Chapter 8: The Vested Interests and the Common Man

    In the eighteenth century certain principles of enlightened
common sense were thrown into formal shape and adopted by the
civilised peoples of that time to govern the system of law and
order, use and wont, under which they chose to live. So far as
concerns economic relations the principles which so became
incorporated into the system of civilised law and custom at that
time were the principles of equal opportunity,
self-determination, and self-help. Chief among the specific
rights by which this civilised scheme of equal opportunity and
self-help were to be safeguarded were the rights of free contract
and security of property. These make up the substantial core of
that system of principles which is called the modern point of
view, in so far as concerns trade, industry, investment, credit
obligations, and whatever else may properly be spoken of as
economic institutions. And these still stand over today,
paramount among the inalienable rights of all free citizens in
all free countries; they are the groundwork of the economic
system as it runs today, and this existing system can undergo no
material change of character so long as these paramount rights of
civilised men continue to be inalienable. Any move to set these
rights aside would be subversive of the modern economic order;
whereas no revision or alteration of established rights and
usages will amount to a revolutionary move, so long as it does
not disallow these paramount economic rights.
    When the constituent principles of the modern point of view
were accepted and the modern scheme of civilised life was
therewith endorsed by the civilised peoples, in the eighteenth
century, these rights of self-direction and self-help were
counted on as the particular and sufficient safeguard of equity
and industry in any civilised country. They were counted on to
establish equality among men in all their economic relations and
to maintain the industrial system at the highest practicable
degree of productive efficiency. They were counted on to give
enduring effect to the rule of Live and Let Live. And such is
still the value ascribed to these rights in the esteem of modern
men. The maintenance of law and order still means primarily and
chiefly the maintenance of these rights of ownership and
pecuniary obligation.
    But things have changed since that time in such a way that
the rule of Live and Let Live is no longer completely safeguarded
by maintaining these rights in the shape given them in the
eighteenth century, -- or at least there are large sections of
the people in these civilised countries who are beginning to
think so, which is just as good for practical purposes. Things
have changed in such a way since that time, that the ownership of
property in large holdings now controls the nation's industry,
and therefore it controls the conditions of life for those who
are or wish to be engaged in industry; at the same time that the
same ownership of large wealth controls the markets and thereby
controls the conditions of life for those who have to resort to
the markets to sell or to buy. In other words, it has come to
pass with the change of circumstances that the rule of Live and
Let Live now waits on the discretion of the owners of large
wealth. In fact, those thoughtful men in the eighteenth century
who made so much of these constituent principles of the modern
point of view did not contemplate anything like the system of
large wealth, large-scale industry, and large-scale commerce and
credit which prevails today. They did not foresee the new order
in industry and business, and the system of rights and
obligations which they installed, therefore, made no provision
for the new order of things that has come on since their time.
    The new order has brought the machine industry, corporation
finance, big business, and the world market, Under this new order
in business and industry, business controls industry. Invested
wealth in large holdings controls the country's industrial
system, directly by ownership of the plant, as in the mechanical
industries, or indirectly through the market, as in farming. So
that the population of these civilised countries now falls into
two main classes: those who own wealth invested in large holdings
and who thereby control the conditions of life for the rest; and
those who do not own wealth in sufficiently large holdings, and
whose conditions of life are therefore controlled by these
others. It is a division, not between those who have something
and those who have nothing -- as many socialists would be
inclined to describe it -- but between those who own wealth
enough to make it count, and those who do not.
