to make a struggle so great that even the French Revolution is
insignificant beside it; for this later struggle, for the first time in
the history of struggles, is not confined to any particular portion of
the globe, but involves the whole of it.

Starting on the assumption that society is at present in a state of flux,
Mr. Ghent sees it rapidly crystallizing into a status which can best be
described as something in the nature of a benevolent feudalism. He
laughs to scorn any immediate realization of the Marxian dream, while
Tolstoyan utopias and Kropotkinian communistic unions of shop and farm
are too wild to merit consideration. The coming status which Mr. Ghent
depicts is a class domination by the capitalists. Labor will take its
definite place as a dependent class, living in a condition of machine
servitude fairly analogous to the land servitude of the Middle Ages.
That is to say, labor will be bound to the machine, though less harshly,
in fashion somewhat similar to that in which the earlier serf was bound
to the soil. As he says, "Bondage to the land was the basis of
villeinage in the old regime; bondage to the job will be the basis of
villeinage in the new."

At the top of the new society will tower the magnate, the new feudal
baron; at the bottom will be found the wastrels and the inefficients.
The new society he grades as follows:

"I. The barons, graded on the basis of possessions.

"II. The court agents and retainers. (This class will include the
editors of 'respectable' and 'safe' newspapers, the pastors of
'conservative' and 'wealthy' churches, the professors and teachers in
endowed colleges and schools, lawyers generally, and most judges and
politicians).

"III. The workers in pure and applied science, artists, and
physicians.

"IV. The entrepreneurs, the managers of the great industries,
transformed into a salaried class.

"V. The foremen and superintendents. This class has heretofore been
recruited largely from the skilled workers, but with the growth of
technical education in schools and colleges, and the development of
fixed caste, it is likely to become entirely differentiated.

"VI. The villeins of the cities and towns, more or less regularly
employed, who do skilled work and are partially protected by
organization.

"VII. The villeins of the cities and towns who do unskilled work and
are unprotected