Pantaleoni's public interventions demonstrated his belief that the economic status of the working classes refl ected their lack of social and economic merits: "all considered, it seems obvious that the classes with lower incomes are signifi cantly defi cient in qualities with respect to others. So that this defi ciency [defi cienza] is the cause of the lower income and not the lower income the cause of the defi ciency" (Pantaleoni 1922, 36). Members of the working classes were such because they suff ered from incurable vices, such as wasteful consumption, and were hangerson to a more perfect economic system populated by savers. Being poor or workingclass was a choice and a pathology.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 1141