II. Industrial Evolution 27 III. Markets and Misery 72 IV. Social Decay 103 V. Business and Politics 138 VI. The Revolution 179 VII. The Industrial Republic 215 ILLUSTRATIONS “Vooruit,” Home of the Socialist societies of Ghent _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE A Socialist view of the Trusts 48 Reaping by hand and by machinery 92 Child labor in glass factories and coal mines 114 The Social contrast in New York 126 Coxey’s Army on the march and in Washington 206 The competitive vs. coöperative distribution of information 220 Helicon Hall 274 THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC CHAPTER I THE COMING CRISIS The thing which most impresses the student of the Civil War struggle, is how generally and completely the people who lived through it failed to understand it themselves. We of the present day know that the War was a clash between two incompatible types of civilisation; between an agricultural and conservative aristocracy, and a commercial and progressive democracy. We can see that each society developed in its people a separate point of view, separate customs and laws, ideals and policies, literatures and religions. We can see that their differing interests as to tariffs, police regulations, domestic improvements and foreign affairs, made political strife between them inevitable; and that finally the expansion which was necessary to the life of each brought them into a conflict which could only end with the submission of one or the other. Yet, plain as this seems to us now, the people of that time did not grasp it; through the whole long process they were dragged, as it were, by the hair of their heads, and each event as it came was a separate phenomenon, a fresh source of astonishment, alarm, and indignation. Even after the war had broken out, the vast majority of them would not be enlightened as in regard to it—a few of them have not been enlightened yet. I talked recently with an old Confederate naval officer, who said to me: “Oh, yes; it was the politicians who made the war.” I recall the astonished look which crossed the old gentleman’s face when I ventured the opinion that the politicians of this country had never yet made anything except their own livings.