sympathy. The surplus value in production is trifling and seems large
only because concentrated in comparatively few hands. The surplus of
ages is concentrated in the structures which we see all about us, and in
the commodities ready or partly ready for consumption and which will
disappear in a short time. The annual accretions are small for an
enormous amount of human effort is wastefully directed. That more effort
is not wasted is due to the increasing necessities of an increasing
population stimulating the most competent by the hope of personal gain
to provide new means and new methods whereby those necessities may be
served. No stimulus other than the hope of personal gain has ever been
found effective to inspire this effort, or make it successful.
Government administration invents nothing. It copies tardily and
administers wastefully. Direction falls to those who compete
successfully in talk not to those who demonstrate resourcefulness and
masterfulness in forseeing human requirements, utilizing available means
for supplying them, and effectiveness in least wastefully directing
labor in the use of these means. Our Captains of Industry are those who
for the most part starting life with nothing but a sound mind in a
strong body have risen to the direction of great affairs through
unrestricted opportunity to strenuously compete through long hours of
hard labor and the mental and bodily strength to endure it. There is no
reason to suppose that any other method than the same strenuous and
unrestricted competition would produce men equal to such
responsibilities, or that any inspiration but the hope of personal gain
would induce such effort. The contention that the honor of direction and
the applause of the multitude would incite to the necessary competition
is not sound. In the first place long years of inconspicuous service but
with the same eager effort are essential preliminaries to the great
places which but few can reach, and secondly the honor would go as it
does now in public affairs, not to the man efficient in industry, but to