rofounder significance, and that is the reconstruction and the
vast proliferation of what constituted the middle class of the old
order. It is now, indeed, no longer a middle class at all. Rather all
the definite classes in the old scheme of functional precedence have
melted and mingled,[25] and in the molten mass there has appeared a vast
intricate confusion of different sorts of people, some sailing about
upon floating masses of irresponsible property, some buoyed by smaller
fragments, some clinging desperately enough to insignificant atoms, a
great and varied multitude swimming successfully without aid, or with an
amount of aid that is negligible in relation to their own efforts, and
an equally varied multitude of less capable ones clinging to the
swimmers, clinging to the floating rich, or clutching empty-handed and
thrust and sinking down. This is the typical aspect of the modern
community. It will serve as a general description of either the United
States or any western European State, and the day is not far distant
when the extension of means of communication, and of the shareholding
method of conducting affairs, will make it applicable to the whole
world. Save, possibly, in a few islands and inaccessible places and
regardless of colour or creed, this process of deliquescence seems
destined to spread. In a great diversity of tongues, in the phases of a
number of conflicting moral and theological traditions, in the varying
tones of contrasting racial temperaments, the grandchildren of black and
white, and red and brown, will be seeking more or less consciously to
express themselves in relation to these new and unusual social
conditions. But the change itself is no longer amenable to their
interpretations, the world-wide spreading of swift communication, the
obliteration of town and country, the deliquescence of the local social
order, have an air of being processes as uncontrollable by such
collective intelligence as men can at present command, and as
indifferent to his local peculiarities and prejudices as the movements
of winds and tides....

It will be obvious that the interest of this speculation, at any rate,
centres upon this great intermediate mass of people who are neither
passively wealthy, the sleeping partners of change, nor helplessly
thrust out of the process. Indeed, from our point of view--an inquiry
into coming things--these non-effective masses would have but the
slightest interest were it not for