ABSTRACT
Wealth stands, in modern society, for nearly all the grosser and more tangible forms; for power over material goods, primarily, and secondarily over the more purchasable kinds of human activity—hand labor, professional services, newspaper commendation, political assiduity and so on. In modern life, then, and in a country without formal privilege, the question of classes is practically one of wealth, and of occupation considered in relation to wealth. For the ill-paid classes, the desire for money does not mean "materialism" in any reproachful sense, but is chiefly the means by which they hope to realize, first, health and decency, and then a better chance at the higher life—books, leisure, education and refinement. Culture and refinement have with us no very close or essential connection with occupation or wealth, and a classification based upon the former would show a very general rearrangement. Other aims are pursued in peace; wealth, because it is material and appropriable, involves conflict.
