This whole aspect of the American governmental process in the novel is a very unsavory one. The industrialists are predatory robber barons who purchase dishonest politicians in order to obtain special privilege. In _The Charterhouse of Parma_ the Contessa dissuades Fabrizio from going to America by explaining to him “the cult of the god _Dollar_.” In several of his novels Sinclair declares that American foreign policy has been determined by the industrial interests. He portrays Dollar Diplomacy with a vengeance. In _Oil!_ he contends that the United States joined with Britain and France to fight the Bolsheviks not because of political ideology, but because “the creditor nations meant to make an example of Soviet Russia, and establish the rule that a government which repudiated its debts would be put out of business.” He also tells the reader that the same oil interests which backed Harding had turned in and out of office a succession of Mexican governments to suit their own commercial purposes. And it is not hard to see in _Nostromo_ the influence of the American tycoon Holroyd at work when the American cruiser _Powhatan_ appears to salute the Occidental flag and “put an end to the Costaguana-Sulaco War.” If the perverters of power are not demagogues with messianic complexes, they may be gangsters who rule by ballots when bribery fails. These subjects in the novel did not go out of vogue with the Muckraking Era or with Prohibition. A new rash of novels about gangsters in politics has appeared in recent years. The gunman who is concerned about investing his money may be replacing the one who writes his name with machine gun bullets, but his influence in politics is the same. =The American Idealist= The reverse side of this particular coin shows the idealist at work. He may come out of the political wringer with his ideals mangled and his illusions full of holes, but still he retains something of the impulse which created the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Millard Carroll in _The Grand Design_ is such a one, but he emerges as an old man at the end of his ordeal. Nick Burr in Ellen Glasgow’s _The Voice of the People_ (1900) is another, but his end is violent death. In recent years this idealistic aspect of the American political character has often found expression in heroes who engage in the direct struggle for liberty. Both Robert Jordan and Glenn Spotswood spill their blood on Spanish earth fighting against Franco. Were it not for the crusading district attorneys of books such as _Ashes_ and _Caesar’s Angel_, the implication would be that the American girds on his armor abroad but avoids conflict in his own back yard. Even so, something of this impression may remain with the reader. =Responsibility at Home and Abroad=