In adopting, then, the methods of education, of organization, and of political action the socialists rest their case upon the decision of democracy. They accept the weapons that civilization has put into their hands, and they are testing the word of kings and of parliaments that democracy can, if it wishes, alter the bases of society. And in no small measure this is the secret of their immense strength and of their enormous growth. There is nothing strange in the fact that the socialists stand almost alone to-day faithful to democracy. It simply means that they believe in it even for themselves, that is to say, for the working class. They believe in it for industry as well as for politics, and, if they are at war with the political despot, they are also at war with the industrial despot. Everyone is a socialist and a democrat within his circle. No capitalist objects to a group of capitalists cooeperatively owning a great railroad. The fashionable clubs of both city and country are almost perfect examples of group socialism. They are owned cooeperatively and conducted for the benefit of all the members. Even some reformers are socialists in this measure--that they believe it would be well for the community to own public utilities, provided skilled, trained, honorable men, like themselves, are permitted to conduct them. Indeed, the only democracy or socialism that is seriously combated is that which embraces the most numerous and most useful class in society, "the only class that is not a class";[10] the only class so numerous that it "cannot effect its emancipation without delivering all society from its division into classes."[11]