White Collar by C. Wright Mills — Read

The world of small entrepreneurs was self-balancing. Within it no central authority allocated materials and ordered men to specified tasks, and the course of its history was the unintended consequence of many scattered wills each acting freely. It is no wonder that men thought this so remarkable they called it a piece of Divine Providence, each man's hand being guided as if by magic into a preordained and natural harmony. The science of economics, which sought to explain this extraordinary balance, which provided order through liberty without authority, has not yet entirely rid itself of the magic.

The providential society did have its economic troubles. Its normal rhythm of slump and boom alternately frightened and exhilarated whole sections and classes of men. Yet it was not seized by cycles of mania and melancholia. The rhythm never threw the economy into the lower depths known intimately to twentieth-century men, and for long years there were no fearful wars or threats of wars. The main lines of its history were linear, not cyclical; technical and economic processes were still expanding, and the cycles that did occur seemed seasonal matters which did not darken the whole outlook of the epoch. Through it all there ran the exhilaration of expansion across the gigantic continent.