ally consulted are the men who have the biggest
stakes--the big bankers, the big manufacturers, the big masters of
commerce, the heads of railroad corporations and of steamship
corporations.... Every time it has come to a critical question, these
gentlemen have been yielded to and their demands have been treated as
the demands that should be followed as a matter of course. The
government of the United States at present is a foster-child of the
special interests" (p. 57-58). "The organization of business has become
more centralized, vastly more centralized, than the political
organization of the country itself" (p. 187). "An invisible empire has
been set up above the forms of democracy" (p. 35). "We are all caught in
a great economic system which is heartless" (p. 10).

This is the direct control exercised by the plutocracy over the
machinery of government. Its indirect control is no less important, and
is exercised in exactly the same way as in the case of the channels of
public opinion.

Lawyers receive preferment and fees from business--there is no other
large source of support for lawyers. Judges are chosen from among these
same lawyers. Usually they are lawyers who have won preferment and
emolument. Legislators are lawyers and business men, or the
representatives of lawyers and business men. The result is as logical as
it is inevitable.

The wealth owners control the machinery of government because they pay
the taxes and provide the campaign funds. They control public officials
because they have been, are, or hope to be, on the payrolls, or
participants in the profits of industrial enterprises.

10. _It is "Their United States"_

The man fighting for bread has little time to "turn his eyes up to the
eternal stars." The western cult of efficiency makes no allowances for
philosophic propensities. Its object is product and it is satisfied with
nothing short of that sordid goal.

The members of the wealth owning class are relieved from the food
struggle. Their ownership of the social machinery guarantees them a
secure income from which they need make no appeal. These privileges
provide for them and theirs the leisure and the culture that are the
only possible excuse for the existence of civilization.

The propertied class, because it owns the jobs, the industrial products,
the social surplus, the channels of public opinion and the political
machinery also enjoys the opportunity that goes with adequately assure