It is too soon, therefore, to determine how far the business of the Standard Oil Company has been built up on its merits; how far its success is due to efficient management and organisation by the shrewdest and ablest men, and how far due to the illegal and immoral methods of which they are accused. At the Chicago Convention in 1908 Senator Lodge said that the great body of the people had come to believe more and more that these vast fortunes, these vast combinations of capital, were formed and built up by tortuous and dishonest means and with a cynical disregard of the very laws which the mass of the people were compelled to obey. On the other hand the _Reminiscences_ of Mr. Rockefeller reveal a rare combination of insight and energy in founding and consolidating a new industry which of itself is sufficient to account for success. In any case, we in England, looking back on our history, have no right to point the finger of reproach at our American kinsmen. There is indeed a cynical theory that our ruling classes are free from such reproach only because they have been sated with the wealth they have already gained. With us the struggle has long been decided; whereas in America the dust and heat of battle still blind the eyes of men. The motives and merits of the agents by which great historic changes are accomplished, whether they be Julius Cæsar, Henry VIII., or J. D. Rockefeller, form a most interesting and important subject of study. But far more important is the problem we must face regarding the forces and the issues which they set in movement. Here we are concerned with live forces and urgent issues. Briefly we may describe the situation with which we have to deal as the struggle now proceeding between various forms of autocracy, bureaucracy, and plutocracy, on the one hand, and a social democracy which claims to represent the mass of the people, on the other. The features of the former powers we all know. The social democracy is still in its giant and untried youth. Not very long ago, as we have seen, the German working men had neither voice nor organisation nor insight into their position and prospects. France, after the failures of 1848, was hardly better. In most countries labour was dumb, or moaning under its burden of hardship and sorrow. Now much is changed. The working men have the foremost orators in the world to speak with their enemies in the gate, and they have an organisation which the strongest statesmen have been unable to break up or weaken. In previous chapters we have had frequent occasion to characterise the democracy of which the workers are the vast majority. We shall understand it better if we duly consider a few special points.