This compromise was adopted, and the effect of it was to give an immense impulse to private industry. While the question was being discussed few were willing to embark on an enterprise that might be declared illegal and be appropriated by the state. As soon, however, as private enterprise was indirectly sanctioned by the passage of this law it became clear that any individual might devote his leisure to the production of anything not satisfactorily produced by the state, and the result of this new departure was considerable, for it not only greatly increased the total wealth of the community but it stimulated the state to maintain and improve standards of manufacture, contributing all that is good in competition without tolerating those features of oppression and pauperism which had made competition so evil in our day. And Masters became a great man in the community; for not only was he regarded as the author of private enterprise, but possessing the powers of organization and the judgment in selecting his fellow-workers essential to success, he soon became the head of numerous enterprises; and although he was unable at first to accumulate wealth in the shape of money, he did accumulate it in the shape of products of manufacture. Moreover, the fact that he could not accumulate it in the shape of money and that there was a limit to his power to accumulate it in the shape of products of manufacture, drove him to distribute his earnings among his neighbors with a prodigality so lavish that, possessing a naturally generous heart and an attractive manner, he became a man of enormous--some men said undue--influence in the state. Recently, too, owing to the establishment of a banking system, accumulation in private money became possible. Masters had never married. His interests were so various and engrossing that he had not felt the need of a wife. Nor was he ever at a loss for a companion; the bath was his club; and a short evening--for he was an early riser--was comfortably spent in the society of those with whom he dined at the common table. But he was by no means insensible to feminine charm, and Neaera had not ineffectually aired her graces for his benefit.