IF there were conscious restriction upon the expression of opinion in America, this essay would possess the pompous certainty of an official document. Instead of threading its hazardous way through a mass of confused thought, it would record in formal terms acceptable utterance. In fact, the very restrictions upon thought and speech, with the aid of scissors and a license to speech, could easily be turned into a statement of the reputable theory of the welfare of the community. Unluckily, however, American life has not been arranged to make matters easy for the interpreter of economic opinion. Every American is conscious of a right to his own opinion about “why all of us taken together are as well off as we are” and “why some of us are better off and others of us worse off than the average of us.” Whether this privilege comes from the Bill of Rights, the constitution of the United States, or his Simian ancestry, he could not say; but he is fully assured that it is “inalienable” and “indefeasible.” No restriction of birth, breeding, position, or wealth limits his right to an opinion or persuades him to esteem his more fortunate neighbour’s more highly than his own. Nor do intellectual limitations check the flow of words and of ideas. No one is examined upon the growth of industrialism, the institutions which make up the economic order, or the nature of an industrial problem before he is allowed to speak. In fact, the idea that a knowledge of the facts about the subject under discussion, or of the principles to be applied to it, is essential to the right to an opinion is a strange notion little understood here. Even if occasionally some potentate attempts a mild restriction upon the spoken or the written word, it checks only those who talk directly and therefore clumsily. Its principal effect is through provocation to add mightily to the volume of opinion.