Again, it is generally the custom to regard this phenomenon of class-government with indignation and astonishment, as if it were something abnormal and monstrous; but from the point of view of this discussion, it is a perfectly natural and inevitable incident of the intensification of competition. You are to picture Capital, seeking profits; like a wild beast in a cage, pacing about, watching for an opening, here and there; like water, caught behind a dam, creeping up, crowding forward, feeling for a weak spot. And the one thing to be determined is: _Is there any way in which profits can be made through the powers of government?_ If so, it is quite certain that there will be an attempt made by capital to get possession of those powers. You can see the thing in its germ in any primitive community; I once amused myself by studying it in a little village in Canada, where the trusts had never been heard of. The storekeeper was a rich man, and he had a “pull” with the squire and with the constable and with the game-warden; he did little favours for them, and they for him—so that a poor “Frenchman” who was suspected of stealing a pair of socks found himself in jail before he knew why. And then there was a big “lumber man” in the township; he owned all the jobs, and he traded with the storekeeper, and the storekeeper in return ran the political machine. That was the whole story of the politics of the district—except that there were several fellows of independent temperament, who grumbled, and who constituted the germ of the Socialist movement. Political corruption first became epidemic in our country in 1861, when the government had to go into business upon an enormous scale. There were contractors—and competition. And then, of course, there was the tariff, a shrewd scheme to compel the people to pay high prices without knowing it. Later on someone discovered the brilliant idea of the franchise, the selling for a nominal sum of the right to tax the public without limit. And so capital went into politics. At first it did a purely retail business, buying up the legislators as it needed them; but soon the thing became systematised, and Capital got wholesale prices—it financed the machines, and chose its own candidates. The process culminated at the beginning of the present decade, when “big business” was in practically undisputed possession of both the majority parties, of Congress and the Presidency, and of the governments in every town, city and state in America.