like most of the other countries in the world, is suffering from the
over-extension of government and the decline of individual self-help.
For six generations industry in England and America has flourished on
individual effort called out by the prospect of individual gain.
Every man acquired from his boyhood the idea that he must look after
himself. Morally, physically and financially that was the recognised
way of getting on. The desire to make a fortune was regarded as a
laudable ambition, a proper stimulus to effort. The ugly word
"profiteer" had not yet been coined. There was no income tax to turn
a man's pockets inside out and take away his savings. The world was
to the strong.

Under the stimulus of this the wheels of industry hummed. Factories
covered the land. National production grew to a colossal size and
the whole outer world seemed laid under a tribute to the great
industry. As a system it was far from perfect. It contained in
itself all kinds of gross injustices, demands that were too great,
wages that were too small; in spite of the splendour of the
foreground, poverty and destitution hovered behind the scenes. But
such as it was, the system worked: and it was the only one that we
knew.

Or turn to another aspect of this same principle of self-help. The
way to acquire knowledge in the early days was to buy a tallow candle
and read a book after one's day's work, as Benjamin Franklin read or
Lincoln: and when the soul was stimulated to it, then the aspiring
youth must save money, put himself to college, live on nothing, think
much, and in the course of this starvation and effort become a
learned man, with somehow a peculiar moral fibre in him not easily
reproduced to-day. For to-day the candle is free and the college is