If any portion or class of society is sheltered
from the action of the environment in any essential respect, that
portion of the community, or that class, will adapt its views and
its scheme of life more tardily to the altered general situation;
it will in so far tend to retard the process of social
transformation. The wealthy leisure class is in such a sheltered
position with respect to the economic forces that make for change
and readjustment. And it may be said that the forces which make
for a readjustment of institutions, especially in the case of a
modern industrial community, are, in the last analysis, almost
entirely of an economic nature.
Any community may be viewed as an industrial or economic
mechanism, the structure of which is made up of what is called
its economic institutions. These institutions are habitual
methods of carrying on the life process of the community in
contact with the material environment in which it lives. When
given methods of unfolding human activity in this given
environment have been elaborated in this way, the life of the
community will express itself with some facility in these
habitual directions. The community will make use of the forces of
the environment for the purposes of its life according to methods
learned in the past and embodied in these institutions.
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