Beyond these, whose life-interests are, after all, closely bound up with the kept classes, there are other vested interests of a more doubtful and perplexing kind; classes and occupations which would seem to belong with the common lot, but which range themselves at least provisionally with the vested interests and can scarcely be denied standing as such. Such, as an illustrative instance, is the A. F. of L. Not that the constituency of the A.
F. of L. can be said to live on free income, and is therefore to be counted in with the kept classes -- the only reservation on that head would conceivably be the corps of officials in the A.
F. of L., who dominate the policies of that organisation and exercise a prescriptive right to dispose of its forces, at the same time that they habitually come in for an income drawn from the underlying organisation. The rank and file assuredly are not of the kept classes, nor do they visibly come in for a free income. Yet they stand on the defensive in maintaining a vested interest in the prerogatives and perquisites of their organisation. They are apparently moved by a feeling that so long as the established arrangements are maintained they will come in for a little something over and above what would come to them if they were to make common cause with the undistinguished common lot. In other words, they have a vested interest in a narrow margin of preference over and above what goes to the common man.
But this narrow margin of net gain over the common lot, this vested right to get a narrow margin of something for nothing, has hitherto been sufficient to shape their sentiments and outlook in such a way as, in effect, to keep them loyal to the large business interests with whom they negotiate for this narrow margin of preference. As is true of the vested interests in business, so in the case of the A. F. of L., the ordinary ways and means of enforcing their claim to a little something over and above is the use of a reasonable sabotage, in the way of restriction, retardation, and unemployment. Yet the constituency of the A. F. of L., taken man for man, is not readily to be distinguished from the common sort so far as regards their conditions of life. The spirit of vested interest which animates them may, in fact, be nothing more to the point than an aimless survival.
Farther along the same line, larger and even more perplexing, is the case of the American farmers, who also are in the habit of ranging themselves, on the whole, with the vested interests rather than with the common man. By sentiment and outlook the farmers are, commonly, steady votaries of that established order which enables the vested interests to do a "big business" at their expense. Such is the tradition which still binds the farmers, however unequivocally their material circumstances under the new order of business and industry might seem to drive the other way. In the ordinary case the American farmer is now as helpless to control his own conditions of life as the commonest of the common run. He is caught between the vested interests who buy cheap and the vested interests who sell dear, and it is for him to take or leave what is offered, -- but ordinarily to take it, on pain of "getting left."
There is still afloat among the rural population a slow-dying tradition of the "Independent Farmer," who is reputed once upon a time to have lived his own life and done his own work as good him seemed, and who was content to let the world wag. But all that has gone by now as completely as the other things that are told in tales which begin with "Once upon a time." It has gone by into the same waste of regrets with the like independence which the country-town retailer is believed to have enjoyed once upon a time. But the country-town retailer, too, still stands stiffly on the vested rights of the trade and of the town; he is by sentiment and habitual outlook a business man who guides, or would like to guide, his enterprise by the principle of charging what the traffic will bear, of buying cheap and selling dear. He still manages to sell dear, but he does not commonly buy cheap, except what he buys of the farmer, for the massive vested interests in the background now decide for him, in the main, how much his traffic will bear. He is not placed so very differently from the farmer in this respect, except that, being a middleman, he can in some appreciable degree shift the burden to a third party. The third party in the case is the farmer; the massive vested interests who move in the background of the market do not lend themselves to that purpose.
Except for the increasing number of tenant farmers, the American farmers of the large agricultural sections still are owners who cultivate their own ground. They are owners of property, who might be said to have an investment in their own farms, and therefore they fancy that they have a vested interest in the farm and its earning-capacity. They have carried over out of the past and its old order of things a delusion to the effect that they have something to lose. It is quite a natural and rather an engaging delusion, since, barring incumbrances, they are seized of a good and valid title at law, to a very tangible and useful form of property. And by due provision of law and custom they are quite free to use or abuse their holdings in the land, to buy and sell it and its produce altogether at their own pleasure. It is small wonder if the farmers, with the genial traditions of the day before yesterday still running full and free in their sophisticated brains, are given to consider themselves typical holders of a legitimate vested interest of a very substantial kind. In all of which they count without their host; their host, under the new order of business, being those massive vested interests that move obscurely in the background of the market, and whose rule of life it is to buy cheap and sell dear.
