3. _Custom and social ideals that raise or depress hope and ambition, affect efficiency._ The institution called caste, which fixes the place of the worker and makes it impossible to rise out of the social position in which he is born, and disgraceful to do any work reserved to other castes, is deadening to energy. It exists in some form throughout the world, and where it is not called by that name, the same caste spirit is at work. The European peasants in the Middle Ages lived under the shadow of it. Where slavery exists the master class at times feels its hardships. "It is not so hard to live," says the hungry Creole daughter in "The Grandissimes," "but it is hard to be ladies.... We are compelled not to make a living. Look at me: I can cook, but I must not cook; I am skilful with the needle, but I must not take in sewing; I could keep accounts; I could nurse the sick; but I must not." Nowhere in the world is there less caste than in America, but it is here. The negro's low measure of industrial virtues is partly the cause of the prejudice against him, but in turn doubtless inherited class feeling is in some measure the cause of his inefficiency. To close to a worker all but the menial occupations is to take from him the most powerful motives for effort. The thought is paralyzing. The race problem in America is in part one of caste sentiment, whatever can or cannot be done about it. [Sidenote: American democracy and the efficiency of labor] Democracy makes for the efficiency of American industry not less than do the great natural resources. If America is to surpass the world in all the great industrial lines, it will be largely because of her ideas and institutions. They lead to greater energy and to a faster working pace in all grades of labor than is found anywhere else in the world. There is danger that as the West is closed to settlement something of the spirit of enterprise will be lost. To Western eyes already the young men in the older East seem to be trammeled by social conventions. In an older community there is less of hopeful ambition; one's position depends more on what his fathers achieved; in the new community, more on what he does himself. If it is true, as wise students declare, that the frontier has been the nursery of our democratic ideas, we may well ask what effect the closing of the frontier will have on our national sentiment and on our material prosperity. [Sidenote: The balance of advantage between work and leisure]