But time passed on. Some who were frugal and diligent—and others who were cunning and unscrupulous—grew rich; and then machinery came in, and the pace grew faster. The rich were on top, and they stayed there. As the country expanded, railroads were built, and fortunes made; the war came, with its enormous expenditures, and still more fortunes were made. Capital grew; but it could not grow fast enough—in the seventies the rate of interest was ten per cent., and the promoters made fortunes besides. It was in those days that the battles of the giants were fought, the railroad wars in which the Gould and Vanderbilt millions were accumulated. Still there was plenty to do; the people had money, and there were some of them to buy everything we could make, and what came from abroad besides. The cities grew and spread, and the immigrants flowed in; railroads and factories were built, and the mighty structure of our modern industrial machine began to take shape. It must be understood that all the while inventions and improvements were being made, that enabled one man to do the work of ten, of fifty, of a hundred; and each such improvement set free so many thousands more men, to turn their attention to another part of the structure and to rush it on to completion. _Completion!_ Has it never dawned upon you that this machine might possibly some day reach completion? The purpose of it is a very definite and obvious one—it is to supply the needs of men; and when it is adequate to that purpose, it is complete. But how will you know when _that_ is? Why, by the simplest of methods in the world—by that insufficiency of profits which I described before. You are in business for profits, you understand; and when you are making something that men need, you make profits; and when you are making something that men do not need, you _stop_ making profits. It would be too bad if men went on making railroads where no one wanted to ride, and building houses for no one to occupy; how fortunate that Nature has arranged it so that we all know when our work is done! We were trembling on the very verge—in fact, we were half-way over the verge—three years ago, when the Russo-Japanese War came along and saved us. Everybody had begun to realise the peril. The investor, who had been making ten per cent. in the seventies, came down to three. The workingman who had a job that did not suit him, stuck to it all the same, because he saw a million men in the country who had no job at all. And the capitalist, the captain of industry—he mounted into his watch-tower, and proceeded to scan the landscape. A market! A market! My kingdom for a market!