These classes have little else than a business interest in things economic, and on them at the same time it is chiefly incumbent to deliberate upon the community's affairs.
The relation of the leisure (that is, propertied non-industrial) class to the economic process is a pecuniary relation--a relation of acquisition, not of production; of exploitation, not of serviceability.
Indirectly their economic office may, of course, be of the utmost importance to the economic life process; and it is by no means here intended to depreciate the economic function of the propertied class or of the captains of industry.

The purpose is simply to point out what is the nature of the relation of these classes to the industrial process and to economic institutions.

Their office is of a parasitic character, and their interest is to divert what substance they may to their own use, and to retain whatever is under their hand.

The conventions of the business world have grown up under the selective surveillance of this principle of predation or parasitism.

They are conventions of ownership; derivatives, more or less remote, of the ancient predatory culture.