176   HISTORIC GROWTH OF MAN.

INSPIRING METHODS.   177

but equally for those of the whole society. We would not do away with financiers, with directors for workmen.

In the new social order, from the nation down to the town, there is a board of trustees in each band. This consists of one of the central officers, with the recorder, the costumist, sanatist, economist, conductor and marshal. This board has the general care of the collective property. These officers must be good financiers, good judges of property and its investments, else they are not fit and qualified to be candidates for election to these offices. Hence each community and the whole nation is able to avail itself of the best financial talent that exists. In long established communities, like the Shakers and the Economists, where millions of dollars are handled, the trustees have rarely made poor investments and the people have found no difficulty in getting the best men for these places.

It has been commonly thought and said that if men were not allowed the chance to become rich by profit and speculation, then there would be no ambition, no enterprise and invention; everything would sink down to a dead level. There is no truth in such an idea. It is proved false by all the facts. Among the six thousand Shakers, where the property is all held in common, there have been a greater number of useful and practical inventions than among a similar number of people anywhere else in the world. Selfishness, the desire to gain wealth for one's self, has not been the inspiring motive that led to the great inventions and discoveries. Selfishness did not invent the steam engine, the printing press or the telegraph. It is true

that selfishness has used and controlled these.

Selfishness did not inspire the hand of Michael Angelo

or the genius of Shakespeare and Newton.

In a state of harmonism the financier will be able

to gratify his dominant faculty, his capacity to plan,

discriminate, direct and control vast operations; he

will enjoy all this a great deal more than he does now.

For he will know that the direct results of his opera

tions will bring happiness to a far greater number of

human beings, and these results will bring want and sorrow to none. " Will he have as much means, as many things, for his own personal enjoyment? " Yes, and much more. The huge wastefulness of the present way of doing things will cease; there will be much more for all. The greatest architects will design the mansions; the greatest artists will plan their decorations and furnishings. The financier, like the artist or the poet, will have the love of the whole people, not their envy and hatred.

A large number of the same men who are now the real leaders in business affairs may still be leaders in the new order of things. The altruistic motives will take the place of selfish motives. The fierce struggle for advantage which is needed in competition will give place to concert of action and interests. All business methods will bear the light of day.

The current methods of business and property have always required that every man must have good business or financial talent, or else he must suffer hopeless poverty. What would we think now of that state of society where every man must be a good weaver and tailor or else go without clothes to his back; where he must be a good shoemaker or else go barefoot ; where