the term in the
course of theoretical discussion, as in the ordinary analysis of
distribution, it may be taken to include also other grades of workers,
whose incomes probably would not be so governed, as for example,
assistant or department managers of large businesses.

The recent past has witnessed important changes both in the economic
position of the wage earners, and in the relations between them and the
other groups engaged in industry. A close connection may be traced
between the two lines of change. Up to the beginning of the present
century, at any rate, it may be asserted that the wage earners of the
country were not separated from the rest of the industrial community,
either socially or economically; although at all times throughout the
last century, there was to be found a section of recent immigrant labor
which had not yet found its way into the main channels of economic
society. The farms, the shops and private businesses of the small and
semi-rural towns; these were the common origins and discipline of our
industrial leaders and of the more skilled groups of wage earners. There
was no great difference either of educational or of industrial
opportunity between the mass of men. The few great financial centers of
the East may have been the home of an established and separate economic
class, but this class was not one of the most important industrial
forces. The standard of life as well as the economic prospects of all
wage earners who had been thoroughly absorbed into the community
encouraged a feeling of equality and independence. The tradition of our
period of industrial expansion was that most men should seek to operate
their own farm or business (and be their own master). This tradition
could flourish as long as a great variety of industrial opportunity
existed for the ordinary individual. The first stages in the development
of our natural resources, the course of mechanical invention and
improvement, the rapid growth of our population--all these changes
stimulated independent enterprise, and offered great hopes of success in
enterprise to men possessed of common sense, energy, and character. No
family felt itself placed in a fixed position in the industrial scale
except by reason of its own inferior powers of utilizing opportunity.
The wage earners were those workers who worked for some one else, but
they did not form a separate class different in experience and outlook
from their employers. The possess