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most apparent in business. Speculation, adventure, discovery are still possible in a business career. One knows what churchmen and statesmen will say before their message is uttered; for the life they deal with is stereotyped. In modern industrialism life is a game, a form of exercise, requiring insight, imagination, creative ability, culture. I almost envy the fortune which has given to such writers as Hamlin Garland, Owen Wister and Frank Norris, the education necessary to write characteristic chapters of the Epic of the West. I envy more the chance enabling other men to play the role of epical heroes. These men are to me intensely interesting. I have just been reading a clever sketch of Charles T. Yerkes, written by T. P. O'Connor, the Irish journalist. This is the man as he appears to a foreign observer:

"A man rather below the middle height-with a heavy snow-white moustache, a pale complexion; with that slight tendency towards an enlarged girth that comes with middle age; with white hair, with fine dark eyes, and with a soft voice and a subdued manner-such is Mr. Yerkes. The first, indeed the supreme and most lasting, impression he makes upon you is serenity. He comes, I believe, of Quaker blood, and the face is a Quaker face, with that quietism which is and always remains the expression of the man or woman who has begun life amid the prolonged silences and the stern self-discipline and selfcontrol of the Society of Friends. The voice-soft, low, never raised above a minor key—is in perfect accord with the expression; and the eyes-with their curious immobility and a certain sweetness, and last the least touch of mocking humor-complete this picture of one of those silent, quiet, iron men that rule the storm and ride the

cyclone in the elemental and Titantic wars of American industry.

"The pallor of the complexion, ivory in its intensity, yet indicates health, not fragility-a certain distinction and refinement as of a man who has always exercised selfrestraint, and who has never poisoned his system and colored his cheeks with the flowing wine or the overbounteous, overladen table. And Mr. Yerkes is, indeed, a man who has sternly controlled himself. He never takes tea nor coffee, and he never smokes, though he may be tempted into a couple of glasses of light champagne at dinner. And yet, with all this impression of supreme serenity, you cannot be with the man for more than half an hour without becoming conscious of all the iron strength there is behind the ivory cheek, the soft brown eye, the low voice. He speaks slowly, with something of the characteristic American drawl, and he seems much more disposed to listen than to talk-unless he finds that the atmosphere is sympathetic and appreciative and that he can reveal his inner self.

"And then you hear talk worth listening to. Cold, easy, with every word spoken slowly and every word coming out as clear cut, as fitted to the word that has preceded and will follow as though he were making a mosiac of jewels. Mr. Yerkes tells the tale of his life; of his conflicts; of his enemies; of his friends, and often leaving these behind, he sums up his theory of the world and his lessons from life in some anecdote told with brevity, without a superfluous word, with quiet but expressive gesture-above all, with full appreciation of the dramatic points."

I rub my eyes a little at these statements, for this is not

the Yerkes I have been told of in Chicago. But I am ready to admit that hitherto my eyes have not been open. The notice concludes after more detailed characterization:

"Such is the man that has undertaken the gigantic task of revolutionizing our methods of locomotion in London. Curiously enough, the accumulation of money has been rather an accident than a purpose of this strange and potent man's life. He speaks of tramways, of electric light, electric power, with a quiet passion which you might expect from Mr. John Sargeant talking of a picture; from Paderewski talking of music; and when he begins to describe the smoke, the closeness, the inconveniences of steam engines in our underground, there is a look of positive pain in his features. To make an underground system which will be clean, cheap, fast, worked by electricity-a joy instead of a horror-such is the ambition of Mr. Yerkes. 'I have never,' he said, 'interested myself in anything but tramways and traction; that's my business, and I've never gone one second outside that business. And men are judged usually by their last work. This is my last work; this is my final ambition.'

"Such are my impressions of that strange, new portent, the American millionaire, that, sighing for new worlds to conquer, has come to London to reverse our methods, to startle and renew our old systems and methods, to bring to Europe the gigantic projects, the fearless daring, that are so characteristic of America, with her rivers that are seas, her states that are continents, her simple private citizens that are forces more potent than armies, or fleets, or Czars."

Such are the fruits of democracy. Add to what is now

known of men, the knowledge of nature revealed by science, and one is forced to admit that the world as modernly conceived transcends in imaginative significance the highest fictions of poet and novelist.

THE NEW DOCTRINE OF LABOR.

If it be true, as political economists assert, that an industrial civilization is now forming, it becomes pertinent to inquire what attitude it is proper to assume towards labor-towards that which is necessarily central in such a civilization. It is manifestly impossible to build up a civilization on the basis of labor as it exists in the world today. If labor is to be a factor in civilization it must be itself a civilizing agency. No one can be so blind to existing conditions as to assert that labor at the present time is anything but a sordid makeshift, without character and without meaning. The questions now which arise in the mind are these: Is there an ideal of labor humanistic in its import? Is there a form of labor cultural in its results?

The theological doctrine of labor is probably everywhere outgrown-the doctrine that labor is a curse, inflicted upon mankind for disobedience and sin. In the middle ages the theological interpretation of life coincided with the system of political feudalism then forming, and a social civilization came into being in which the work of the world was given over to slaves and underlings, the masters meanwhile maintaining a cultured grace with special privileges, highly ornate and ceremonial, fashioned upon leisure.

Political feudalism was destroyed by the many revolutions in Europe at the turn of the century. While these revolutions were nominally political they were in reality industrial. The French Revolution initiated the present

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