This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... the vested interests There are certain saving clauses in common use among persons who speak for that well-known order of pecuniary rights and obligations which the modern point of view assumes as "the natural state of man." Among them are these: "Given the state of the industrial arts "; "Other things remaining the same "; " In the long run "; " In the absence of disturbing causes." It has been the praiseworthy endeavor of the votaries of this established law and custom to hold fast the good old plan on a strategic line of interpretation resting on these provisos. There have been painstaking elucidations of what is fundamental and intrinsic in the way of human institutions, of what essentially ought to be, and of what must eventually come to pass in the natural course of time and change as it is believed to run along under the guidance of those indefeasible principles that make up the modern point of view. And the disquieting incursions of the New Order have been disallowed as not being of the essence of Nature's contract with mankind, within the constituent principles of the modern point of view stabilised in the eighteenth century. Now, as has already been remarked in an earlier passage, the state of the industrial arts has at no time continued unchanged during the modern era; consequently other things have never remained the same; and in the long run the outcome has always been shaped by the disturbing causes. All this reflects no discredit on the economists and publicists who so have sketched out the natural run of the present and future in the dry light of the eighteenth-century principles, since their reservations have not been observed. The arguments have been as good as the premises on which they proceed, and the premises have...