The president of the company desired that his employees should possess
the individual and family virtues, but did nothing to cherish in them
the social virtues which express themselves in associated effort.

Day after day, during that horrible time of suspense, when the wires
constantly reported the same message, "the President of the Company
holds that there is nothing to arbitrate," one was forced to feel that
the ideal of one-man rule was being sustained in its baldest form. A
demand from many parts of the country and from many people was being
made for social adjustment, against which the commercial training and
the individualistic point of view held its own successfully.

The majority of the stockholders, not only of this company but of
similar companies, and many other citizens, who had had the same
commercial experience, shared and sustained this position. It was quite
impossible for them to catch the other point of view. They not only felt
themselves right from the commercial standpoint, but had gradually
accustomed themselves also to the philanthropic standpoint, until they
had come to consider their motives beyond reproach. Habit held them
persistent in this view of the case through all changing conditions.

A wise man has said that "the consent of men and your own conscience
are two wings given you whereby you may rise to God." It is so easy for
the good and powerful to think that they can rise by following the
dictates of conscience, by pursuing their own ideals, that they are
prone to leave those ideals unconnected with the consent of their
fellow-men. The president of the company thought out within his own mind
a beautiful town. He had power with which to build this town, but he did
not appeal to nor obtain the consent of the men who were living in it.