In 1903. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in his renowned book, The Soul of Black Folk: “The characteristic of our age is the contact of European civilization with the world’s undeveloped peoples … not pleasant to look back upon. War, murder, slavery, extermination and debauchery, this has again and again been the result. … It is, then, the strife of all honorable [people] to see that in the future competition of the races, the survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the good, the beautiful, and the true; that we may be able to preserve … all that is really fine and noble and strong, and not continue to put a premium on greed and impudence and cruelty.

“One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the effort of every man to get the most he can for his services, and that of society, disguised under the name of capital, to get his services for the least possible return.” (Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., writing as Justice of the high court of Massachusetts in the 1896 case of Vegelahn v.  Guntner.)

In a class action the claims of "many individuals can be resolved at the same time ... [it] provides small claimants with a method of obtaining redress..." (California Supreme Court in the 2004 case, Sav-on Drug Stores, Inc. v. Superior Court, 34 Cal. 4th 319, 340.)

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