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

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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.

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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 a 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 fee.. 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 exist- & ence 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 sys

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tem 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