class; it is of universal growth, and tends by the prominent part which
it plays in modern industry, to reduce to their lowest terms the class
differences of the former era.

The rewards of professional life are gauged primarily by character and
native endowment, and are, to this extent, open to the children of
workmen. New barriers, however, arise here in the ampler education
which, as time advances, is demanded of persons in these pursuits; and
these barriers give to a part of the fourth and highest class in the
scheme that we are criticising a permanent basis of existence. Another
variety of labor retains a pre-eminence based on native adaptations and
special opportunities. It is the work of the employer himself. It is an
organizing and directing function, and in large industries is performed
only in part by the owners. A portion of this work is committed to hired
assistants. Strictly speaking, the entrepreneur, or employer, of a great
establishment is not one man, but many, who work in a collective
capacity, and who receive a reward that, taken in the aggregate,
constitutes the "wages of superintendence." To some members of this
administrative body the returns come in the form of salaries, while to
others they come partly in the form of dividends; but if we regard their
work in its entirety, and consider their wages in a single sum, we must
class it with entrepreneur's profits rather than with ordinary wages. It
is a different part of the product from the sum distributed among day
laborers; and this fact separates the administrative group from the
class considered in our present inquiry. Positions of the higher sort
are usually gained either through the possession of capital or through
relations to persons who possess it. Though clerkships of the lower
grade demand no attainments which the children of workmen cannot gain,
and though promotion to the higher grades is still open, the tendency of
the time is to make the transition from the ranks of labor to those of
administration more and more difficult. The true laboring class is
merging its subdivisions, while it is separating more sharply from the
class whose interests, in test questions, place them on the side of
capital.

2. Competition and the Natural Harmony of Individual Interests[193]

The general industry of the society never can exceed what the capital of
the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept in
employment by any particular p