The psychological effect of the political equality established under republicanism is extremely demoralizing. As I have remarked, the subject classes have never desired freedom so much as a chance at the privileges that they see other people enjoy. Political equality, with its breaking-down of class distinctions, creates an impression of equality of opportunity--and indeed to the extent that government maintains no disabling legal discriminations among members of the enfranchised class,[33] it actually establishes equality. No member of that class is excluded from the benefits of privilege by anything save his inability to get possession of it; and this fact, especially in a country where opportunity is comparatively plentiful, is more likely to confirm people in their loyalty to a system under which they stand even a dog’s chance to become beneficiaries of privilege, than it is to stimulate an endeavour to abolish privilege altogether. In this country the incalculable richness of natural resources and the enormous wealth to be gained by speculative enterprise under a government which gives full rein to monopoly, contributed immensely to the corruption of the citizenry. Speculation became the normal course of enterprise, the most approved method of money-getting; and the more ruinously did the monopolist exploit the country’s resources, as Mr. Veblen has pointed out, the greater the regard in which he was held by his fellow citizens. Never before in the world’s history had so many people a chance at the enjoyment of privilege as in the pioneer period of American development. The country’s resources were gutted for profit, not developed for use. The use-value of land was incidental to its value as real estate. Every farmer became a speculator, and consequently the margin of cultivation, instead of being pushed out gradually in response to the natural increase in the country’s needs, was extended artificially and with extreme rapidity, with the result that farms were miles apart and unnecessary difficulties in marketing, and in the maintenance of education and social life, were created. The country resembled the modern city-addition of the real-estater, with all the framework of settlement, waiting for the pressure of population to enhance the selling-price of land. Not only was the public mind corrupted by the apparently limitless opportunity to enjoy privilege--not only was speculation confused with production--but all this opportunity was blindly attributed to the blessings of republicanism. “The greatest government on earth” came to be regarded as the guardian of free opportunity for all citizens, in spite of the very evident fact that no government which protects land-monopoly can possibly maintain freedom of opportunity, for in the course of monopoly all available natural resources are shortly pre-empted, and those people who are born after occupation is complete will find nothing left to pre-empt.