    And all the while the scale on which the control of industry
and the market is exercised goes on increasing; from which it
follows that what was large enough for assured independence
yesterday is no longer large enough for tomorrow. Seen from
another direction, it is at the same time a division between
those who live on free income and those who live by work, -- a
division between the kept classes and the underlying community
from which their keep is drawn. It is sometimes spoken of in this
bearing -- particularly by certain socialists -- as a division
between those who do no useful work and those who do; but this
would be a hasty generalisation, since not a few of those persons
who have no assured free income also do no work that is of
material use, as e.g., menial servants. But the gravest
significance of this cleavage that so runs through the population
of the advanced industrial countries lies in the fact that it is
a division between the vested interests and the common man. It is
a division between those who control the conditions of work and
the rate and volume of output and to whom the net output of
industry goes as free income, on the one hand, and those others
who have the work to do and to whom a livelihood is allowed by
these persons in control, on the other hand. In point of numbers
it is a very uneven division, of course.
    A vested interest is a legitimate right to get something for
nothing, usually a prescriptive right to an income which is
secured by controlling the traffic at one point or another. The
owners of such a prescriptive right are also spoken of as a
vested interest. Such persons make up what are called the kept
classes. But the kept classes also comprise many persons who are
entitled to a free income on other grounds than their ownership
and control of industry or the market, as, e.g., landlords and
other persons classed as "gentry," the clergy, the Crown -- where
there is a Crown -- and its agents, civil and military.
Contrasted with these classes who make up the vested interests,
and who derive an income from the established order of ownership
and privilege, is the common man. He is common in the respect
that he is not vested with such a prescriptive right to get
something for nothing. And he is called common because such is
the common lot of men under the new order of business and
industry; and such will continue (increasingly) to be the common
lot so long as the enlightened principles of secure ownership and
self-help handed down from the eighteenth century continue to
rule human affairs by help of the new order of industry.
    The kept classes, whose free income is secured to them by the
legitimate rights of the vested interests, are less numerous than
the common man -- less numerous by some ninety-five per cent or
thereabouts -- and less serviceable to the community at large in
perhaps the same proportion, so far as regards any conceivable
use for any material purpose. In this sense they are uncommon.
But it is not usual to speak of the kept classes as the uncommon
classes, inasmuch they personally differ from the common run of
mankind in no sensible respect. It is more usual to speak of them
as "the better classes," because they are in better circumstances
and are better able to do as they like. Their place in the
economic scheme of the civilised world is to consume the net
product of the country's industry over cost, and so prevent a
glut of the market. 

    But this broad distinction between the kept classes and their
vested interests on the one side and the common man on the other
side is by no means hard and fast. There are many doubtful cases,
and a shifting across the line occurs now and again, but the
broad distinction is not doubtful for all that. The great
distinguishing mark of the common man is that he is helpless
within the rules of the game as it is played in the twentieth
century under the enlightened principles of the eighteenth century.
    There are all degrees of this helplessness that characterises
the common lot. So much so that certain classes, professions, and
occupations -- such as the clergy, the military, the courts,
police, and legal profession -- are perhaps to be classed as
belonging primarily with the vested interests, although they can
scarcely be counted as vested interests in their own right, but
rather as outlying and subsidiary vested interests whose tenure
is conditioned on their serving the purposes of those principal
and self-directing vested interests whose tenure rests
immediately on large holdings of invested wealth. The income
which goes to these subsidiary or dependent vested interests is
of the nature of free income, in so far that it is drawn from the
yearly product of the underlying community; but in another sense
it is scarcely to be counted as "free" income, in that its
continuance depends on the good will of those controlling vested
interests whose power rests on the ownership of large invested
wealth. Still it will be found that on any test vote these
subsidiary or auxiliary vested interests uniformly range
themselves with their superiors in the same class, rather than
with the common man. By sentiment and habitual outlook they
belong with the kept classes, in that they are staunch defenders
of that established order of law and custom which secures the
great vested interests in power and insures the free income of
the kept classes. In any twofold division of the population these
are therefore, on the whole, to be ranged on the side of the old
order, the vested interests, and the kept classes, both in
sentiment and as regards the circumstances which condition their
life and comfort.
