9/19/2023 0 Comments Aim surplusWhat were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life. The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. In the commercial world similar causes have produced similar results, and the race is benefited thereby. Today the world obtains commodities of excellent quality at prices which even the generation preceding this would have deemed incredible. The laborer has now more comforts than the landlord had a few generations ago.”īut the inevitable result of such a mode of manufacture was crude articles at high prices. “The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. There was, substantially social equality, and even political equality, for those engaged in industrial pursuits had then little or no political voice in the State. When these apprentices rose to be masters, there was little or no change in their mode of life, and they, in turn, educated in the same routine succeeding apprentices. The master and his apprentices worked side by side, the latter living with the master, and therefore subject to the same conditions. Formerly articles were manufactured at the domestic hearth or in small shops which formed part of the household. It applies to all combinations of human industry, as stimulated and enlarged by the inventions of this scientific age. In the manufacture of products we have the whole story. One illustration will serve for almost every phase of the cause. It is easy to see how the change has come. It is a waste of time to criticize the inevitable. But whether the change be for good or ill, it is upon us, beyond our power to alter, and therefore to be accepted and made the best of. A relapse to old conditions would be disastrous to both-not the least so to him who serves-and would sweep away civilization with it. Neither master nor servant was as well situated then as to-day. The "good old times " were not good old times. Much better this great irregularity than universal squalor. It is well, nay, essential for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilization, rather than that none should be so. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us today measures the change which has come with civilization. This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It was just like the others in external appearance, and even within the difference was trifling between it and those of the poorest of his braves. When visiting the Sioux, I was led to the wigwam of the chief. The Indians are today where civilized man then was. In former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. The conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionized, within the past few hundred years. The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. “The Gospel of Wealth” By Andrew Carnegie
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