Ever since the first tall chimneys unfurled the sooty banners of the new, the industrial civilization, we have had the cry that the power machine is a monster whose reign means the debasement of the masses of mankind. And latterly, throughout the world, but most loudly in America, which has been foremost in promoting the new order, it has been charged that the men in control of the new order, the business men, are merciless and relentless; that in the struggle for markets and for profits they are trampling morality and all the other restraints and ideals. Now comes Thorstein Veblen, lately Assistant Professor of Political Economy at the University of Chicago, to formulate these charges upon a scientific basis. In his _Theory of Business Enterprise_ he makes the following declarations of scientific principle: First: That “the machine is a leveller, a vulgarizer, whose ends seem to be the extirpation of all that is respectable, noble and dignified in human intercourse and ideals”; that “in the nature of the case the cultural growth dominated by the machine industry is of a skeptical, matter-of-fact complexion, materialistic, unmoral, unpatriotic, undevout”; that “the machine, their (the masses’) master, is no respecter of persons, and knows neither morality nor dignity, nor prescriptive right, divine or human.” Second: That “the machine methods which are corrupting the hearts and manners of the workmen are profitable to the business man.” Third: That “the economic welfare of the community at large is best secured by a facile and uninterrupted interplay of the various processes which make up the industrial system at large; but the pecuniary interests of the business men, in whose hands lies the discretion in the matter, are not necessarily best served by an unbroken maintenance of the industrial balance. Especially is this true as regards those greater business men whose interests are very extensive. Gain may come to them from a given disturbance of the system, whether the disturbance makes for heightened facility or for widespread hardship, very much as a speculator in grain futures may be either a bull or a bear.”