that led to the acceptance of these institutions and to the confirmation and standardisation of these habitual norms of conduct. For the time being, however, they are "fundamentally and eternally right and good."
Being a pecuniary majority—what may be called a majority of the corporate stock—of the nation, it is also fundamentally and eternally right and good that the pecuniary interests of the owners of the material means of life should rule unabated in all those matters of public policy that touch on the material fortunes of the community at large. Barring a slight and intermittent mutter of discontent, this arrangement has also the cordial approval of popular sentiment in these modern democratic nations. One need only recall the paramount importance which is popularly attached to the maintenance and extension of the nation's trade—for the use of the investors—or the perpetuation of a protective tariff—for the use of the protected business concerns—or, again, the scrupulous regard with which such a body of public servants as the Interstate Commerce Commission will safeguard the legitimate claim of the railway companies to a "reasonable" rate of earnings on the capitalised value of the presumed earning-capacity of their property.
Again, in view of the unaccustomed freedom with which it is here necessary to speak of these delicate matters, it may be in place to disclaim all intention to criticise the established arrangements on their merits as details of public policy. All that comes in question here, touching these and the like features of the established law and order, is the bearing of all this on the material fortunes of the common man under the current régime, as contrasted with what he would reasonably have to look for
under the projected régime of Imperial tutelage that would come in, consequent upon this national surrender to Imperial dominion.
In these democratic countries public policy is guided primarily by considerations of business expediency, and the administration, as well as the legislative power, is in the hands of businessmen, chosen avowedly on the ground of their businesslike principles and ability. There is no power in such a community that can over-rule the exigencies of business, nor would popular sentiment countenance any exercise of power that should traverse these exigencies, or that would act to restrain trade or discourage the pursuit of gain. An apparent exception to the rule occurs in wartime, when military exigencies may over-rule the current demands of business traffic; but the exception is in great part only apparent, in that the warlike operations are undertaken in whole or in part with a view to the protection or extension of business traffic.
National surveillance and regulation of business traffic in these countries hitherto, ever since and in so far as the modern democratic order of things has taken effect, has uniformly been of the nature of interference with trade and investment in behalf of the nation's mercantile community at large, as seen in port and shipping regulations and in the consular service, or in behalf of particular favored groups or classes of business concerns, as in protective tariffs and subsidies. In all this national management of pecuniary affairs, under modern democratic principles, the common man comes into the case only as raw material of business traffic,—as consumer or as laborer. He is one of the industrial agencies by use of which the businessman who employs him supplies himself with
goods for the market, or he is one of the units of consumptive demand that make up this market in which the business man sells his goods, and so "realises" on his investment. He is, of course, free, under modern principles of the democratic order, to deal or not to deal with this business community, whether as laborer or as consumer, or as small-scale producer engaged in purveying materials or services on terms defined by the community of business interests engaged on so large a scale as to count in their determination. That is to say, he is free de jure to take or leave the terms offered. De facto he is only free to take them—with inconsequential exceptions—the alternative being obsolescence by disuse, not to choose a harsher name for a distasteful eventuality.
The general ground on which the business system, as it works under the over-ruling exigencies of the so-called "big business," so defines the terms of life for the common man, who works and buys, is the ground afforded by the principle of "charging what the traffic will bear;" that is to say, fixing the terms of hiring, buying and selling at such a figure as will yield the largest net return to the business concerns in whom, collectively or in severalty, the discretion vests. Discretion in these premises does not vest in any business concern that does not articulate with the system of "big business," or that does not dispose of resources sufficient to make it a formidable member of the system. Whether these concerns act in severalty or by collusion and conspiracy, in so defining the pecuniary terms of life for the community at large, is substantially an idle question, so far as bears on the material interest of the common man. The base-line is still what the traffic will bear, and it is still adhered to, so nearly as the human infirmity of the discretionary captains of industry will