When the capitalist has retired from the scene of his exploitation, will the day arrive when the regenerated neighborhood will own that factory, and others, too, for itself? Very likely. In any case, the neighborhood has been emancipated from its worst disadvantages.
In short, I have little doubt but that the further progress of our civilization will give effect to certain economic laws and tendencies, and to certain social rules and principles, that will make for a higher measure of equality in the distribution of realized wealth. Meanwhile wherever a practical step can be taken to remedy an evil, let us do what we can to promote that step. Let us recognize the already great possibilities for useful participation in the social and public life that belong to an honorable business career.
From the standpoint of the intellectual interest of the young man going into business, let it be borne in mind that there are scientific principles underlying every branch of trade or commerce or industry, and that there is almost, if not quite, as much room for the delightful play of the faculty of imagination in the successful conduct of a soap business as in writing poetry or in making statuary groups for world's fairs. The cultivation of public spirit in the broad sense, and the determination to be an all-round good and efficient citizen and member of the community, will often help a man amazingly to discern the opportunities for usefulness that lie in the direct line of his business work. The more thoroughly he studies underlying principles--whether of a technical sort as related to his own trade, or of a general sort having to do with the organization and general methods of commerce--the less likely he will be to take narrow and anti-social views of business life. The high development of his intelligence in relation to his own work will show him the value in his business--as in all else in life--of the standard thing, the genuine thing, the thing that will bear the test as contrasted with the shoddy, or the inferior, or the spurious.
Our technological schools, our colleges of mechanic arts, our institutes of agriculture and their related experiment stations,--these are all teaching us many valuable object-lessons regarding the way in which the wealth of the individual and that of the community can both, at the same time, be advanced by scientific methods. Thus it is coming about that business life is ever more ready to welcome the most highly trained kinds of intelligence, inasmuch as it is perceived that specialized knowledge is henceforth to be the most valuable commodity that a man can possess.