10 per cent of the total wealth of
the country and yet the tiny fraction of the population which owns this
wealth can exercise a dictatorial control over the economic policies
that underlie American public life.

4. _The Avenues of Mastery_

While control rests back directly or indirectly upon some form of
ownership, most owners exercise little or no control over economic
affairs. Instead they are made the victims of a social system under
which one group lives at the expense of another.

Against this tendency toward control by one group or class (usually a
minority) over the lives of another group or class (usually a majority)
the human spirit always has revolted. The United States in its earlier
years was an embodiment of the spirit of that revolt. President Wilson
characterized it excellently in 1916. Speaking of the American Flag, he
said,--"That flag was originally stained in very precious blood, blood
spilt, not for any dynasty, nor for any small controversies over
national advantage, but in order that a little body of three million men
in America might make sure that no man was their master."[40]

Against mastery lovers of liberty protest. Mastery means tyranny;
mastery means slavery.

Mastery has always been based upon some form of ownership. There is in
the United States a group, growing in size, of people who take more in
keep than they give in service; people who own land; franchises; stocks
and bonds and mortgages; real estate and other forms of investment
property; people who are living without ever lifting a finger in toil,
or giving anything in labor for an unceasing stream of necessaries,
comforts and luxuries. These people, directly or indirectly, are the
owners of the productive machinery of the United States.

Historically there have been a number of stages in the development of
mastery. First, there was the ownership of the body. One man owned
another man, as he might own a house or a pile of hides. At another
stage, the owner of the land--the feudal baron or the landlord--said to
the tenant, who worked on his land: "You stay on my land. You toil and
work and make bread and I will eat it." The present system of mastery is
based on the ownership by one group of people, of the productive wealth
upon which depends the livelihood of all. The masters of present day
economic society have in their possession the natural resources, the
tools, the franchises, patents, and the other phases of the moder