But this was "great industry" in America. It was Pittsburg, only in heightened pace and concentration. For this reason came the ghastly "Survey" of that city. It directed public attention from the shining top to the broad base. After the main body of this wholly admirable investigation had been published, I found an ironmaster in the city who had read it. He was about half angry. He pointed out to me "mistakes," but in their relation to the whole disclosure these "mistakes" were so trivial as to excite laughter. "Yes," he said, "it is in the main true, but it makes a Pittsburger mad to have his own town picked out and held up as if it were the only sinner. In our business we are no worse than the rest of the world, and in many respects far better." Every one of us who is properly human will respond to this local patriotism. The "Survey" only shows us what an unfolding there would have been if investigators had done for the country as a whole what they did for Pittsburg. Restricted as it is, the popularized education based upon that study is beyond price.
Bits from the income of one great capitalist were used to pry off the lid of things subterranean, and let the public study what went on there. Owners, managers, and stockholders were compelled to see probably for the first time, what was really happening beneath the pyramid, under the shadow of which they lived. Clear as flame in a dark night, one fact stood out. Here was a business, touching and enveloping the life of the nation. Woodrow Wilson was just then saying in a public speech, "Business is no longer in any sense a private matter." "Society is the senior
