THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC BOOKS BY UPTON SINCLAIR THE JUNGLE MANASSAS THE JOURNAL OF ARTHUR STIRLING PRINCE HAGEN KING MIDAS [Illustration: _Courtesy of Everybody’s Magazine_ “VOORUIT” Home of the Socialist Societies of Ghent ] The Industrial Republic A Study of the America of Ten Years Hence By UPTON SINCLAIR ILLUSTRATED [Illustration] New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1907 COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY PUBLISHED, MAY, 1907 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN TO H. G. WELLS “THE NEXT MOST HOPEFUL” INTRODUCTION The thought of the time has familiarised us with the evolutionary view of things; we understand that life is the product of an inner impulse, labouring to embody itself in the world of sense; and that the product is always changing—that there is nothing permanent save the principles and laws in accordance with which development goes on. We understand that the universe of things was evolved by slow stages into what it is to-day, that all life has come into being in the same way. We have traced this process in the far-distant suns and in the strata of the earth; we have traced it in the vegetables and in the animals, in the seed and in the embryo; we have traced it in all of man’s activities, his ways of thinking and acting, of eating and dressing and working and fighting and praying. This book is an attempt to interpret in the light of evolutionary science the social problem of our present world; to consider American institutions as they exist at this hour—what forces are now at work within them, and what changes they are likely to produce. The subject-matter dealt with is not abstract speculation, but rather the everyday realities of the world we know—our present political parties and public men, our present corporations and captains of industry, our present labour unions and newspapers, colleges and churches. The thing sought is an answer to a concrete and definite question: _What will America be ten years from now?_ Inasmuch as the people who are most interested in practical affairs are very busy people, I judge it to be a common-sense procedure to set forth my ideas in miniature at the outset; so that one may learn in two or three minutes exactly what my book contains, and judge whether he cares to read it.