even, which came from the foreignness of its members. Another
ominous condition arose. The United States ceased to be the Land
of Promise, where any hard-working and thrifty man could better
himself and even become rich. The gates of Opportunity were
closing. The free lands, which the Nation offered to any one who
would cultivate them, had mostly been taken up; the immigrant who
had been a laborer in Europe, was a laborer here. Moreover, the
political conditions in Europe often added to the burdens and
irritation caused by the industrial conditions there. And the
immigrant in coming to America brought with him all his
grievances, political not less than industrial. He was too
ignorant to discriminate; he could only feel. Anarchy and
Nihilism, which were his natural reaction against his despotic
oppressors in Germany and Russia, he went on cultivating here,
where, by the simple process of naturalization, he became
politically his own despot in a year or two.

But, of course, the very core of the feud which threatens to
disrupt modern civilization was the discovery that, in any final
adjustment, the POLITICAL did not suffice. What availed it for
the Taborer and the capitalist to be equal at the polls, for the
vote of one to count as much as the vote of the other, if the two
men were actually worlds apart in their social and industrial
lives? Equality must seem to the laborer a cruel deception and a
sham unless it results in equality in the distribution of wealth
and of opportunity. How this is to be attained I have never seen
satisfactorily stated; but the impossibility of realizing their
dreams, or the blank folly of doting on them, has never prevented
men from striving to obtain them. From this has resulted the
frantic pursuit, during a century and a quarter, of all sorts of