    Beyond these, whose life-interests are, after all, closely
bound up with the kept classes, there are other vested interests
of a more doubtful and perplexing kind; classes and occupations
which would seem to belong with the common lot, but which range
themselves at least provisionally with the vested interests and
can scarcely be denied standing as such. Such, as an illustrative
instance, is the A. F. of L. Not that the constituency of the A.
F. of L. can be said to live on free income, and is therefore to
be counted in with the kept classes -- the only reservation on
that head would conceivably be the corps of officials in the A.
F. of L., who dominate the policies of that organisation and
exercise a prescriptive right to dispose of its forces, at the
same time that they habitually come in for an income drawn from
the underlying organisation. The rank and file assuredly are not
of the kept classes, nor do they visibly come in for a free
income. Yet they stand on the defensive in maintaining a vested
interest in the prerogatives and perquisites of their
organisation. They are apparently moved by a feeling that so long
as the established arrangements are maintained they will come in
for a little something over and above what would come to them if
they were to make common cause with the undistinguished common
lot. In other words, they have a vested interest in a narrow
margin of preference over and above what goes to the common man.
But this narrow margin of net gain over the common lot, this
vested right to get a narrow margin of something for nothing, has
hitherto been sufficient to shape their sentiments and outlook in
such a way as, in effect, to keep them loyal to the large
business interests with whom they negotiate for this narrow
margin of preference. As is true of the vested interests in
business, so in the case of the A. F. of L., the ordinary ways
and means of enforcing their claim to a little something over and
above is the use of a reasonable sabotage, in the way of
restriction, retardation, and unemployment. Yet the constituency
of the A. F. of L., taken man for man, is not readily to be
distinguished from the common sort so far as regards their
conditions of life. The spirit of vested interest which animates
them may, in fact, be nothing more to the point than an aimless survival.
    Farther along the same line, larger and even more perplexing,
is the case of the American farmers, who also are in the habit of
ranging themselves, on the whole, with the vested interests
rather than with the common man. By sentiment and outlook the
farmers are, commonly, steady votaries of that established order
which enables the vested interests to do a "big business" at
their expense. Such is the tradition which still binds the
farmers, however unequivocally their material circumstances under
the new order of business and industry might seem to drive the
other way. In the ordinary case the American farmer is now as
helpless to control his own conditions of life as the commonest
of the common run. He is caught between the vested interests who
buy cheap and the vested interests who sell dear, and it is for
him to take or leave what is offered, -- but ordinarily to take
it, on pain of "getting left."
    There is still afloat among the rural population a slow-dying
tradition of the "Independent Farmer," who is reputed once upon a
time to have lived his own life and done his own work as good him
seemed, and who was content to let the world wag. But all that
has gone by now as completely as the other things that are told
in tales which begin with "Once upon a time." It has gone by into
the same waste of regrets with the like independence which the
country-town retailer is believed to have enjoyed once upon a
time. But the country-town retailer, too, still stands stiffly on
the vested rights of the trade and of the town; he is by
sentiment and habitual outlook a business man who guides, or
would like to guide, his enterprise by the principle of charging
what the traffic will bear, of buying cheap and selling dear. He
still manages to sell dear, but he does not commonly buy cheap,
except what he buys of the farmer, for the massive vested
interests in the background now decide for him, in the main, how
much his traffic will bear. He is not placed so very differently
from the farmer in this respect, except that, being a middleman,
he can in some appreciable degree shift the burden to a third
party. The third party in the case is the farmer; the massive
vested interests who move in the background of the market do not
lend themselves to that purpose.
