The impression seems to be that the age we live in is the age of the masses. Half the times you open a book or start a discussion you find yourself dealing with mass production, mass consumption, mass media and mass culture. We blame the masses for all our ills: the vulgarization of culture and politics, the meaninglessness of our ways of life, the cruelty of our wars and, of course, the population explosion. Actually, America is the only country in which the masses impressed their tastes and values on the whole of a society. Everywhere else, from the beginning of time, societies have been shaped by exclusive minorities of aristocrats, scholars, trades, manufacturers and priests. Only in America did the masses have a chance to show what they could do on their own, without masters to push them around; a new world had to be discovered to give them the chance. But in America just now the masses are on their way out. With the coming of automation, 90 percent of the common people will become unneeded and unwanted. Nor is there room any longer for the special skills and talents of the masses. There was a time in this country when the masses acted as pathfinders and pioneers. They plunged into the unknown, cleared the land, built cities, founded states and propagated new faiths. The masses built America, and for almost a century shaped its future. But America's future is now being shaped in fantastically complex and expensive laboratories which supermen work in, and the masses are on the way to becoming a bothersome waste product no one knows what to do with.