A comfortable aristocratic lifestyle was the goal, and business was carried out with an attitude of getting it over with as easily as possible. Rational capitalism is based not on luxury trades but on mass production of the commodities of everyday life. Hence the traditional attitude, the greedy maximization of profit in a one-shot enterprise, has been overcome by a new attitude which relies upon the accumulation of many small gains. Not high prices and windfall profits, but moderate prices and high, steady sales are the driving force of modern capitalism. Such technology is pointless in the luxury trades.
Modern machinery is the result of a prior revolution in the spirit of capitalism.