    Except for the increasing number of tenant farmers, the
American farmers of the large agricultural sections still are
owners who cultivate their own ground. They are owners of
property, who might be said to have an investment in their own
farms, and therefore they fancy that they have a vested interest
in the farm and its earning-capacity. They have carried over out
of the past and its old order of things a delusion to the effect
that they have something to lose. It is quite a natural and
rather an engaging delusion, since, barring incumbrances, they
are seized of a good and valid title at law, to a very tangible
and useful form of property. And by due provision of law and
custom they are quite free to use or abuse their holdings in the
land, to buy and sell it and its produce altogether at their own
pleasure. It is small wonder if the farmers, with the genial
traditions of the day before yesterday still running full and
free in their sophisticated brains, are given to consider
themselves typical holders of a legitimate vested interest of a
very substantial kind. In all of which they count without their
host; their host, under the new order of business, being those
massive vested interests that move obscurely in the background of
the market, and whose rule of life it is to buy cheap and sell dear.
    In the ordinary case the farmers of the great American
farming regions are owners of the land and improvements, except
for an increasing proportion of tenant farmers. But it is the
farmer-owner that is commonly had in mind in speaking of the
American farmers as a class. Barring incumbrances, these
farmer-owners have a good and valid title to their land and
improvements; but their title remains good only so long as the
run of the market for what they need and for what they have to
sell does not take such a turn that the title will pass by
process of liquidation into other hands, as may always happen.
And the run of the market which conditions the farmer's work and
livelihood has now come to depend on the highly impersonal
manoeuvres of those massive interests that move in the background
and find a profit in buying cheap and selling dear. In point of
law and custom there is, of course, nothing to hinder the
American farmer from considering himself to be possessed of a
vested interest in his farm and its working, if that pleases his
fancy. The circumstances which decide what he may do with his
farm and its equipment, however, are prescribed for him quite
deliberately and quite narrowly by those other vested interests
in the background, which are massive enough to regulate the
course of things in business and industry at large. He is caught
in the system, and he does not govern the set and motions of the
system. So that the question of his effectual standing as a
vested interest becomes a question of fact, not of preference and
genial tradition.
    A vested interest is a legitimate right to get something for
nothing. The American farmer -- say, the ordinary farmer of the
grain-growing Middle West -- can be said to be possessed of such
a vested interest if he habitually and securely gets something in
the way of free income above cost, counting as cost the ordinary
rate of wages for work done on the farm plus ordinary returns on
the replacement value of the means of production which he
employs. Now it is notorious that, except for quite exceptional
cases, there are no intangible assets in farming; and intangible
assets are the chief and ordinary indication of free income, that
is to say, of getting something for nothing. Any concern that can
claim no intangible assets, in the way of valuable good-will,
monopoly rights, or outstanding corporation securities, has no
substantial claim to be rated as a vested interest. What
constitutes a valid claim to standing as a vested interest is the
assured customary ability to get something more in the way of
income than a full equivalent for tangible performance in the way
of productive work.
    The returns which these farmers are in the habit of getting
from their own work and from the work of their household and
hired help do not ordinarily include anything that can be called
free or unearned income, -- unless one should go so far as to
declare that income reckoned at ordinary rates on the tangible
assets engaged in this industry is to be classed as unearned
income, which is not the usual meaning of the expression. It may
be that popular opinion on these matters will take such a turn
some time that men will come to consider that income which is
derived from the use of land and equipment is rightly to be
counted as unearned income, because it does not correspond to any
tangible performance in the way of productive work on the part of
the person to whom it goes. But for the present that is not the
popular sense of the matter, and that is not the meaning of the
words in popular usage. For the present, at least, reasonable
returns on the replacement value of tangible assets are not
considered to be unearned income.
    It is true, the habits of thought engendered by the machine
system in industry and by the mechanically standardised
organisation of daily life under this new order, as well as by
the material sciences, are of such a character as would incline
the common man to rate all men and things in terms of tangible
performance rather than in terms of legal title and ancient
usage. And it may well come to pass, in time, that men will
consider any income unearned which exceeds a fair return for
tangible performance in the way of productive work on the part of
the person to whom the income goes. The mechanistic logic of the
new order of industry drives in that direction, and it may well
be that the frame of mind engendered by this training in
matter-of-fact ways of thinking will presently so shape popular
sentiment that all income from property, simply on the basis of
ownership, will be disallowed, whether the property is tangible
or intangible. All that is a speculative question running into
the future. It is to be recognised and taken account of that the
immutable principles of law and equity, in matters of ownership
and income as well as in other connections, are products of
habit, and that habits are always liable to change in response to
altered circumstances, and the drift of circumstances is now
apparently setting in that direction. But popular sentiment has
not yet reached that degree of emancipation from those good old
principles of self-help and secure ownership that go to make up
the modern (eighteenth-century) point of view in law and custom.
