country in their class interest. The connection of "crooked politics and crooked business" stood suddenly revealed and a vigorous agitation set in which has lasted to our own day and which fixed as its object the termination, as it was called, of "this unholy partnership."

As I am writing this article (April, 1915) there is going on in Syracuse, New York, a libel suit of Mr. Barnes, a Republican boss, against ex-President Roosevelt, the Progressive leader, which has brought to light such illuminative material on class control that I am tempted to quote from it. It was in 1898, after the Spanish war, that Mr. Roosevelt began his national career by coming forward as candidate for governor of the state of New York. As a necessary preliminary he opened up round-about negotiations with Platt, the Republican boss and agent of the money-kings of Wall street, and presently received this letter from Platt's secretary: “I told him (Platt) that you would like to be nominated; that you understood perfectly that if you were nominated it would be as a result of his support; that you were not the sort of a man who would accept a nomination directly out of the hands of the organization without realizing the obligation thereby assumed. I said that you would adopt no line of policy and agree to no important matter or nomination without previous consultation." Mr. Roosevelt accepted these terms (with certain mental reservations) and entered upon his famous career as the personally honest agent of a corrupt boss and soon, in measure as his reach expanded, of a whole bench of bosses. In the following years he made the hairraising discovery that the wicked bosses were the tools of

the still more wicked manipulators of "big business" and on this discovery based his clamorous preachment of reform founding at last the Progressive party for the express purpose of overthrowing the enemies of the public weal.

The Progressive party marks an interesting awakening of the American people to capitalist control but it is, historically speaking, a party rather of reactionary than of forward-looking tendencies, for it upholds a program inspired by the old American freedom of the days of unlimited material resources and naively believes that "ideas" and "morality," if made sufficiently common coin, will secure the elections and the government to the people and drive the shamed capitalists into a modest, philosophic, and self-erasive obscurity. Everything considered, the most notable thing about the Progressive party is that it ignores the fact that democracy (with which nonetheless it boasts to be wed in Siamese inseparableness) is primarily an economic issue, and from this strange blindness it follows that, though fervidly denouncing capital as the source of political corruption, it proposes to conserve the capitalist system after effecting the "reform" of the individual capitalist through the descent of the Holy Ghost.

A small group of social-democratic critics laughs at such "reform" and upholds the faith of its European fellow-workers to the effect that democracy is primarily an economic issue and that it will be realized only by the total overthrow of the middle class regime. But these critics are as yet no considerable factor in the realm of practical politics. The average American continues to disport himself as a convinced individualist but the rea

son for his stand, though he does not admit it, is mainly economic. In spite of the trusts with their cumulative appropriation of our natural resources for the benefit of a limited group, in spite of our growing proletariat and its increasing misery and restlessness, we are not yet at the end of our unrivalled wealth and consequently a majority of our people prefers the system of free competition with its prospect of a luxurious return for every expended effort to a restrictive and cooperative system with its meager ideal of rations for everybody. America for many years to come will in all likelihood continue to be democratic in the generous sense of its traditions, that is, it will be content with political and legal equality coupled with the right of every individual to make as good a living as he can. The fly in the ointment will be the growing knowledge that the vaunted political rights are set at naught by secret class rule and that the shrinkage of economic opportunity goes on apace through the octopus activity of capital. Till the day of realization we shall go on boasting of the democracy we've got, a magnificent democracy in the light of its achievements but already undermined on its economic and moral sides. Above all, we should guard against judging and condemning Europe by the standards of our free competitive system. For crowded Europe neither was nor is comparable with us in the matter of material possibilities and under pressure of necessity has ante-dated us in interpreting democracy economically. In one sense at least Europe, in such advanced societies as Great Britain and Germany, is therefore more democratic than we are, but that need not hinder us from being proud of the democracy we have,

provided we recognize its virtues and its drawbacks and modestly remain aware that our chief advantage over the little trans-Atlantic continent lies in the more bounteous reward which the generous mother-heart of our country pours out to the individual as a return for his exertions.

THE PRESENT SITUATION IN GREAT BRITAIN.

I have already pointed out that till the Reform Bill of 1832 Great Britain was politically in the hands of its land-holding gentry and great merchants. The age of machinery won a first victory for its middle class beneficiaries by virtue of the act just named and inspired this group to try for nothing less than complete political control. Its program constituting the great creed of nineteenth century Liberalism included all the well-known liberties, such as religious toleration, freedom of speech, of the press and of association, and a wider and wider extension of the suffrage. An enormous legislation has accumulated along these lines in the eighty years since 1832 and the liberal program has been so completely realized that only a few details remain to be added, for instance, in the matter of the suffrage. The suffrage in Great Britain was twice extended after 1832, in the Reform Bills of 1867 and 1884, but a residence and property qualification persists and the radical demand of universal suffrage still remains to be realized. Such tiny imperfections, however, can not disguise the fact that Great Britain has achieved middle class rule, achieved it in fact with a completeness that leaves every other country, with the possible exception of France, in the shade and puts the British government hors concours as an expression of middle class ideals. It is noteworthy that this

success was won against the landed gentry but not at the price of its destruction. The gentry, not without terrible heart-burnings to be sure, has gradually adjusted itself to the situation and in return for its submission has been left in possession of its enormous social prestige and been admitted to a share in the money-profits of capitalism. The continued existence of the English aristocracy and its tenure of most of the high administrative posts in the army, navy, diplomatic and colonial services, has blinded us to the important fact that, economically speaking, this ancient order has been absorbed by the middle class, for although it still lives upon the land and maintains magnificent estates for ornamental purposes, it no longer lives by the land like the farmers of the United States or the peasants and gentry of Germany. The British gentry's interest-earning investments have been gradually transferred to industry and commerce, and therefore in spite of the social contempt it may feel and express for "people in trade," it is bound to those same people by the wirecables of an absolutely identical economic interest. Occassional revolts of the nobility caused by the unforgotten dream of power have been speedily suppressed. The last action, still in everybody's mind, befell in the first decade of the twentieth century and ended in the partial destruction of the house of Lords by the cancellation of its veto power. The more we look into the situation the more we are obliged to agree that in the British parliamentary system the middle class has perfected a tool admirably responsive to the mental, moral, and economic purposes of the group.