"Two great social organizations now confront each other in the United States--political democracy and the corporation. Both are yet new,--developments, in their present form, of the past two hundred years,--and the laws of neither are understood. The entire social and economic history of the world is now shaping itself around the struggle for dominance between them.... "The problem presented by this situation is the most difficult that any modern nation has faced; and the odds, up to the present time, have all been with the corporations. Property settles by economic law in strong hands; it has unlimited rewards for service, and the greatest power in the world--the power of food and drink, life and death--over mankind. Corporate property in the last twenty years has been welded into an instrument of almost infinite power, concentrated in the hands of a very few and very able men. "Sooner or later the so far unchecked tendency toward monopoly in the United States must be met squarely by the American people.... "The problem of the relation of the State and the corporation is now the chief question of the world. In Europe the State is relatively much stronger; in America, the corporation. In Europe the movement towards Socialism--collective ownership and operation of the machinery of industry and transportation--is far on its way; in America we are moving to control the corporation by political instruments, such as State Boards and the Interstate Commerce Commission.... "And if corporate centralization of power continues unchecked, what is the next great popular agitation to be in this country? For State Socialism?" When a treaty of peace is made between "Big Business" and the smaller capitalists under such leadership as La Follette's, we may be certain that it will not amount merely to a swallowing up of the small fish by the large. The struggle waged according to La Follette's principles is not a mere bid for political power and the spoils of office, but a real political warfare that can only end by recognition of the small capitalist's claims in business and politics--in so far as they relate, not to the restoration of competition, but to government ownership or control. As early as 1905, when governor of Wisconsin, La Follette said:--