Fourth: That, these being the facts, there has arisen a “class of pecuniary experts” who “have an interest in making the disturbances of the system large and frequent”; that, under the new civilization, industry being carried on for business, and not business for the sake of industry, such disturbances are as a matter of fact both large and frequent, are incident to a merciless struggle among business men for the supremacy which monopoly alone gives; that, while the business man, in common with other men, is moved by humane ideals, “motives of this kind detract from business efficiency, and an undue yielding to them on the part of business men is to be deprecated as an infirmity”; that, while sentiment has a certain force “in restraint upon pecuniary advantage, not in abrogation of it,” the “code of business ethics consists, after all, of mitigations of the maxim, _caveat emptor_ (let the buyer beware)”; that, “under the system of handicraft and neighborhood industry, the adage ‘Honesty is the best policy’ seems, on the whole, to have been accepted and to have been true. This adage has come down from the days before the machine’s régime and before modern business enterprise”; that, under modern circumstances of lack of personal contact between business man and customer, “business management has a chance to proceed on a temperate and sagacious calculation of profit and loss, untroubled by sentimental considerations of human kindness or irritation or of honesty.” Professor Veblen’s ideas have been given in his own language so far as has been permitted by his passionate professorial predilection for polysyllables--or, has he used long words and involved phrases from the prudent motive of screening from “the vulgar” the ferocity of his attack upon business men, rather than from the reactionary motive of scholastic snobbery? However this may be, to close study he makes it clear enough that, according to his reading of political economy: First: The machine is a monster. Second: It is making monsters of men--brutal serfs of the masses; bandits, liars, thieves and cheats of the managers and directors. A savage indictment that! A terrifying, topsy-turvying of the dearest beliefs and hopes of us who look upon steam and electricity as efficient agents of Democracy, the strong and inevitable unshacklers of the bodies and minds of mankind. But Professor Veblen has stated only the extreme of what is said without denial every day; he is simply the courageous spokesman of the majority of the classes who write and speak; he is putting into scientific formula the sneer of every snob who professes contempt of business and, indeed, of all other forms of modern democratic activity. His book, therefore, serves admirably as a provocation for presenting a few facts and suggestions on the other side.