The second condition mentioned is “a high degree of the division of labor, by which, on the one hand, the mutual dependence of man on man grows ever greater, but by which, at the same time, the eye of the uncultured man becomes less and less able to perceive the connection existing between merit and reward, or service and remuneration. Let us betake ourselves in imagination to Crusoe’s island. There, when one man, after the labor of many months, has hollowed out a tree into a canoe, with no tools but an animal’s tooth, it does not occur to another, who, in the meantime, was, it may be, sleeping on the skin of some wild animal, to contest the right of the former to the fruit of his labor. How different this from the condition of things where civilization is advanced, as it is in our day; where the banker, by a single stroke of his pen, seems to earn a thousand times more than a day-laborer in a week; where, in the case of those who lend money on interest, their debtors too frequently forget how laborious was the process of acquiring the capital by the possessors, or their predecessors in ownership! More especially, we have in times of over-population whole masses of honest men asking, not alms, but only work—an opportunity to earn their bread, and yet on the verge of starvation.” The third condition: “A violent shaking or perplexing of public opinion in its relation to the feeling of right by revolutions, especially when they follow rapidly one on the heels of another, and take opposite directions. On such occasions both parties have generally prostituted themselves for the sake of the favor of the masses.... In this way they are stirred up to the making of pretentious claims which it is afterwards very difficult to silence.” It is in this prostitution of parties that our greatest danger in the United States lies. It is already sought to influence large classes by promises of office. The evils of political contests controlled by those who hope to gain offices and those who fear they may lose them will increase in two ways. First, the number of offices will necessarily become greater with the increase of population and the growth of public business. Instead of one hundred thousand federal office-holders, we will yet have two hundred thousand. Second, as population increases, and it becomes ever more and more difficult to gain one’s bread, to say nothing about ascending the social ladder, public offices will be coveted even more than at present, and over each one there will be waged a bitter personal warfare. What, then, we have to fear is that, as in ancient Rome, politicians will strive to influence the great masses by promises of favors—food and entertainments (_panem et circenses_). If a beginning is ever made in that direction the enemies of the republic will have already crossed the rubicon. It behooves us to stop in the downward path before it is too late. This can be done only by