrial city. This new and revolutionizing system of industry and business forced its way into a world of poverty, of disease, of depraved public life, of low morals in the main pervading the community,--a world for the most part of class distinctions in which the lot even of the privileged few was not a very noble or enviable one, while the state of the vast majority was little better than that of serfs. Many writers have sought to throw a charm and a glamour over that old condition of economic life and society that followed the break-up of feudalism and that preceded the creation of our new political and industrial institutions. But with some mitigations it was for most people a period, as I have said, of squalor, disease, and degradation. The fundamental trouble could be summed up in the one word, _poverty_. The mission of the new industrial system, for the most part unconscious and unrecognized, was to transform the world by abolishing the reign of poverty. Doubtless it would be desirable if the improvement of conditions, material and spiritual, could make progress with exactly even pace on some perfectly symmetrical plan. But history shows us that the forward social movement has proceeded first in one aspect, then in another, on lines so tangential, often so zigzag, that it is difficult until one gets distance enough for perspective, to see that any true progress has been made at all. Thus, the modern industrial system, which found the conditions of poverty, disease, and hardship prevalent, seemed for quite a long time, in its rude breaking up of old relations and its ruthless adherence to certain newly proclaimed principles, to have brought matters from bad to worse. The squalor and poverty of the village of hand-loom weavers seemed only intensified in the new industrial towns to which the weavers flocked from their deserted hamlets. Manufacturers were doing business under the fiercest and most unregulated competition. Economists were demonstrating their "law of supply and demand" and their "iron law of wages" as capable in themselves of regulating all the conditions and relations of business life. Epidemics raged and depravity prevailed in the new factory centers.