In America, however, the aristocracy was abolished; and the only controlling and directing force left was business, with nothing to restrain it in its pursuit of money except the business necessity for maintaining property in land and capital and enforcing contracts, the business prudence which perceives that it would be ruinous to kill outright the proletarian goose that lays the golden eggs, and the fear of insurrection. There was no longer a king and an aristocratic governing class to say to the tradesman “Never mind the public interest: that is our business: yours is to get as rich as you can, incidentally giving employment to the proletariat and increasing our rent rolls”. All that remained was the tradition of unscrupulous irresponsibility in business; and when the American millionaires first began to astonish Europe with their wealth it was possible for the most notorious of them, in the course of an enquiry into the proceedings of a Trust with which he was connected, to reply to a criticism as to the effect of his business policy on the public with a simple “Damn the public!”. Had he been a middle class man in a country where there was a governing class outside and above business, or a monarch with a council in the same position, or even a State Church, his answer would have been entirely in order apart from its verbal profanity. Duly bowdlerized it would have run “I am a man of business, not a ruler and a lawgiver. The public interest is not my job: I do not presume to meddle with it. My sole function is to make as much money as I can”. Queen Elizabeth would have applauded such an attitude as socially sound and highly becoming: nothing angered her more than presumptuous attempts on the part of common persons to concern themselves with _her_ business of high politics.