It is precisely in this preeminent requisite for success in
government that I suspect the modern capitalistic class to be weak. The
scope of the human intellect is necessarily limited, and modern
capitalists appear to have been evolved under the stress of an
environment which demanded excessive specialization in the direction of
a genius adapted to money-making under highly complex industrial
conditions. To this money-making attribute all else has been sacrificed,
and the modern capitalist not only thinks in terms of money, but he
thinks in terms of money more exclusively than the French aristocrat or
lawyer ever thought in terms of caste. The modern capitalist looks upon
life as a financial combat of a very specialized kind, regulated by a
code which he understands and has indeed himself concocted, but which is
recognized by no one else in the world. He conceives sovereign powers to
be for sale. He may, he thinks, buy them; and if he buys them; he may
use them as he pleases. He believes, for instance, that it is the
lawful, nay more! in America, that it is the constitutional right of the
citizen to buy the national highways, and, having bought them, to use
them as a common carrier might use a horse and cart upon a public road.
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