[305]. Introduction to Sociology, pp. 132–36.
[306]. See Chapter Three, The Explanation.
[307]. “Classes differ in readiness to twist social control to their own advantage.... In general, the more distinct, knit together, and self-conscious the influential minority, the more likely is social control to be colored with class selfishness.”—Professor E. A. Ross, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Social Control, p. 86.
[308]. See Chapter Eleven for suggestions on the origin of large-scale parasitic aggression; and on the origin and history of the working class and of the class-labor form of society.
[309]. See Dynamic Sociology, Vol. I., pp. 581–97; Psychic Factors in Civilization, Chapter 24.
Note carefully the quotation on methods of social parasites at the head of the present chapter from Dr. Ross’s Social Control. Professor Ross is generally recognized as one of the most profound and brilliant writers on Sociology.
It is important to consider, too, that, as a Socialist, Dr. Franklin H. Giddings, Head of Department of Sociology in Columbia University, recognizes the capitalist class’s parasitic relation to society. Dr. Giddings is recognized in all the universities of the world as having few equals as a sociologist.
The social parasites of the world will never forgive the learned Socialist, Dr. Thorstein Veblen, recently of the University of Chicago, for writing his bold and astonishing book, The Theory of the Leisure Class. The screaming mockeries and glittering pretensions of the “princely-fortune” parasites of capitalism are mercilessly explained by him.
It is noteworthy too that the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Sociology, and Head of the Department of Sociology in the University of Chicago, Dr. Albion W. Small, has for many years been calling attention, in lectures, to the parasitic nature of one of the forms of capitalist income, thus: “There is no moral justification for the taking of interest incomes.” In his General Sociology, pp. 268–69, Dr. Small says: “In the first place, capital produces nothing. It earns nothing.” See also his suggestions on social parasites on page [266], where he is clearly in considerable degree in agreement with Dr. Ward.
Gustavus Myers’ History of Great American Fortunes is here again commended as an extraordinary record of remarkable social parasitism in American history.