ABSTRACT
Social intercourse is, however, not self-supporting any more than it is self-regulating or self-protecting. It must have, as its immediate basis, an industrial system which provides it with its material appliances. The units of the minority, from the specially skilled labourers up to the higher directorates, will necessarily be persons of some sort of distinction, and in the material appliances of their lives these graduations of function and of personal efficiency will be reflected. If we consider men merely as agents maintaining and amplifying, according to their several capacities, the material appliances of life, the spectacular signs of oligarchy will be more clearly apparent than the spectacular signs of democracy. As representing in a material sense the conditions of social intercourse, they will within wide limits be more ample or less ample—will, according to any reasonable standard, represent plenty or poverty—according to the character of each individual recipient.
