and the upper middle class as a whole.  This comparison is made not to apply an alien class system which holds very inadequately here in America, but simply to avow the difficulty of my task of apology.  The bourgeoisie is equally suspect among radicals, reactionaries, and artists.  My middling rich are nothing other than what an European essayist would quite brazenly call the haute bourgeoisie.  It is quite a comprehensive class, made up chiefly of professional men, moderately successful merchants, manufacturers, and bankers with their more highly paid employees, but including also many artists, and teachers of all sorts.  Incidentally it is an employing and borrowing class in various degrees, hence especially subject to the exactions of the labor union at one end, and of the great capitalist and the Trust at the other.

The general harmlessness of the wealth of this class rests upon the fact that it is in small part inherited, but mostly earned by individual effort, while such effort has usually been honestly and efficiently rendered and paid for at a moderate rate.  In fact the amount of capacity that can be hired for the slightest rewards is simply amazing.  It is the distinction of this class as compared both with the wage earning and the capitalist class—­both of which agree in overvaluing their services and extorting payment on their own terms—­that it respects its work more than it regards rewards.  Consider the amount of general education and special training that go to make a capable school superintendent, or college professor; a good country doctor or clergyman—­and it will be felt that no money is more honestly earned.  This is equally true of many lawyers and magistrates, who are wise counsellors for an entire country side.  It is no less true of hosts of small manufacturers who make a superior product with conscience.  For the wealth, small enough it usually is, that is thus gained in positions of especial skill and confidence, absolutely no apology need be made.  I sometimes wish that the Socialists for whom any degree of wealth means spoliation, would go a day’s round with a country doctor, would take the pains to learn of the cases he treats for half his fee, for a nominal sum, or for nothing; would candidly reckon his normal fee against the long years of college, medical school and hospital, and against the service itself; would then deduct the actual expenses of the day, as represented by apparatus, motor, or horse service—­I can only say that if such an investigator could in any way conceive that physician as a spoliator, because he earned twice as much as a master brick-layer or five times as much as a ditch digger—­if, I say, before the actual fact, our Socialist investigator in any way grudges that day’s earnings, his mental and emotional confusion is beyond ordinary remedy.  And such a physician’s earnings are merely typical of those of an entire class of devoted professional men.