Except in a few older communities, there were no countervailing classes or sets of values—no aristocracy to marry into, no formidable body of national aspirations outside business aspirations. Business not only appealed to vigorous and ambitious men but set the dominant standards for the rest of society, so that members of the professions—law, medicine, schoolteaching, even the ministry—aped businessmen and adapted the standards of their own crafts to those of business.
