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Meanwhile American prosperity increases on a grand scale, and the chief sign of it is increased leisure. The leisure class grows. It far outnumbers the leisure class of England or of any other nation. There are more Americans than English at Monte Carlo, more Americans in Switzerland, in Egypt, on the Norwegian fjords, in Athens, in Rome, in Northern Africa. There are many thousands of leisure Americans in London and at the shrines of England and ensconced in English country houses or enjoying the hospitality of country gentry—very greatly more than there are leisure Englishmen or Frenchmen or any other nationality at the shrines or country houses of America.
In America the leisured appear everywhere. The East is larded with leisure; the West runs on it as on oil. Care-free children in tens of thousands get educated, graduate, and have leisure. Something has to be done for the children of leisure—to make life more interesting.
A life of cars and country clubs will not suffice—especially for the women, who are almost always more ambitious than the men. There is a demand for careers by those who do not necessarily demand pay, a demand for greater interest. The Astors have found admirable scope in British politics. Such success as Lady Astor has attained is doubtless open to a few more. Americans range in surprising numbers behind successful British politicians, delighting in entertaining them when they can. Various very good looking and capable Americans hold, as it were, advanced posts in English society life. The competition to be presented at Court is greater each year, though greater numbers are actually received. The American Embassy is broadened out to an extensive social platform crowded with people whose estate and position in American life is such that they can hardly be ignored.
The diplomatic service generally in Europe is greatly used by the leisured Americans, and there come people with academic missions, advisory people of various kinds, who for one reason or another obtain interviews with distinguished men and then arrange dinner parties and talk, obtain impressions, get inside, have a finger in the pie.
That same force drives in American politics at home, by intrigue and by lobbying, trying to find a way of life, a larger interest, for the leisured. The American Republic, the old United States, affords little scope for the new ever-increasing class. But America as an Empire, America with a great Army and a great Fleet, America with a deep foreign policy which kept foreign powers all speculating on her next move, America as a world power, would give scope.
Most abhorrent to the leisured class is the primitive State; most desired is the State in its highest development. For a leisured class is not compatible with pure democracy. The present commercial system, however, is producing a leisured class in ever greater numbers. Does it not, therefore, follow that the commercial system itself is incompatible with pure democracy?