The result of this institution, conceived on such imperial lines, was, in the field we are now considering, the total destruction of the sense of the holiness of labour and of joy in work.  It extended far beyond the limits of pure industrialism; it moulded and controlled society in all its forms, destroying ideals old as history, reversing values, confusing issues and wrecking man’s powers of judgment.  Until the war it seemed irresistible, now its weakness and the fallacy of its assumptions are revealed, but it has become so absolutely a part of our life, indeed of our nature, that we are unable to estimate it by any sound standards of judgment, and even when we approximate this we cannot think in other terms when we try to devise our schemes of redemption.  Even the socialist and the Bolshevik think in imperial terms when they try to compass the ending of imperialism.

Under this supreme system, as I see it, the two essential things I have spoken of cannot be restored, nor could they maintain themselves if, by some miracle, they were once re-established.  The indictment cannot be closed here.  The actual condition that has developed from industrialism presents certain factors that are not consonant with sane, wholesome and Christian living.  Not only has the unit of human scale in human society been done away with, not only have the sense of the nobility of work and joy in the doing been exterminated, but, as well, certain absolutely false principles and methods have been adopted which are not susceptible of reform but only of abolition.

Of some of these I have spoken already; the alarming drift towards cities, until now in the United States more than one-half the population is urban; the segregation of industries in certain cities and regions; the minute division of labour and intensive specialization; the abnormal growth of a true proletariat or non-land-holding class; the flooding of the country by cheap labour drawn from the most backward communities and from peoples of low race-value.  Out of this has arisen a bitter class conflict and the ominous beginnings of a perilous class consciousness, with actual warfare joined in several countries, and threatened in all others where industrial civilization is prevalent.  With this has grown up an artificially stimulated covetousness for a thousand futile luxuries, and a standard of living that presupposes a thousand non-essentials as basic necessities.  Production for profit, not use, excess production due to machinery, efficient organization, and surplus of labour, together with the necessity for marketing the product at a profit, have produced a state of things where at least one-half the available labour in the country is engaged in the production and sale of articles which are not necessary to physical, intellectual or spiritual life, while of the remainder, hardly more than a half is employed in production, the others are devoting themselves to distribution and to the war of competition through advertising and the capturing of trade by ingenious and capable salesmen.  It is a significant fact that two of the greatest industries in the United States are the making of automobiles and moving pictures.