222 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

In this American philosophy you may find economic chivalry
 by looking for it. If you do, it is implicit there. The
conscious view is still pragmatic. Any other is obscured in a
curious way. Long before, this state of society had been
imagined, in which the desire for private gain as the paramount
 economic motive should yield to the idea of social
function; but nobody had ever imagined it would really pay.

THE ESSENCE oF THE NEW INDUSTRIAL ORDER

Corroborative citations as to the attitude of mind and
principles of action of American trade, industry, and
finance might be greatly multiplied. No such basis of
proof, however, is necessary. The new order hds become
a commonplace. Industry itself has even passed the point
of being conscious of the revolutionary changes in thought
and procedure which have occurred during the past five
years. The old order of thinking and action has practically
been forgotten.
The employer now has come to sed the wage-earner as a
consumer as well as a producer. The workers themselves
and their leaders have had the vision of their real significance
 as producers, and of the relation of their possibilities
in economic and social well-being to their productivity.
Financiers, captains of industry and the leaders of organized
 labor have accepted the fact that their mutual interests
 lie in increasing industrial output, reducing costs,
and stimulating consumption and profits by better service
and lower prices. The net result has been that the employer,
 realizing that the continuing profitableness of industry
 is dependent upon an expansion in purchasing
power, has willingly accepted and declared that there may
be indeterminate wage-increases as long as costs are not increased
 and the proper margin of profit is maintained.
Organized labor has also given its adherence to this point