Note 336 — CHAPTER ELEVEN. A Short Lesson in the History of the Working Class.

The inauguration of human slavery was a profound change in human relations—the greatest possible “change in circumstances”—down at the very foundations of society. Vast fundamental changes resulted—inevitably—in changed, and even new, institutions.

“Institutions must change with changing circumstances, since they are of the nature of an habitual method of responding to stimuli which these changing circumstances afford.... The institutions are, in substance, prevalent habits of thought with respect to particular relations and particular functions of the individual and of the community....”—Thorstein Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class, p. 190. See quotation from Dr. Small at the head of Chapter Ten. Also consult Ross’s Social Control.