w before.

In all good faith, and with none but inconsequential reservations, the
material fortunes of modern civilised men--together with much else--have
so been placed on a pecuniary footing, with little to safeguard them at
any point except the inalienable right of pecuniary self-direction and
initiative, in an environment where virtually all the indispensable
means of pecuniary self-direction and initiative are in the hands of
that contracted category of owners spoken of above. A numerical
minority--under ten percent of the population--constitutes a conclusive
pecuniary majority--over ninety percent of the means--under a system of
law and order that turns on the inalienable right of owners to dispose
of the means in hand as may suit their convenience and profit,--always
barring recourse to illegal force or fraud. There is, however, a very
appreciable margin of legal recourse to force and of legally protected
fraud available in case of need. Of course the expedients here referred
to as legally available force and fraud in the defense of pecuniary
rights and the pursuit of pecuniary gain are not force and fraud _de
jure_ but only _de facto_. They are further, and well known,
illustrations of how the ulterior consequences of given institutional
arrangements and given conventionalised principles (habits of thought)
of conduct may in time come to run at cross purposes with the initial
purpose that led to the acceptance of these institutions and to the
confirmation and standardisation of these habitual norms of conduct. For
the time being, however, they are "fundamentally and eternally right and
good."

Being a pecuniary majority--what may be called a majority of the
corporate stock--of the nation, it is also fundamentally and eternally
right and good that the pecuniary interests of the owners of the
material means of life should rule unabated in all those matters of
public policy that touch on the material fortunes of the community at
large. Barring a slight and intermittent mutter of discontent, this
arrangement has also the cordial approval of popular sentiment in these
modern democratic nations. One need only recall the paramount importance
which is popularly attached to the maintenance and extension of the
nation's trade--for the use of the investors--or the perpetuation of a
protective tariff--for the use of the protected business concerns--or,
again, the scrupulous regard with which such a body of public servants