All society is a struggle for the survival of the fittest; and in crude and early forms of society, it is the strongest who proves himself most fit. In savage communities--and Europe was savage until after the feudal days--it is the big man and brutal who comes to the top. In the savage days of American commerce, which, at least for the West, ended only a generation back, it was too often the man who could go out and subdue the wilderness and beat down opposition, who rode rough-shod over his competitors and used whatever weapons, whether of mere brute strength or fraud, with the greatest ferocity and unscrupulousness, who made his mark and his fortune. But in a settled and complex commercial community it is no longer the strongest who is most fit; it is the most honest. The American commercial community as a whole, in spite of occasional exceptions and in defiance of the cynicism of the press, has grasped this fact and has accepted the business standards of the world at large. Let me not be interpreted as implying that there are any fewer Americans than there are Englishmen who live rightly from the fear of God or for the sake of their own self-respect. The conclusion of most observers has been that the American people is more religious than the English, that the temperament, more nervous and more emotional, is more susceptible to religious influence. It may be so. It is a subject on which the evidence is necessarily so intangible--on which an individual judgment is likely to be so entirely dependent on individual observation in a narrow field--that comparison becomes extremely difficult. My own opinion would be that there is at least as much real religious feeling in England as in the United States, and certainly more in Scotland than in either; but that the churches in America are more active as organisations and more efficient agents in behalf of morality. But we are now speaking of the business community as a whole, and the force which ultimately keeps the ethics of every business community pure is, I imagine, the same, namely that without honesty the community itself cannot live or prosper and that, with normal ability, he who is most honest prospers most. American business was dishonest before society had settled down and knitted itself together. The change which has come over the American business world can perhaps best be made clear to English readers by taking a single example; and it must necessarily be an example from a field with which I am familiar. * * * * *