The equity of income derived from the use of tangible property
may presently become a moot question; but it is not so today,
outside of certain classes in the population whom the law and the
courts are endeavoring to discourage. It is the business of the
law and the courts to discourage any change of insight or opinion.
    It appears, therefore, that his conditions of life should
throw the American farmer in with the common man who has
substantially nothing to lose, beyond what the vested interests
of business can always take over at their own discretion and in
their own good time. In point of material fact he has ceased to
be a self-directing agent; and self-help has for him come
substantially to be a make-believe; although, of course, in point
of legal formality he still continues to enjoy all the ancient
rights and immunities of secure ownership and self-help. Yet it
is no less patent a fact of current history that the American
farmer continues, on the whole, to stand fast by those principles
of self-help and free bargaining which enable the vested
interests to play fast and loose with him and all his works. Such
is the force of habit and tradition.
    The reason, or at least the preconception, by force of which
the American farmers have been led, in effect, to side with the
vested interests rather than with the common man, comes of the
fact that the farmers are not only farmers but also owners of
speculative real estate. And it is as speculators in land-values
that they find themselves on the side of unearned income. As
land-owners they aim and confidently hope to get something for
nothing in the unearned increase of land-values. But all the
while they overlook the fact that the future increase of
land-values, on which they pin their hopes, is already discounted
in the present price of the land,- except for exceptional and
fortuitous cases. As is known to all persons who are at all
informed on this topic, farmland holdings in the typical American
farming regions are over-capitalised, in the sense that the
current market value of these farm-lands is considerably greater
than the capitalised value of the income to be derived from their
current use as farmlands. This excess value of the farmlands is a
speculative value due to discounting the future increased value
which these lands are expected to gain with the further growth of
population and with increasing facilities for marketing the farm
products of the locality. It is therefore as a land speculator
holding his land for a rise, not as a husbandman cultivating the
soil for a livelihood, that the prairie farmer, e.g., comes in
for an excess value and an over-capitalisation of his holdings.
All of which has much in common with the intangible assets of the
vested interests, and all of which persuades the prairie farmer
that he is of a class apart from the common man who has nothing to lose.
    But he can come in for this unearned gain only by the
eventual sale of his holdings, not in their cur rent use as a
means of production in farming. As a business man doing a
speculative business in farmlands the American farmer, in a small
way, runs true to form and so is entitled to a modest place among
that class of substantial citizens who, get something for nothing
by cornering the supply and "sitting tight." And all the while
the massive interests that move obscurely in the background of
the market are increasingly in a position, in their own good
time, to disallow the farmer just so much of this still-born gain
as they may dispassionately consider to be convenient for their
own ends. And so the farmer-speculator of the prairie continues
to stand fast by the principles of equity which entitle these
vested interests to play fast and loose with him and all his works.
    The facts of the case stand somewhat different as regards the
American farmer's gains from his work as a husbandman, or from
the use which he makes of his land and stock in farming. His
returns from his work are notably scant. So much so that it is
still an open question whether, taken one with another, the
American farmer's assets in land and other equipment enable him,
one year with another, to earn more than what would count as
ordinary wages for the labor which these assets enable him to put
into his product. But it is beyond question that the common run
of those American farmers who "work their own land" get at the
best a very modest return for the use of their land and stock, --
so scant, indeed, that if usage admitted such an expression, it
would be fair to say that the farmer, considered as a going
concern, should be credited with an appreciable item of "negative
intangible assets," such as habitually to reduce the net average
return on his total active assets appreciably below the ordinary
rate of discount. His case, in other words, is the reverse of the
typical business concern of the larger sort, which comes in for a
net excess over ordinary rates of discount on its tangible
assets, and which is thereby enabled to write into its accounts a
certain amount of intangible assets, and so come into line as a
vested interest. The farmer, too, is caught in the net of the new
order; but his occupation does not belong to that new order of
business enterprise in which earning-capacity habitually outruns
the capitalised value of the underlying physical property. 

