The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-01-08
MIR. FORD'S OWN PAGE

A correspondent suggests that in classifying society into groups such as the Producing, the Con suming and the Public groups, of the Capital, the Labor and the Public groups. there should have been added the Govern ment group, thus placing the structure on four solid legs, in stead of leaving it the three legged stool' of recent popular expression.
 The suggestion illustrates the fundamental falsity of dividing society at ali, for 1t Is an undi- vided organism. If we set it off into classes and interests, we do so simply as an aid to our thinking, as children first use blocks to learn arithmetic; we never imply that life is such a hard and fast matter that every man is shut up into one caste or class.
 That is where the class-con- sciousness usually fails as a mo- tive, and that is why the prop agandists of class-conscious strife are doomed to failure-you cannot cage an individual in any one class. Even while you are tagging him, he eludes you and glides into another class, if for only an hour. In a free country like ours, a man usually does at least he always lnay-belong to all classes at once, except per haps artificial and unwhole- some classes like that which we call the leisure class. ID belong to the leisure class" simply means that down in the mine and at the forge and in the shop there are men working for themselves and for idlers whom they never saw; 1t js to Se sponge, a parasite, a sign of economic disease.
 There is ono class which none of us escapes membership in, and that is the Consuming class. By law of nature we are all con- sumers. It means our very life. Rich or poor, learned or ignor- ant, it does not matter-eveTy living organism consumes the material of life, and for us this means mostly food for the body and the material necessities of residence on the earth.
 Every man, be he the greatest producer ever known, is a con- sumer the first thing in the morning when he sits down at his breakfast table. Whether he produced what he consumes, or whether someone else produced it, does not matter-sitting at that table and eating, he has joined the consuming class. The total produce of the world is a little less because he sat there.
 And then he goes to work. He enters the shop and takes up his task, and by that act he has passed into the Producing group. No jolt and no jar attended the transition, no change in his funda1a ental interests occurred, he is not on one side of the fence whi!e he is eating braak k fast, ard on the ether as he plies his j1a--E1e is f-zs- human be- ing trying to ss.i,!.<-r. Himself and depe-7 6e,2z n :" N-orI1 nt:.ze.
 Me,9 i.e7zl7iu ir f2.o C>ra&9,i .1g class iS c-T,1 nuiso~v- f lie is to go rn .a@- c7-: s'-- U.e5.l,cr ship in the Ies=+:;cine claes is not, for tnase are aa-a----a very few comparatively who go cn consuming all day io31g. week iI1 and week out. during 2 whole lifetime. without ever putting back single valuable contribution into the general supply. They are living on their money we say. But they are not. They are living on the grain which other men raised, the clothing which other men spun, the com modities which other men made and their money is one of the modern fetishes by which they are enabled to do this. Money is always a sign of pro duction. but its posseasion is not.