And well enough, perhaps, since as yet America has no intellectual atmosphere, no native art force wherewith to present its claim, even to itself. A drab, and in places narrowly ignorant, people, imagining that it is religious, moral, conservative--a thousand things that really it is not. Since it is mental capacity that makes a country interesting to itself and others, perhaps it is the drab attitude of the American toward what he has and is which makes his land so uninteresting to himself and others. Give him a different mental attitude, more perspective, “punch,” daring in regard to life itself, and America would soon take on a luster not outrivaled by that of any other land. * * * * * Let us contemplate in this connection another and, in so far as this essay is concerned, final phase of the American mind--for I have elsewhere dealt with moral narrowness--and that is his serious and, were it not so pathetic and at times tragic, one might say, amusing, faith in the ballot and what it will or can accomplish for him. Always, always he is voting for some one--a mayor or a State legislator every year; a congressman every two years, a senator every four or six; a governor every two and a President every four years--and he is under the illusion that thereby, by his vote, his choice of a candidate, he is running the Government and maintaining his so-called liberties. The futility of his vote in the late great war might have taught him something, if only he were to be taught. To this day he has not discovered that, in the main, he is merely voting for individuals thrust upon him by interests and forces over which he has no control, never has had, and apparently never can have, and the election or defeat of whom does not depend upon him or the individuals about whom he is so excited. Mayors, governors, state legislators, congressmen, senators, and even judges and presidents, come and go, but the powerful interests at the top remain; and however much the former may be imbued with a desire to do something for the rank and file, the latter are there to revise or repress their emotions or opinions, and the ordinary voter finds himself about where he was before--of small force or weight in the vast welter of American politics. In short, keen money-masters at the top long since learned that a bare majority of votes anywhere, in or out of congress or a state legislature, is sufficient to confer rule and that, apart from convincing the intellect by sound argument, there were many, many ways of bending the representatives of the people to their will. If this is not true, how is it that five per cent of them have ninety-five per cent of the wealth and the other ninety-five only five?