We are not at heart--in this splendid country of ours--engaged in a mad struggle and race for wealth. We are engaged rather in the greatest effort ever made in the world for the upbuilding of a higher civilization. To avow that this civilization must rest upon a physical and material basis,--that is to say, upon a high development of our productive capacity and upon a constant improvement in our processes of distribution and exchange,--is not, on the other hand, to confess that our civilization is materialistic in its nature or in its aims. I was very glad, the other day, to read the wholesome and understanding words of a distinguished Boston clergyman who is just now coming to New York to take charge of an important parish. He declared that this nation was founded on an ideal, and that the most powerful influences in its life today are working toward noble ideals. The moral and spiritual tone of the country, he asserted, is higher than ever, in spite of the accidents of wealth and poverty. He declared that the great host of men and women who cherish our ideals will continue to stamp idealism upon the minds and hearts of our youth, and that they in turn "will convert wealth to the service of ideals."
Such views are not merely the expressions of a comfortable optimist. They are true to the facts of our current progress. There are vast portions of this country today in which the enterprising business man who can succeed in selling to the farmers an honest and effective commercial fertilizer is the best possible missionary of idealism,--is, in fact, a veritable angel for the spread of sweetness and light. There are regions where the capitalist or the company that will build a cotton mill or some other kind of factory is rescuing whole communities from degradation. It is poverty that has kept the South so backward, and it is poverty alone that explains the illiteracy and the lawlessness not merely of the Kentucky mountains, but of great areas in other States as well. Good schools cannot be supported in regions like those, for the palpable reason that the taxable wealth of an entire school district cannot yield enough to pay the salary of a teacher. But when modern business invades those uplands, utilizes the water-power now wasted, opens the mines, builds cotton factories or foundries, the situation changes almost as if by magic.
