OCCUPATIONAL TYPES 323
cured of the great task of mastering nature and organizing natural forces in the service of human need. Each new advance in this movement opens to view yet greater pos sibilities. In the meantime the economic organization has seemed to become a vast and powerful system, independent of the individuals engaged in it, which masters and moulds the multitudes of men whom it draws into its varied ac tivities. 1 Business men have come naturally in this business age to be the dominant class in society. This is true even in Europe, where the stratification of society based on the Feudal System yet persists, and is coming to be so even in the Orient, so recently invaded by modern ideas and methods. In the United States the evolution of the business man into the personage of dominant power is most com plete.
In politics it is a recognized fact that no man can hope to be elected to any office of importance who has the business men opposed to him. Politics are more and more concerned with economic questions ; and in one way or another business is so closely connected with political organization, manage ment and aims that politics might not unfairly be called a branch of business. The money which corporations expend in political activity is a regular item in their expense ac count. A policy that hurts business is on that account con demned ; if it encourages and fosters business, that is the end of controversy. In the State, business rules, and that means that business men are the ruling class. But is it not equally true in the church? In the local church business men dominate in fact, whether they do in form or not ; and in general denominational affairs their influence is tran- scendant whenever they feel enough interest to bring it to bear. The local congregation and the general ecclesiastical body have to be financed in all their enterprises, and church enterprises, whether local or general, and especially the lat ter, are projected on an ever larger scale; which means that the financial liberality of business men must be relied on
1 See Sombart s " Der Bourgeois," p. 446, ff .
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