they are vested interests of business or of privilege. It is more than probable that in such a case national pretensions in the way of preferential concessions in commerce and investment will be allowed to fall into neglect, so far as to lose all value to any vested interest whose fortunes they touch. These things have no effect in the way of net tangible performance. They only afford ground for preferential pecuniary rights, always at the cost of someone else; but they are of the essence of things in that pecuniary order within which the vested interests of business live and move. So also such a matter-of-fact project of reconstruction will be likely materially to revise outstanding credit obligations, including corporation securities, or perhaps even bluntly to disallow claims of this character to free income on the part of beneficiaries who can show no claim on grounds of current tangible performance. All of which is inimical to the best good of the vested interests and the kept classes.

Reconstruction which partakes of this character in any sensible degree will necessarily be viewed with the liveliest apprehension by the gentlemanly statesmen of the old school, by the kept classes, and by the captains of finance. It will be deplored as a subversion of the economic order, a destruction of the country's wealth, a disorganisation of industry, and a sure way to poverty, bloodshed, and pestilence. In point of fact, of course, what such a project may be counted on to subvert is that dominion of ownership by which the vested interests control and retard the rate and volume of production. The destruction of wealth in such a case will touch, directly, only the

value of the securities, not the material objects to which these securities have given title of ownership; it would be a disallowance of ownership, not a destruction of useful goods. Nor need any disorganisation or disability of productive industry follow from such a move; indeed, the apprehended cancelment of the claims to income covered by negotiable securities would by that much cancel the fixed overhead charges resting on industrial enterprise, and so further production by that much. But for those persons and classes whose keep is drawn from prescriptive rights of ownership or of privilege the consequences of such a shifting of ground from vested interest to tangible performance would doubtless be deplorable. In short, "Bolshevism is a menace "; and the wayfaring man out of Armenia will be likely to ask: A menace to whom?

VIII

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