h the extra stimulus of the belief that individual effort was
throwing open vast new resources to the world, the course of
accumulation has been viewed with approval and in the spirit of
emulation.

We, however, have recently been assailed by growing doubts in regard to
the idea of economic progress based upon capital accumulation. We have
witnessed the growth of severe tensions between those who receive the
greatest share of the income from accumulated wealth and the other
groups engaged in production. It is pertinent to inquire into the
reasons for this change of feeling; for, within the sphere of its
operation, any policy of wage settlement must aim to lessen or eliminate
this cause of discontent.

First of all it must be observed that the bulk of the accumulation has
been accomplished by a relatively small number of individuals. If this
concentration of wealth were peculiar to the United States it might be
attributed to the fact that this country has undergone exceptionally
rapid expansion, during which the opportunities for accumulation were
both unusual and irregularly distributed. But the explanation seems to
lie deeper, for the same condition is to be found in all advanced
industrial nations. The opinion may be ventured that it is
characteristic of such industrial arrangements as have prevailed in the
United States, that the tendency towards diffusion of the results of
advances in production (obscured, besides, by the growth of population)
should lag seriously behind the tendency towards concentration.[11]

The condition of inequality of wealth, heretofore a condition of the
process of capital accumulation, is one of the chief causes of the
embitterment of industrial relations. Firstly, it is one of the factors
which tend to the creation of separate group interests. A high degree of
inequality of accumulated wealth leads to a concentration of the control
of the larger industrial enterprises within the hands of a small
section of the community. The interest in high returns from accumulated
wealth appears to be a group interest. And, indeed, if the lag of
diffusion behind concentration passes a certain point it is in reality a
group interest--in the sense of being opposed to the general interest.
Secondly, great inequality of wealth leads to the growth of institutions
incompatible with the purposes of a democracy. These are a cause of
economic antagonism, which has its reflection in industrial relations.
Thirdl