A little patience; a little time for our eighty millions, surcharged with Democracy, to weigh and measure and judge. Be sure, the dog will not be wagged by the tail. And before many decades European caste will see such a handwriting upon the western sky as has not terrified it since our Declaration of Independence. PART II.--DEMOCRACY CHAPTER IX “WE, THE PEOPLE” It cannot, then, be denied that wealth, concentrated wealth--not so much the plutocrat himself as the vast masterful accumulation of which he is the appendage; one might with truth say, the victim--is not only the most conspicuous factor in American life to-day, but also one of the most potent factors. The plutocracy in politics, the plutocracy in business, the plutocracy in society, the plutocracy in the home--in its own homes--that is our “peril.” A great monster indeed, fully up to the harrowing descriptions of our radical orators and writers. But why does the average, common-sense American refuse to be terrified? Because he does not see it? Hardly that. No; the real reason is that the American is fundamentally incapable of those caste and class feelings, without which a plutocracy can never hope to erect itself into an aristocracy, and therefore a real “peril.” To see America--the America that was, and is, and shall be--we must leave the neighborhood of the palaces of the plutocracy with its servile parasites and imitators, its fawning menials and shopkeepers; we must also leave the neighboring slums, where the American is so sadly caricatured--not more sadly, in truth, than where the plutocracy flaunts. We must go to the smaller cities and the towns and villages and the farms, where in ten thousand homes a sane and sober life is led by a sane and sober people. And we find there no tendencies toward the development of caste, far-reaching though the poisonous influence of the plutocracy is.