CHAPTER XXIV

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASSCONTINUED

THE INFLUENCE OF AMBITIOUS YOUNG MEN-SECURITY OF THE DOMINANT CLASS IN AN OPEN SYSTEM-IS THERE Danger of ANARCHY AND SPOLIATION?-WHETHER THE SWAY OF RICHES IS GREATER NOW THAN FORMERLY-WHETHER GREATER IN AMERICA THAN IN ENGLAND.

IN any society where there is some freedom of opportunity ambitious young men are an element of extreme importance. Their numbers are formidable and their intelligence and aggressiveness much more so: in short, they want an opening and are bound to get it.

As the members of this class are mainly impecunious, it might be supposed that they would be a notable offset to the power of wealth; and in a sense they are. It is their interest to keep open the opportunity to rise, and they are accordingly inimical to caste and everything which tends toward it. But it by no means follows that they are opposed to the ascendency of an upper class based on wealth and position. This becomes evident when one remembers that their aim is not to raise the lower class, but to get out of it. The rising young man does not identify himself with the lowly stratum of society in which he is born, but, dissatisfied with his antecedents, he strikes out for wealth, power or fame. In doing so he fixes his eyes on those who have these things, and from whose example

he may learn how to gain them; thus tending to accept the ideals and standards of the actual upper class. He gives a great deal of attention to the points of view of A, a railroad president, B, a senator, and even of C, head of a labor organization, but to a mere farmer or laborer, whose hand is on no levers, he is indifferent.

The students of our universities are subject to a conflict between the healthy idealism of youth, which prevails with the more generous, and the influences just indicated, which become stronger as education draws closer to practical affairs. On the whole, possessed of one great privilege and eager to gain others, they are not so close in spirit to the unprivileged classes as might be imagined.

Thus the force of ambitious youth goes largely to support the ascendency of the money-getting class: directly, in that it accepts the ideals of this class and looks forward to sharing its power; indirectly, in that it is withdrawn from the resources of the humbler class. How long will the rising lawyer retain his college enthusiasm for social reform if the powers that be welcome him and pay him salaries?

We have then the fact, rather paradoxical at first sight, that the dominant class in a competitive society, although unstable as to its individual membership, may well be more secure as a whole than the corresponding class under any other system-precisely because it continually draws into itself most of the natural ability from the other classes. Throughout English history, we are told, the salvation of the aristocracy has been its comparative openness, the fact that ability could percolate into it, instead

of rising up behind it like water behind a dam, as was the case in pre-revolutionary France. And the same principle is working even more effectually in our own economic order. A great weakness of the trades-union movement, as of all attempts at self-assertion on the part of the less privileged classes, is that it is constantly losing able leaders. As soon as a man shows that marked capacity which would fit him to do something for his fellows, it is ten to one that he accepts a remunerative position, and so passes into the upper class. It is increasingly the practice -perhaps in some degree the deliberate policy—of organized wealth to win over in this way the more promising leaders from the side of labor; and this is one respect in which a greater class-consciousness and loyalty on the part of the latter would add to its strength.

Thus it is possible to have freedom to rise and yet ha at the same time a miserable and perhaps degraded lower class-degraded because the social system is administered with little regard to its just needs. This is more the case with our own industrial system, and with modern society in general, than our self-satisfaction commonly perceives. Our one-sided ideal of freedom, excellent so far as it goes, has somewhat blinded us to the encroachments of slavery on an unguarded flank. I mean such things as bad housing, insecurity, excessive and deadening work, child labor and the lack of any education suited to the industrial masses -the last likely to be remedied now that it is seen to threaten industrial prosperity.

It is hard to say how much of the timidity noticeable in the discussion of questions of this sort by the comfortable

classes is due to a vague dread of anarchy and spoliation by an organized and self-conscious lower class; but probably a good deal. If power, under democracy, goes with numbers, and the many are poor, it would seem at first glance that they would despoil the few.

To conservative thinkers a hundred, or even fifty, years ago this seemed almost an axiom, but a less superficial philosophy has combined with experience to show that anarchy, in Mr. Bryce's words, "is of all dangers or bugbears the one which the modern world has least cause to fear."*

The most apparent reason for this is the one already discussed, namely, that power does not go with mere numbers, under a democracy more than under any other form of government; a democratic aristocracy, that is, one whose members maintain their position in an open struggle, being without doubt the strongest that can exist. We shall never have a revolution until we have caste; which, as I have tried to show, is but a remote possibility. And as an ally of established power we have to reckon with the inertia of social structure, something so massive and profound that the loudest agitation is no more than a breeze ruffling the surface of deep waters. Dominated by the habits which it has generated, we all of us, even the agitators, uphold the existing order without knowing it. (There may, of course, be sudden changes due to the fall of what has long been rotten, but I see little cause to suppose that the timbers of our system are in this condition: they are rough and unlovely, but far from weak.

Another conservative condition is that economic solid

*The American Commonwealth, Chapter 94.

arity which makes the welfare of all classes hang together, so that any general disturbance causes suffering to all, and more to the weak than to the strong. A sudden change, however reasonable its direction, must in this way discredit its authors and bring about reaction. The handworking classes may get much less of the economic product than they ought to; but they are not so badly off that they cannot be worse, and, unless they lose their heads, will always unite with other classes to preserve that state of order which is the guaranty of what they have. Anarchy would benefit no one, unless criminals, and anything resembling a general strike I take to be a childish expedient not likely to be countenanced by the more sober and hardheaded leaders of the labor movement. All solid betterment of the workers must be based on and get its nourishment from the existing system of production, which must only gradually be changed, however defective it may be. The success of strikes, and of all similar tactics, depends, in the nature of things, on their being partial, and drawing support from the undisturbed remainder of the process. It is the same principle of mingling stability with improvement which governs progress everywhere.

And, finally, effective organization on the part of the less privileged classes goes along with intelligence, with training in orderly methods of self-assertion, and with education in the necessity of patience and compromise. The more real power they get, the more conservatively, as a rule, they use it. Where free speech exists there will always be a noisy party advocating precipitate change (and a timid party who are afraid of them), but the more the