ABSTRACT
The first requirement of a functioning industrial order is to get rid of the proletarian. The modern industrial order is extremely sensitive to the poisoning effect of a proletariat. One of the central facts of American life is that there has, so far, never been a proletariat in the European sense–with the exception of the "poor white" and Negroes of the Deep South, who live, however, in a nonindustrial society. The absence of the proletarian is perhaps the most striking difference between America and Europe. In Europe the conversion of the proletarian into a citizen is, obviously, both infinitely more difficult and infinitely more important. A high standard of wages or of living will not avert proletarianization or remedy it, vitally desirable though it undoubtedly is. The only thing that is absolutely effective against the poison is the adoption of the principle that labor is a capital resource in an industrial economy.
