But there are signs that these conditions are undergoing profound changes. Unlimited competition has led to limitless consolidation of industries, and the financial destinies of the Republic repose in the hands of comparatively few men. So much of the Marxian proposition is fulfilled, at the moment, in America. This concentrated wealth has not been unmindful of politics. Governmental power and money power are closely identified in the public mind. Our cities are overflowing with a new population from the excitable portions of southern Europe, a population that is proletarian in every sense of the word. Panics follow one another in rapid succession. The uneasiness of business is fed by the turmoil of politics. Unrest is everywhere. Labor and business are engaged in constant struggles that affect all members of society. The cost of living has increased alarmingly in the last ten years. We are becoming rapidly a manufacturing nation; the balance of power is shifting from the farm to the city.[8] European Socialists are taking a keen interest in American affairs. Bebel said to me: "You are getting ready for the appropriation of the great productive enterprises and the railways. Your trusts make the problem easy." John Burns prophesied that violence and bloodshed alone would check us in our mad career for wealth. Jaurès asked how long it would take before our poverty would be worse than that of Europe. At a distance they see us plunging headlong into a Socialist régime. Professor Brentano of Munich knows us better. He said to me, "Conservation will be your Socialism."[9] If the fundamental principles of conservation can be embodied in constitutional laws, then there will be an almost indefinite extension of the power of the state over industry. It will embrace mines, forests, irrigated deserts; it will extend to the sources of all water supply and water power; the means of transportation may ultimately be included. So that without radical legal and institutional changes it will be possible for many of the sources of our raw materials to be placed under governmental surveillance, leaving the processes of manufacture and exchange in the hands of private individuals. There are at present many indications that this will be our general process of "socialization." The people appear to want it; and in a democracy the will of the people must prevail. Before we have advanced far along the new road of conservation we will find it necessary to reconstruct our whole system of administration. The haphazard of politics must be foreign to public business. Everywhere in Europe, especially in Germany and England, the people, including the Socialists, appear satisfied with the efficiency of their administrative machinery. Who would intrust the running of a railroad to our Federal or State governments?