[H]ere and now, as always and everywhere, invention is the mother of necessity. - Thorstein Veblen

"Snobbery" is here used without disrespect, as a convenient term to denote the element of strain involved in the quest for gentility on the part of persons whose accustomed social standing is less high or less authentic than their aspirations.

Any evolutionary science... is a close-knit body of theory. It is a theory of a process, of an unfolding sequence... of cumulative causation. The great deserts of the evolutionist leaders... lie... in their having shown how this colorless impersonal sequence of cause and effect can be made use of for theory proper, by virtue of its cumulative character.

It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free to deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or withhold the equipment under his control, without reservation. Business discretion and business strategy, in fact, has no other means by to work out its aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.