    Evidently the cleavage due to be brought on by the new order
in business and industry, between the vested interests and the
common man, has not vet fallen into clear lines, at least not in
America. The common man does not know himself as such, at least
not yet, and the sections of the population which go to make up
the common lot as contrasted with the vested interests have not
yet learned to make common cause. The American tradition stands
in the way. This tradition says that the people of the republic
are made up of ungraded masterless men who enjoy all the rights
and immunities of self-direction, self-help, free bargaining, and
equal opportunity, quite after the fashion that was sketched into
the great constituent documents of the eighteenth century.
    Much doubt and some discontent is afoot. It is becoming
increasingly evident that the facts of everyday life under the
new order do not fall in with the inherited principles of law and
custom; but the farmers, farm laborers, factory hands, mine
workmen, lumber hands, and retail tradesmen have not come to
anything like a realisation of that new order of economic life
which throws them in together on one side of a line of division,
on the other side of which stand the vested interests and the
kept classes. They have not yet come to realise that all of them
together have nothing to lose except such things as the vested
interests can quite legally and legitimately deprive them of,
with full sanction of law and custom as it runs, so soon and so
far as it shall suit the convenience of the vested interests to
make such a move. These people of the variegated mass have no
safeguard, in fact, against the control of their conditions of
life exercised by those massive interests that move obscurely in
the background of the market, except such considerations of
expediency as may govern the manoeuvres of those massive ones who
so move obscurely in the background. That is to say, the
conditions of life for the variegated mass are determined by what
the traffic will bear, according to the calculations of self-help
which guide the vested interests, all the while that the farmers,
workmen, consumers, the common lot, are still animated with the
fancy that they have themselves something to say in these premises.
    It is otherwise with the vested interests, on the whole. They
take a more perspicuous view of their own case and of the
predicament of the common man, the party of the second part.
Whereas the variegated mass that makes up the common lot have not
hitherto deliberately taken sides together or defined their own
attitude toward the established system of law and order and its
continuance, and so are neither in the right nor in the wrong as
regards this matter, the vested interests and the kept classes,
on the other hand, have reached insight and definition of what
they need, want, and are entitled to. They have deliberated and
chosen their part in the division, partly by interest and partly
by ingrained habitual bent, no doubt, -- and they are always in
the right. They owe their position and the blessings that come of
it -- free income and social prerogative -- to the continued
enforcement of these eighteenth-century principles of law and
order under conditions created by the twentieth-century state of
the industrial arts. Therefore, it is incumbent on them, in point
of expediency, to stand strongly for the established order of
inalienable eighteenth-century rights; and they are at the same
time in the right, in point of law and morals, in so doing, since
what is right in law and morals is always a question of settled
habit, and settled habit is always a legacy out of the past. To
take their own part, therefore, the vested interests and the kept
classes have nothing more perplexing to do than simply to follow
the leadings of their settled code in all questions of law and
order and thereby to fall neatly in with the leading of their own
pecuniary advantage, and always and on both counts to keep their
poise as safe and sound citizens intelligently abiding by the
good old principles of right and honest living which safeguard
their vested rights.
