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In England and Scotland the working-class population far exceeds in number the middle and upper classes. Enfranchised as it is, men and women both, it has the political power to seize the reins of government and take control into its hands. In America the situation is considerably different. Numerous as is the working class in America, it is outnumbered by the middle class. And the middle class is more comfortable, more self-assured, than that class in England. In England many middle-class people are so cramped and pinched economically that they are embittered against the rest of society and are ready to throw in their lot politically with Socialists and Radicals.
In British journalism there is much talk of the "Have-nots"—but such an expression would mean little in America: the Haves are so numerous that other people are not heard. What I mean is: the sense of property is capable of being more widely and more strongly developed even than in Britain.
With other nations one might make an even more striking comparison. Russia is a nation of "Have-nots"; Germany is a nation of a few rich and of broad poverty-stricken masses. Or to come nearer to the countries now under view, one may say of Mexico that poverty is national there. In America possession is national. The dollar is in America almost a national emblem.
There we have a very marked fundamental condition for future development. Britain is in danger because her masses do not obtain a fair share of the prosperity of the country as a whole. America is not in that sort of danger.
It may be urged that America has a violent Labor element, and that she has been harassed by such prolonged strikes as that of the coal operatives, the steel workers, the railway men. It is true that there is a violent element, but that element is foreign and illiterate. The real under-dog in America is the foreigner and the colored man. He is not regarded as a fellow citizen but as a hired mercenary, one in a gang of Chinese, a member of a slave caste. Even if he has his papers as a United States citizen he finds, like Eugene O'Neill's stoker—the "Hairy Ape"—that he does not really "belong."
Skilled men, craftsmen, artisans, shopmen, what in England we call the "respectable" working class, have in America no consciousness of inferiority. They have their Ford cars and their "Victrolas," they dance, the men wear ironed trousers, the women "bob" their hair. They are affiliated to religious organizations, they are also masons of some rite, probably not Rotarians or Kiwanis, but Red Men perhaps. In politics, they almost infallibly vote Democrat or Republican. Labor politics make no progress, because in the many millions they have only many thousand votes.
The American government machine is guaranteed against Radical interference for a long time. For Republicanism is founded on the Banks of America, and Democratism on the industries. Both parties are based solidly on the rights of possession, the rights of property, the rights of capital.