Is not this a parallel to make one pause and think? And if our American republic is to escape the fate of Rome, to what cause will it be due? The Roman failure was due to the fact that “the men and women by whom the hard work of the world was done were chiefly slaves”; those who held the franchise, the free Roman citizens, were a comparatively small class, and the patricians bought them with “bread and circuses,” and so held the reins of power. In our present time, however, those who do the work and those who have the ballot are the same class; and also they have the public school and the press, and the whole of modern science at their backs. More important yet—the all-dominating fact—is the machine. The Roman chattel-slave worked with his hands, while the modern wage-slave works with tools of gigantic speed and power; which means that our modern economic process, while infinitely more cruel and destructive, makes up for these qualities by the certainty and swiftness with which it rushes to its end. So it is that a Revolution which in Rome took centuries to culminate and fail, will require only decades in America to accomplish its inevitable triumph. CHAPTER IV SOCIAL DECAY If my analysis of the industrial process be correct, there will be two developments observable in our society: the first a material change, a kind of economic apoplexy, the concentration of wealth in one portion of society, accompanied by an intensification of competition, a falling in the rate of interest, and a steady rise in the cost of living; and second, a spiritual change coincident with the material one, a protest against the rising frenzy of greed, and against the constantly increasing economic pressure. It is important that these two processes should be clearly perceived, and their relationship correctly understood; for there is no aspect of the whole problem about which there is more bad thinking done. The two are cause and effect, and they explain and prove each other; and yet almost invariably you will hear them cited as contradicting each other. If, for instance, one speaks of the ever-rising tide of misery and suffering in our society, he will be met with the response that “the world is getting better all the time.” And when he asks for some proof of the statement, the reply will be that a great national awakening is going on, that we are developing new ideals and a new public spirit! Similarly I have, time and again, when advocating this or that concrete remedy, been met with the statement that the cure for the evils of the time is publicity—that the people must be educated—that we must appeal to men’s moral sense, etc. It is useless to argue with a person who cannot perceive that all these things are simply means to an end, and not the end. You cannot educate people just to be educated; when you appeal to them, you have to appeal to them to _do_ something.