The less sanguine admitted all this. Of course the workingmen's
aspirations were impossible of fulfillment for natural
reasons, but there were grounds to fear that they would not
discover this fact until they had made a sad mess of society.
They had the votes and the power to do so if they pleased, and
their leaders meant they should. Some of these desponding
observers went so far as to predict an impending social cataclysm.
Humanity, they argued, having climbed to the top round
of the ladder of civilization, was about to take a header into
chaos, after which it would doubtless pick itself up, turn round,
and begin to climb again. Repeated experiences of this sort in
historic and prehistoric times possibly accounted for the
puzzling bumps on the human cranium. Human history, like all
great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of
beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a
chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The
parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustration of the
career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the
aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization
only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in
the regions of chaos.

This, of course, was an extreme opinion, but I remember
serious men among my acquaintances who, in discussing the
signs of the times, adopted a very similar tone. It was no doubt
the common opinion of thoughtful men that society was
approaching a critical period which might result in great
changes. The labor troubles, their causes, course, and cure, took
lead of all other topics in the public prints, and in serious
conversation.