‘It is, with advertising, the chief curse of the Americans, and may, indeed, be described as political advertising. For never in the history of the world has there been so wonderful a field for the skilful persuader as are these modern democracies, where all the people can read and very few of them can think. All are secretly uncertain of themselves, and in America more so than elsewhere, and look to see what their neighbours are thinking and desire to be counted among the majority. For nothing is stronger in America than this desire to belong to the majority and to say “We think” or “We feel.” And it is natural for business men to be timid, for their business depends upon the good opinion of others, and so it is that business men very easily become hypocrites. I believe myself the American men do not mind dying since it means joining the great majority.’ ‘And one ever growing greater,’ added Agathon. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but they will not enjoy Hades, where time is not money any more, and no one but Charon has any wealth, so that the most forward salesmanship will be in vain.’ ‘Poor Americans,’ said Lysis, ‘they will feel very lost.’ ‘They will understand giving a sop to Cerberus,’ said Agathon; ‘it will be like their own politics. And they will like the crowds.’ ‘Come, my good friends,’ I said, ‘cease to tarry with the Americans in Hades, and let me resume my tale of their earthly misfortunes.’ ‘Pray do so, Socrates,’ they said. ‘Then I will say,’ I resumed, ‘that the second great disaster of that war has been this: that by the mechanism of the Constitution (to use a phrase often in their mouths, by which they mean that the laws made for other times and conditions produce different and strange results to-day), the opinions and ideas of one part of the country become the laws that are to be obeyed by all the parts. For it is the people of the North spreading westward to the great rivers that have built up in the great agricultural plains the growing empire of the Middle West, of which we spoke earlier, where the preachers and manufacturers have most power of all, having secured the ear of the women. Except for an accident once or twice the same party has been in power ever since the war, and that is the party of the North and the manufacturers, and the South have hardly more voice in the central government than if they were frankly governed as subjects.’ ‘What sort of people were these in the South?’ asked Lysis. ‘The best of them were the very best sort of barbarians,’ I replied, ‘and the nearest to civilization of all the Americans.’ ‘But they are from Ethiopia, are they not?’ said Lysis, ‘for I have heard men whistling in the streets of Athens songs in which the singer praises the blackness of his lover’s or mother’s face and these songs are what men sing in these Southern States.’