It has been said that usually there are but three generations between shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves. The old man trades upon the name made in the days of his younger strength, and the son, seldom possessing the strength of the father, trades on the father's name, while the third generation generally gets back to shirt-sleeves again. Although this statement is not a general truth, it has truth enough to excuse it. The main reason why luxury and opulence lead to degeneracy, weakness, and effeminacy, is that those who live on Easy Street, being relieved of the intense strife necessary to gain a livelihood and to climb to positions of opulence and power, suffer from weakness and decay, and finally find their way down to shirt-sleeves, at the foot of the economic and social ladder, either to be submerged in hoboism, or to make the climb of old progenitors over again. What is true of individuals and families in this respect holds true also of nations, only it takes a little longer time, starting from shirt-sleeves, to get back to shirt-sleeves again. We Americans were taught by the promoters of the American Revolution--in short, by the fathers of our country--that all men are created equal in respect to privilege, and that no class distinction and no class privilege were worthy of honor unless earned. By consequence, the symbol and the badge of our class distinction became the dollar. Taught to despise aristocracy, we immediately created for ourselves a new aristocracy in the shape of a plutocracy. This aristocracy of wealth was fast becoming as tyrannical and unbearable and as much a menace to the freedom of the people as the old aristocracy which it had replaced. The old aristocracy had been established by the right of the sword; the new aristocracy had been established by the purchasing power of the dollar, and the people learned that combinations of wealth were a compelling power as great as the combination of armies, and that a government dominated by the dollar might become as intolerable as any form of absolutism. Then there came another American revolution, led by the labor unions, which proved that it is only necessary for the people to organize, in order to conquer with the short-sword of the ballot as effectually as with the sword of steel. Unhappily, just as intolerance and avarice have always led conquerors to be overgrasping and tyrannical, so have intolerance and avarice made prosecutions under the Sherman Law veritable persecutions. Now that the common people have found their power, nothing under heaven can halt them, or prevent them from abusing that power, except a higher education of the common people and their leaders, compelling them to understand the great truth that the people of a nation must co-operate with a patriotism that shall emulate the spirit of the hive of bees so admirably interpreted by Maeterlinck.