    The common man is not so fortunate. He cannot effectually
take his own part in this difficult conjuncture of circumstances
without getting on the wrong side of the established run of law
and morals, Unless he is content to go on as the party of the
second part in a traffic that is controlled by the massive
interests on the footing of what they consider that the traffic
will bear, he will find himself in the wrong and may even come in
for the comfortless attention of the courts. Whereas if he makes
his peace with the established run of law and custom, and so
continues to be rated as a good man and true, he will find that
his livelihood falls into a dubious and increasingly precarious
case. It is not for nothing that he is a common man.
    So caught in a quandary, it is small wonder if the common man
is somewhat irresponsible and unsteady in his aims and conduct,
so far as touches industrial affairs. A pious regard for the
received code of right and honest living holds him to a
submissive quietism, a make-believe of self-help and fair
dealings; whereas the material and pecuniary circumstances that
condition his livelihood under this new order drive him to fall
back on the underlying rule of Live and Let Live, and to revise
the established code of law and custom to such purpose that this
underlying rule of life shall be brought into bearing in point of
fact as well as in point of legal formality. And the training to
which the hard matter-of-fact logic of the machine industry and
the mechanical organisation of life now subjects him, constantly
bends him to a matter-of-fact outlook, to a rating of men and
things in terms of tangible performance, and to an ever slighter
respect for the traditional principles that have come down from
the eighteenth century. The common man is constantly and
increasingly exposed to the risk of becoming an undesirable
citizen in the eyes of the votaries of law and order. In other
words, vested rights to free income are no longer felt to be
secure in case the common man should take over the direction of affairs.
    Such a vested right to free income, that is to say this
legitimate right of the kept classes to their keep at the cost of
the underlying community, does not fall in with the lines of that
mechanistic outlook and mechanistic logic which is forever
gaining ground as the new order of industry goes forward. Such
free income, which measures neither the investor's personal
contribution to the production of goods nor his necessary
consumption while engaged in industry, does not fit in with that
mechanistic reckoning that runs in terms of tangible performance,
and that grows ever increasingly habitual and convincing with
every further habituation to the new order of things in the
industrial world. Vested perquisites have no place in the new
scheme of things; hence the new scheme is a menace. It is true,
the well stabilised principles of the eighteenth century still
continue to rate the investor as a producer of goods; but it is
equally true that such a rating is palpable nonsense according to
the mechanistic calculus of the new order, brought into bearing
by the mechanical industry and material science. This may all be
an untoward and distasteful turn of circumstances, but there is
no gain of tranquillity to be got from ignoring it.
    So it comes about that, increasingly, throughout broad
classes in these industrial countries there is coming to be
visible a lack of respect and affection for the vested interests,
whether of business or of privilege; and it rises to the pitch of
distrust and plain disallowance among those peoples on whom the
preconceptions of the eighteenth century sit more lightly and
loosely. It still is all vague and shifty. So much so that the
guardians of law and order are still persuaded that they "have
the situation in hand." But the popular feeling of incongruity
and uselessness in the current run of law and custom under the
rule of these timeworn preconceptions is visibly gaining ground
and gathering consistency, even in so well ordered a republic as
America. A cleavage of sentiment is beginning to run between the
vested interests and the variegated mass of the common lot., and
increasingly the common man is growing apathetic, or even
impervious, to appeals grounded on these timeworn preconceptions
of equity and good usage.
    The fact of such a cleavage, as well as the existence of any
ground for it, is painstakingly denied by the spokesmen of the
vested interests; and in support of that comfortable delusion
they will cite the exemplary fashion in which certain
monopolistic labor organisations "stand pat," It is true, such a
quasi-vested interest of the A. F. of L., which unbidden assumes
to speak for the common man, can doubtless be counted on to
"stand pat" on that system of imponderables in which its vested
perquisites reside. So also the kept classes, and their stewards
among the keepers of law and custom, are inflexibly content to
let well enough alone. They can be counted on to see nothing more
to the point than a stupidly subversive rapacity in that
loosening of the bonds of convention that so makes light of the
sacred rights of vested interest. Interested motives may count
for something on both sides, but it is also true that the kept
classes and the businesslike managers of the vested interests,
whose place in the economy of nature it is to make money by
conforming to the received law and custom, have not in the same
degree undergone the shattering discipline of the New Order. They
are, therefore, still to be found standing blamelessly on the
stable principles of the Modern Point of View.
