The modern business man is the true heir of the old magicians. Every thing he touches seems to increase ten or a hundredfold in value and usefulness. All the old methods, old tools, old instruments have yielded to his transforming spell or else been discarded for new and more effective substitutes. In a thousand industries the profits of to-day are wrung from the wastes or unconsidered trifles of yesterday.
The only factor which has withstood this wizard touch is man himself. Development of the instruments of production and distribution has been so great it can hardly be measured: the things themselves have been so changed that few features of their primitive models have been retained.