ating in such an
avowal. It is merely an assertion of the integrity of one's life and work.
As a matter of fact no class is so well fitted to face the threat of a
proletarian revolution as we harmless rich. It is the class that produces
generals, explorers, inventors, statesmen. A social revolution with its
stern attendant regimentation would bear most heavily on the relatively
undisciplined class of working people. The disciplined class of the
middling rich is better prepared to meet such an eventuality. Accordingly
it is no mere selfishness or complacency that leads the middling rich to
oppose the pretensions of proletarianism on one side and of capitalism on
the other. It is rather the assertion of sound middle class morality
against two opposite yet somewhat allied forms of social immorality--the
strength that exaggerates its claims, and the weakness that claims all the
privileges of strength.

We are useful too as conserving certain valuable ideas. When I mention the
idea of the right of private property, I expect to be laughed at by a
large class of enthusiasts. Yet all of civilization has been built up on
the distinction between _meum_ and _tuum_. Without this idea there is not
the slightest inducement to persistent individual effort nor possibility
of progress for the individual or for the race. The fruitful diversities,
the germinative inequalities between men all depend on this right. And
today the right to one's own is doubly under attack from the violence of
laboring men, and the guile of those in positions of financial trust. The
strikers who offer as an argument the burning of a mine or wrecking of a
mill, and the directors who manipulate corporation accounts to pay
unearned dividends, are both undermining the right of property. Against
such counsels of force and fraud, the representatives of the common sense
and funded wisdom of mankind are the middling rich. It is an unromantic
service--doubtless breaking other people's windows or scaling their bank
accounts is much more thrilling--it is a public service obviously tinged
with self-interest, but none the less a public service of high and timely
importance. The business of keeping the sanity of the world intact as
against the wilder expressions of social discontent, and the uglier
expressions of personal envy and greed, may seem to lack zest and
originality today. History may well take a different view of the matter.
It would not be surprising to find a pos