As to the profiteer, bring him back. He is really just the same
person who a few years ago was called a Captain of Industry and an
Empire Builder and a Nation Maker. It is the times that have changed,
not the man. He is there still, just as greedy and rapacious as
ever, but no greedier: and we have just the same social need of
his greed as a motive power in industry as we ever had, and indeed
a worse need than before.

We need him not only in business but in the whole setting of life, or
if not him personally, we need the eager, selfish, but reliant spirit
of the man who looks after himself and doesn't want to have a
spoon-fed education and a government job alternating with a
government dole, and a set of morals framed for him by a Board of
Censors. Bring back the profiteer: fetch him from the Riviera, from
his country-place on the Hudson, or from whatever spot to which he
has withdrawn with his tin box full of victory bonds. If need be, go
and pick him out of the penitentiary, take the stripes off him and
tell him to get busy again. Show him the map of the world and ask him
to pick out a few likely spots. The trained greed of the rascal will
find them in a moment. Then write him out a concession for coal in
Asia Minor or oil in the Mackenzie Basin or for irrigation in
Mesopotamia. The ink will hardly be dry on it before the capital will
begin to flow in: it will come from all kinds of places whence the
government could never coax it and where the tax-gatherer could never
find it. Only promise that it is not going to be taxed out of
existence and the stream of capital which is being dried up in the
sands of government mismanagement will flow into the hands of private
industry like a river of gold.