It differs most from the older economics in the more explicit statement of the function of institutions. The growing inequality of income, of control, and of opportunity have presented facts that have to be faced. But even here, instead of contriving new defences, the advocates of capitalism have refurbished the older ones. The thing that is finds its justification in that which was. Property rights are to be preserved intact, because private property is essential to personal opportunity; just as if the propertyless did not exist and each was to win his living from his own acres or his own shop. The right of contract is not to be abridged, because the interests of both parties are advanced by a bargain between equals; just as if the corporate employer and the individual employé were alike in their freedom, their capacity to wait, and their power to shape the terms of the bargain. Prices are to be self-determined in open market, because competition will best reconcile the conflicting interests of buyers and sellers; just as if there was no semblance of monopoly among producers, no open price agreements, and no informal understandings. Individual initiative is not to be abridged, because it creates the wealth of the nation; just as if routine had no value for efficiency and the masses of men still had discretion in economic matters. The arrangements which make up the economic order find their validity in the symbolic language of ritual rather than in a prosaic recital of current fact. This defence crosses the frontier which separates the economic from the political order only to appropriate the prestige of democracy. Its real concern is the preservation of the prevailing system wherein business controls industry for purposes of profit. Its formal solicitation is lest “the form of government” be changed. This concern finds expression in veneration for the work of the “fathers” (rather young men, by the way), not of machine technology and business enterprise, but of “representative government” and of “constitutional authority.” Its creed becomes propaganda, not for the defence of business, the security of corporations, or the preservation of managerial immunities, but for the defence of the nation, the security of America, and the preservation of “constitutional” rights. The newer economic arrangements are masked behind political rights and given the values of the political institutions which antedate them by many decades. In short, the staunchest defenders of the prevailing economic system believe that “their economic preferences are shared by the constitution of the United States.”