Much doubt and some discontent is afoot. It is becoming increasingly evident that the facts of everyday life under the new order do not fall in with the inherited principles of law and custom; but the farmers, farm laborers, factory hands, mine workmen, lumber hands, and retail tradesmen have not come to anything like a realisation of that new order of economic life which throws them in together on one side of a line of division, on the other side of which stand the vested interests and the kept classes. They have not yet come to realise that all of them together have nothing to lose except such things as the vested interests can quite legally and legitimately deprive them of, with full sanction of law and custom as it runs, so soon and so far as it shall suit the convenience of the vested interests to make such a move. These people of the variegated mass have no safeguard, in fact, against the control of their conditions of life exercised by those massive interests that move obscurely in the background of the market, except such considerations of expediency as may govern the manoeuvres of those massive ones who so move obscurely in the background. That is to say, the conditions of life for the variegated mass are determined by what the traffic will bear, according to the calculations of self-help which guide the vested interests, all the while that the farmers, workmen, consumers, the common lot, are still animated with the fancy that they have themselves something to say in these premises.
It is otherwise with the vested interests, on the whole. They take a more perspicuous view of their own case and of the predicament of the common man, the party of the second part.
Whereas the variegated mass that makes up the common lot have not hitherto deliberately taken sides together or defined their own attitude toward the established system of law and order and its continuance, and so are neither in the right nor in the wrong as regards this matter, the vested interests and the kept classes, on the other hand, have reached insight and definition of what they need, want, and are entitled to. They have deliberated and chosen their part in the division, partly by interest and partly by ingrained habitual bent, no doubt, -- and they are always in the right. They owe their position and the blessings that come of it -- free income and social prerogative -- to the continued enforcement of these eighteenth-century principles of law and order under conditions created by the twentieth-century state of the industrial arts. Therefore, it is incumbent on them, in point of expediency, to stand strongly for the established order of inalienable eighteenth-century rights; and they are at the same time in the right, in point of law and morals, in so doing, since what is right in law and morals is always a question of settled habit, and settled habit is always a legacy out of the past. To take their own part, therefore, the vested interests and the kept classes have nothing more perplexing to do than simply to follow the leadings of their settled code in all questions of law and order and thereby to fall neatly in with the leading of their own pecuniary advantage, and always and on both counts to keep their poise as safe and sound citizens intelligently abiding by the good old principles of right and honest living which safeguard their vested rights.
The common man is not so fortunate. He cannot effectually take his own part in this difficult conjuncture of circumstances without getting on the wrong side of the established run of law and morals, Unless he is content to go on as the party of the second part in a traffic that is controlled by the massive interests on the footing of what they consider that the traffic will bear, he will find himself in the wrong and may even come in for the comfortless attention of the courts. Whereas if he makes his peace with the established run of law and custom, and so continues to be rated as a good man and true, he will find that his livelihood falls into a dubious and increasingly precarious case. It is not for nothing that he is a common man.
So caught in a quandary, it is small wonder if the common man is somewhat irresponsible and unsteady in his aims and conduct, so far as touches industrial affairs. A pious regard for the received code of right and honest living holds him to a submissive quietism, a make-believe of self-help and fair dealings; whereas the material and pecuniary circumstances that condition his livelihood under this new order drive him to fall back on the underlying rule of Live and Let Live, and to revise the established code of law and custom to such purpose that this underlying rule of life shall be brought into bearing in point of fact as well as in point of legal formality. And the training to which the hard matter-of-fact logic of the machine industry and the mechanical organisation of life now subjects him, constantly bends him to a matter-of-fact outlook, to a rating of men and things in terms of tangible performance, and to an ever slighter respect for the traditional principles that have come down from the eighteenth century. The common man is constantly and increasingly exposed to the risk of becoming an undesirable citizen in the eyes of the votaries of law and order. In other words, vested rights to free income are no longer felt to be secure in case the common man should take over the direction of affairs.
