Page:The Modern Writer.pdf/40

 business men and if I were a business man I would try to be a good one. I would try to make money. And anyway the individual factory owner or the individual owner or owners of a magazine with a circulation of hundreds of thousands has no more to do with the matter than have you and I. They also are caught in a trap. Present day conditions are but the natural result of our living in an industrial age. Until the impulse for vast production of second-rate goods and the tendency to be satisfied with second-rate art wears itself out or people grow tired of it things will go on just as they are.

Back of it all, of course, lies the silly notion that people can get happiness out of success, out of making money, the silly notion that any man can be happy doing poor or sloppy work no matter how much temporary success or praise he may win.

You must bear in mind that the mass