In every little village and town, and even through the farming sections, there is some would-be Ward McAllister and “smart set;” some little circle who from some imagined cause or reason, in their own conceit are a little better than the typical old settlers of our country, who brought the Republic into existence. They try to impress, and sometimes most insultingly, this supposed superiority upon the minds of the “Common People.” In one little village it will be, for example, the owner of some protected little factory, which, in the wisdom of the legislators, has been protected to encourage and increase the industries of our country. In the solicitude of the legislators for the welfare of the people (acting honestly and in the best interests of the country), they have created the possibility for this man, this small manufacturer in the little village referred to, to accumulate a few thousand dollars more than his fellow citizens of the little village. The money has not been earned either by his sagacity, business ability, superior education, nor his intrinsic merit as a commercial genius. It is the result of accidents and the necessity that the legislators honestly felt existed, to create manufactories in our own country, to furnish the articles consumed by the people, rather than to buy the same from England and other foreign countries, sending our gold abroad out of the country in payment therefor. The honesty of purpose and the wisdom of the action of the legislative part of the Government, it is not the province of this book to question. It is to record the result of the action upon the social relations of the different members of that little community, or village, in which the small factory was established, and the attendant unhappiness arising from the accumulation of a disproportioned amount of money in the hands of one of the citizens of the community. The manufacturer, becoming prosperous, began to assume an air of social superiority. He was enabled to take a trip every now and again to some near-by city. He there saw his model McAllister. He returned to his village with un-American affectations, aping the manner of his model--the McAllister of his near-by city. He began to draw around him (in much the same manner as McAllister describes the creation of the “Patriarchs” of New York) those whom he deemed suitable for that superior social position which he, modelling the machinery after the manner of the city McAllister, deemed so desirable.