For our hopeful, yes, convincing comparisons, we need not bring forward the early days of the republic, when the surviving silly old Colonial aristocracy was strong enough to restrict the suffrage, to enforce rigid class distinctions, to threaten us with an official aristocracy of “birth.” We only need compare forty years ago with to-day to see the substantial progress of true Democracy. Proportionately, are there not vastly fewer people to-day lacking that high sense of self-respect which caused so much open, profuse and shamefaced apologies for electing to the Presidency a man of such “low origin” as Lincoln? At the time of the Civil War, and even thereafter, the rich men in every community had great political influence simply because they were rich, and property, as property, claimed and was conceded a right to a more potent voice in the public affairs. Is it so to-day? Is not the property influence exercised only in secrecy and stealth? Is the rich man a favorite for elective office, or are the people, roused by the frequent coincidence of wealth and corruption, jealously suspicious of the rich man in politics? Outside the umbra and penumbra of plutocracy we find the American with the inborn sense of equality, the American that rejoices in humble origin as proof of the personal worth of him who has risen. We are still a nation of working men and women, the sons and daughters of working people. And just as soon as one of us becomes ashamed of his birth or of his own past, becomes infected with the cheap and silly vulgarisms that Europe is always thrusting upon us, just so soon does he or she begin to fall behind in the procession. Influential relatives will not long save him or her, nor inherited property; misused opportunity to better education will only hasten the downfall. Never was country made up of more _kinds_ of people than the United States; but we have no classes. There is no condition to which one is born from which one may not escape. Class means such a condition. Now, were caste altogether a matter to be determined by the rich, by those “on top,” we might well tremble for the future of our social state. The rich of a thousand localities would not be slow to take advantage of the chance were it offered them. But fortunately _caste is made by those who look up, not by those who look down_.