In the United States the opponent of plutocracy is democracy. Nowhere
else in the world has the power of wealth come to be discussed in its
political aspects as it is here. Nowhere else does the question arise
as it does here. I have given some reasons for this in former chapters.
Nowhere in the world is the danger of plutocracy as formidable as it is
here. To it we oppose the power of numbers as it is presented by
democracy. Democracy itself, however, is new and experimental. It has
not yet existed long enough to find its appropriate forms. It has no
prestige from antiquity such as aristocracy possesses. It has, indeed,
none of the surroundings which appeal to the imagination. On the other
hand, democracy is rooted in the physical, economic, and social
circumstances of the United States. This country cannot be other than
democratic for an indefinite period in the future. Its political
processes will also be republican. The affection of the people for
democracy makes them blind and uncritical in regard to it, and they are
as fond of the political fallacies to which democracy lends itself as
they are of its sound and correct interpretation, or fonder. Can
democracy develop itself and at the same time curb plutocracy?

Already the question presents itself as one of life or death to
democracy. Legislative and judicial scandals show us that the conflict
is already opened, and that it is serious. The lobby is the army of the
plutocracy. An elective judiciary is a device so much in the interest
of plutocracy, that it must be regarded as a striking proof of the
toughness of the judicial institution that it has resisted the
corruption so much as it has. The caucus, convention, and committee
lend themselves most readily to the purposes of interested speculators
and jobbers. It is just such machinery as they might have invented if
they had been trying to make political devices to serve their purpose,