American fibre was growing weak and flabby from luxury and peace,
curiously ignoring the fact that their own economic class, the small
percentage of our population owning sixty per cent. of the wealth of the
country, and which therefore should be most debilitated by luxury, was
most eager for war, and since war has been declared has most amply proved
its courage and fighting quality. This, however, and other evidences of
the patriotic sacrifices of those of our countrymen who possess wealth,
prove that they are still Americans, and encourages the hope and belief
that as Americans they ultimately will do their share toward a democratic
solution of the problem of society. Many of them are capable of vision,
and are beginning to see the light today.

In America we succeeded in eliminating hereditary power, in obtaining a
large measure of political liberty, only to see the rise of an economic
power, and the consequent loss of economic liberty. The industrial
development of the United States was of course a necessary and desirable
thing, but the economic doctrine which formed the basis of American
institutions proved to be unsuited to industrialism, and introduced
unforeseen evils that were a serious menace to the Republic. An
individualistic economic philosophy worked admirably while there was
ample land for the pioneer, equality of opportunity to satisfy the
individual initiative of the enterprising. But what is known as
industrialism brought in its train fear and favour, privilege and
poverty, slums, disease, and municipal vice, fostered a too rapid
immigration, established in America a tenant system alien to our
traditions. The conditions which existed before the advent of
industrialism are admirably pictured, for instance, in the autobiography
of Mr. Charles Francis Adams, when he describes his native town of Quincy
in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. In those early communities,
poverty was negligible, there was no great contrast between rich and