CHAPTER I

THE COLLAPSE OF CAPITALISTIC GOVERNMENT


Civilization, I apprehend, is nearly synonymous with order. However much
we may differ touching such matters as the distribution of property, the
domestic relations, the law of inheritance and the like, most of us, I
should suppose, would agree that without order civilization, as we
understand it, cannot exist. Now, although the optimist contends that,
since man cannot foresee the future, worry about the future is futile,
and that everything, in the best possible of worlds, is inevitably for
the best, I think it clear that within recent years an uneasy suspicion
has come into being that the principle of authority has been dangerously
impaired, and that the social system, if it is to cohere, must be
reorganized. So far as my observation has extended, such intuitions are
usually not without an adequate cause, and if there be reason for
anxiety anywhere, it surely should be in the United States, with its
unwieldy bulk, its heterogeneous population, and its complex government.
Therefore, I submit, that an hour may not be quite wasted which is
passed in considering some of the recent phenomena which have appeared
about us, in order to ascertain if they can be grouped together in any
comprehensible relation.

About a century ago, after, the American and French Revolutions and the
Napoleonic wars, the present industrial era opened, and brought with it
a new governing class, as every considerable change in human environment
must bring with it a governing class to give it expression. Perhaps, for
lack of a recognized name, I may describe this class as the industrial
capitalistic class, composed in the main of administrators and bankers.