    But a large fraction of the people in the industrial
countries is visibly growing uneasy under these principles as
they work out under existing circumstances. So, e.g., it is
evident that the common man within the United Kingdom, in so far
as the Labor Party is his accredited spokesman, is increasingly
restive under the state of "things as they are," and it is
scarcely less evident that he finds his abiding grievance in the
Vested Interests and that system of law and custom which
cherishes them. And these men, as well as their like in other
countries, are still in an unsettled state of advance to
positions more definitely at variance with the received law and
custom. In some instances, and indeed in more or less massive
formation, this movement of dissent has already reached the limit
of tolerance and has found itself sharply checked by the
constituted keepers of law and custom.
    It is perhaps not unwarranted to count the I. W. W. as such a
vanguard of dissent, in spite of the slight consistency and the
exuberance of its movements. After all, these and their like,
here and in other countries are an element of appreciable weight
in the population. They are also increasingly numerous, in spite
of well-conceived repressive measures, and they appear to grow
increasingly sure. And it will not do to lose sight of the
presumption that, while they may be gravely in the wrong, they
are likely not to be far out of touch with the undistinguished
mass of the common sort who still continue to live within the
law. It should seem likely that the peculiar moral and
intellectual bent which marks them as "undesirable citizens"
will, all the while, be found to run closer to that of the common
man than the corresponding bent of the law-abiding beneficiaries
under the existing system.
    Vaguely, perhaps, and with a picturesque irresponsibility,
these and their like are talking and thinking at cross-purposes
with the principles of free bargain and self-help. There is
reason to believe that to their own thinking, when cast in the
terms in which they conceive these things, their notions of
reasonable human intercourse are not equally fantastic and
inconclusive. So, there is the dread word. Syndicalism, which is
quite properly unintelligible to the kept classes and the adepts
of corporation finance, and which has no definable meaning within
the constituent principles of the eighteenth century. But the
notion of it seems to come easy, by mere lapse of habit, to these
others in whom the discipline of the New Order has begun to
displace the preconceptions of the eighteenth century.
    Then there are, in this country, the agrarian syndicalists,
in the shape of the Nonpartisan League, large, loose, animated,
and untidy, but sure of itself in its settled disallowance of the
Vested Interests, and fast passing the limit of tolerance in its
inattention to the timeworn principles of equity. How serious is
the moral dereliction and the subversive stupidity of these
agrarian syndicalists, in the eyes of those who still hold fast
to the eighteenth century, may be gathered from the animation of
the business community, the commercial clubs, the Rotarians, and
the traveling salesmen, in any glace where the League raises its
untidy head. And as if advisedly to complete the case, these
agrarians, as well as their running-mates in the industrial
centers and along the open road, are found to be slack in respect
of their national spirit. So, at least, it is said by those who
are interested to know.
    It is not that these and their like are ready with "a
satisfactory constructive program," such as the people of the
uplift require to be shown before they will believe that things
are due to change. It is something of the simpler and cruder
sort, such as history is full of, to the effect that whenever and
so far as the time-worn rules no longer fit the new material
circumstances they presently fail to carry conviction as they
once did. Such wear and tear of institutions is unavoidable where
circumstances change; and it is through the altered personal
equation of those elements of the population which are most
directly exposed to the changing circumstances that the wear and
tear of institutions may be expected to take effect. To these
untidy creatures of the New Order common honesty appears to mean
vaguely something else, perhaps something more exacting, than
what was "nominated in the bond" at the time when the free
bargain and self-help were written into the moral constitution of
Christendom by the handicraft industry and the petty trade. And
why should it not?