http://files.libertyfund.org/files/1657/1291_Bk.pdf

Should be required reading to show how fecked up we are as a species. Published in 1899, before political correctness; it tells things as they were and still are.

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PREFACE

IT is the purpose of this inquiry to discuss the place
and value of the leisure class as an economic factor
in modern life, but it has been found impracticable
to confine the discussion strictly within the limits so
marked out. Some attention is perforce given to the
origin and the llne of derivation of the institution, as

well as to features of social life that are not commonly
classed as economic.
At some points the discussion proceeds on grounds of
economic theory or ethnological generalisation that may
be in some degree unfamiliar. The introductory chapter indicates the nature of these theoretical premises
sufficiently, it is hoped, to avoid obscurity. A more
explicit statement of the theoretical position involved
is made in a series of papers published in Volume IV
of the American Journal of Soviolosy , on "The Instinct
of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labour," "The
Beginnings of Ownership," and "The Barbarian Status
of Women." But the argument does not rest on these
_in part novel- generalisations in such a way that
it would altogether lose its possible value as a detail
of economic theory in case these novel generalisations
should, in the reader's apprehension, fall away through
being insui_ciently backed by authority or data.

Partly for reasons of convenience, and partly because
there is less chance of misapprehending the sense of
phenomena that are familiar to all men, the data
employed to illustrate or enforce the argument have
by preference been drawn from everyday life, by direct
observation or through common notoriety, rather than
from more recondite sources at a farther remove. It is
hoped that no one will find his sense of literary or
scientific fitness offended by this recourse to homely
facts, or by what may at times appear to be a callous
freedom in handling vulgar phenomena or phenomena
whose intimate place in men's life has sometimes
shielded them from the impact of economic discussion.
Such premises and corroborative evidence as are
drawn from remoter sources, as well as whatever articles
of theory or inference are borrowed from ethnological
science, are also of the more familiar and accessible
kind and should be readily traceable to their source by
fairly well-read persons. The usage of citing sources
and authorities has therefore not been observed. Likewise the few quotations that have been introduced,
chiefly by way of illustration, are also such as will
commonly be recognised with sufficient facility without
the guidance of citation.