Wherever we can read human history, the answer is always the same.  Where commerce has flourished there civilization has increased.  It has not sufficed that men should tend their flocks, and maintain themselves in comfort on their industry alone, however great.  It is only when the exchange of products begins that development follows.  This was the case in ancient Babylon, whose records of trade and banking we are just beginning to read.  Their merchandise went by canal and caravan to the ends of the earth.  It was not the war galleys, but the merchant vessel of Phoenicia, of Tyre, and Carthage that brought them civilization and power.  To-day it is not the battle fleet, but the mercantile marine which in the end will determine the destiny of nations.  The advance of our own land has been due to our trade, and the comfort and happiness of our people are dependent on our general business conditions.  It is only a figure of poetry that “wealth accumulates and men decay.”  Where wealth has accumulated, there the arts and sciences have flourished, there education has been diffused, and of contemplation liberty has been born.  The progress of man has been measured by his commercial prosperity.  I believe that these considerations are sufficient to justify our business enterprise and activity, but there are still deeper reasons.  I have intended to indicate not only that commerce is an instrument of great power, but that commercial development is necessary to all human progress.  What, then, of the prevalent criticism?  Men have mistaken the means for the end.  It is not enough for the individual or the nation to acquire riches.  Money will not purchase character or good government.  We are under the injunction to “replenish the earth and subdue it,” not so much because of the help a new earth will be to us, as because by that process man is to find himself and thereby realize his highest destiny.  Men must work for more than wages, factories must turn out more than merchandise, or there is naught but black despair ahead.

If material rewards be the only measure of success, there is no hope of a peaceful solution of our social questions, for they will never be large enough to satisfy.  But such is not the case.  Men struggle for material success because that is the path, the process, to the development of character.  We ought to demand economic justice, but most of all because it is justice.  We must forever realize that material rewards are limited and in a sense they are only incidental, but the development of character is unlimited and is the only essential.  The measure of success is not the quantity of merchandise, but the quality of manhood which is produced.

These, then, are the justifying conceptions of the spirit of our age; that commerce is the foundation of human progress and prosperity and the great artisan of human character.  Let us dismiss the general indictment that has all too long hung over business enterprise.  While we continue to condemn, unsparingly, selfishness and greed and all trafficking in the natural rights of man, let us not forget to respect thrift and industry and enterprise.  Let us look to the service rather than to the reward.  Then shall we see in our industrial army, from the most exalted captain to the humblest soldier in the ranks, a purpose worthy to minister to the highest needs of man and to fulfil the hope of a fairer day.