comes in conflict with the new and rising forces, and presents itself in the guise of a conservative force which is obstructive. The family security which has been obtained, and which is guaranteed by property rights, comes to stand across the path of struggle to security for some new, and as yet unsecured, family interests.
If now there is anything in our modern society upon which we may look with complacency when we compare it with any older form of society, it is the fact that our family ambition has gained depth and solidity and sobriety. In place of court intrigues for place and rank, we have earnest and honest endeavor, maintained by wide sections of the population, employing honorable means, enjoying a reasonable hope of success, and directed toward sober and commendable ideals. In place, therefore, of the clash of sordid interests on a narrow arena, and, often enough, employing destructive means, we have a spontaneous effort of the whole mass of the population. It manifests itself chiefly in the strain to win wealth and to secure property. It is one of the marks of our time. The moralists and socialists who set themselves against it bear loudest witness to the fact that the tendency exists, and that nothing can arrest it. Their invectives against capital in the hands of those who have it are double-faced, and, when turned about, are nothing but demands for capital on behalf of those who have it not, in order that they may do with it just what those who now have it are doing with it. There are some who talk with singular fatuity about a time when men worked not to win wealth, but to get a living. When was that time? It was when they could not get a living by all the work they could do. When did they begin to work to win wealth? Just when there was a chance that by work wealth might be won.
