The majority lives in the perpetual utterance of self-applause, and there are certain truths which Americans can only learn from strangers, or from experience. If America has not yet had any great writers, the reason is given in these facts--there can be no literary genius without freedom of opinion, and freedom of opinion does not exist in America. Such passages as the above, quoted from the words of a friendly student of American democracy, show the impression which, notwithstanding our popular prattle about freedom, thoughtful foreigners have since the beginning received. And de Tocqueville wrote long before crowd-thinking had reached anything like the development we see at present. To-day the tyrannizing is not confined to the majority-crowd. All sorts of minority-crowds, impatient of waiting until they can by fair means persuade the majority to agree with them, begin to practice coercion upon everyone within reach the minute they fall into possession of some slight advantage which may be used as a weapon. From the industrial side we were first menaced by the "invisible government" of organized vested interests; now, by a growing tendency to government by strikes. Organized gangs of all sorts have at last learned the amusing trick of pointing a pistol at the public's head and threatening it with starvation, and up go its hands, and the gang gains whatever it wants for itself, regardless of anyone else. But this "hold-up game" is by no means confined to labor. Capitalistic soviets have since the beginning of the war taken advantage of situations to enhance their special crowd-interests. The following, quoted from a letter written during the war to the _Atlantic Monthly_, by a thoroughly American writer, Charles D. Stewart, describes a type of mob rule which existed in almost every part of the nation while we were fighting for freedom abroad: Carlyle said that "Of all forms of government, a government of busybodies is the worst." This is true. It is worse than Prussianism, because that is one form of government, at least; and worse than Socialism, because Socialism would be run by law, anyway. But government by busybodies has neither head nor tail; working outside the law, it becomes lawless; and having no law to support it, it finally depends for its enforcement upon hoodlums and mob rule. When the respectable and wealthy elements are resorting to this sort of government, abetted by the newspapers and by all sorts of busybody societies intent upon "government by public sentiment," we finally have a new thing in the world and a most obnoxious one--mob rule by the rich; with the able assistance of the hoodlums--always looking for a chance. It starts as follows: