THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MAY 24, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8148, 24 May 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MAY 24, 1906.

In an article in McUlure's Magazine, Miss Ida M. Tarbell, undertakes to enow that the modern oommeroial spirit as displayed in America is neither more nor less tban the ancient formula to which Machiavelli gave his name. After briefly, skefcohing Meobiavelli's career, and recapitulating the salient points of his doctrine—as, for instance, that the end justifies the means; that it is better to be feared than loved; that it is impossible to keep one's word always; that you must either crush your rival br take him iuto partnership; and that, above all, you must gain a reputation, for kindness, olemenoy, piety, and justice—Miss Tarbell flatly announces that these are the principles of American, industrial life. Her belief is that to-day "one could easily reoonstruot out of the mouths of our captains of industry a modern edition of 'The Pr'.nce' whioh would gerve quite as weiljas> text-book for the aspirant to financial power as The Prince' of Maohiavelli would have served Lorenzo Medici if he had had the brains, the daring, and the dexterity to apply it." The

only difference, in her opinion, is that; 400 years ago it was a State which the prince aspired to control, whereas to-day it is a great business—"a natural product like iron or ooal or oil, a great food product like beef, a great inter-State tansportation line like a railroad, a great deposit for the savings of the poor like a life insurance oompany." The writer gives the oaptains of industry their due. She acknowledges them to be men of great imagination, men who as she says, are in reality building American empire, piling up American power, enriching the American people. "Our oaptains of industry are poets in their ways—poets who rhyme in steel and iron and ooal.Jwhose verses are great ships and railways and factories and shops. They oreate that the world may have more food and light and Bhelter and joy. They create for the joy of it-—for the sake of feeling themselves grow, for the sake of doing for those they love. This, to a degree, is the vision of them all. These are noble ends, bat they can only be kept so by noble means. Yet, almost immediately comes the realisation that this dream of universal empire cannot be reached by the means whiob baman law and justice prescribe. What of it? The man, hot with his vision, sees his end as greater than truth, than righteousness, than justice. He gradually, and perhaps unconsciously at first, works out a modern version of the half pagan formula of Maohiavelli to apply to a modern and Christian situation, and the world, dazzled by the magnificence of bis achievement, justifies him ,as he does himself.'* To Miss Tarbell's thinking the formula not only ruins the men who praotice it, but the great body, of young men em ployed by the corporations themselves. To an alarming degree, it has become the working formula of American political parties. It has degraded football. No art or profession is free from it. Indeed, the Church itself, she thinks, has been touohed by it. Exposure, apparentiy, is the only antidote.