So we see that in spite of their experiences Socialists still draw a clear distinction between their Socialism and democracy. The Socialist is willing to ignore the experiences of the past twenty years in his ecstasy of vision. He claims that whatever has been done is mere reform. He affects to belittle it, the Marxian scorns it. To the Socialist, democracy is only the halfway house on the road to the economic paradise. He has his gaze fixed on the New Jerusalem of "co-operative production" and "distributive justice." Whether this New City, with its streets paved with the gold of altruism and its gates garnished with the pearls of good will and benevolence, will be brought from the fleecy clouds of ecstatic imagination to our sordid earth remains a question of speculation to that vast body of sincere and practical citizens who have not scaled the heights of the Socialistic Patmos. European Socialism has been transplanted to America. But its growth until quite recently has been very slow, and confined largely to immigrants. There is no political spur to hasten the movement. Here democracy has been achieved. The universal ballot, free speech, free press, free association are accomplished. Many of the economic policies espoused by the Social Democratic parties of Europe are written into the platforms of our political parties. There will be no independent labor party of any strength until the old parties have aroused the distrust of the great body of laboring men, and until the labor unions cut loose from their traditional aloofness and enter politics. How socialistic such a party will be must depend upon the circumstances attending its organization. The two third-party movements which have flourished since the Civil War, the Greenback movement of the '70's and the Populist movement of the '90's, were virtually "class" parties, restricted to the agricultural population of the Middle and Far West; and both of them feared Socialism as much as they hated capitalism. Neither of these parties outlived a decade. Economic prosperity abruptly ended both.[7] The stress of political exclusiveness and the harsh hand of government will not produce a reactionary movement among the workingmen of America. But economic circumstances may do so. We are still a young country full of the hope of youth. The ranks of every walk of life are filled with those who have worked their way to success from humble origin. Most of our famous men struggled with poverty in their youth. Their lives are constantly held up to the children of the nation as examples of American pluck, enterprise, and opportunity. A nation that lures its clerks toward proprietorship and its artisans toward independence offers barren soil for the doctrines of discontent. We have no stereotyped poverty in the European sense. Our farmers own their acreage, and many of the urban poor are able to buy a cottage in the outskirts of the city.