For, strange and incongruous as it may seem, a plutocracy rarely if ever develops a real leader save in the crisis of its lifetime. In Rome, as Ferrero so well points out in his book, “The Greatness and Decline of Rome,” Sulla came into his leadership of the plutocracy only after the people in the person of Marius had seized from the hands of the plutocracy all the power of government. In France, the plutocracy absolutely failed to develop a leader. In England to-day, almost in the dawn of a revolution, the propertied classes lack a single person of commanding power. In America, no single man, no group of men, represent in their persons the power of the plutocracy.
It is the tendency of the great and wealthy to divide into rival camps. For some years past, in the one single subdivision of the world of wealth that is represented by Wall Street finance, there have been at least two great leaders of the golden host, bitterly antagonistic, fiercely at odds, each striving to draw to himself new reinforcements, not with the idea of strengthening the world of money as a whole, but rather with the single idea of building up his own power to break down or destroy the power of other leaders in that world. To-day, in this single section of the world of business, there seems to be but one man who stands like a giant among pygmies. Far more nearly than any other in our history does he, in his magnificent personal power and his splendid executive wisdom, approach the magnitude of a real leader in a plutocracy.
In the political world it is physically next to impossible that any man can arise in a country where the people vote who will be able to assume at once political power as a servant of the people and plutocratic rule as a representative of moneyed interests. In the never-ceasing conflict between the people and their exploiters no man by serving two sides can achieve greatness. Therefore, the wealthy classes of America have never sought, and are not seeking to-day, leaders from the political arena. In that arena, it is true, they have chosen to associate themselves, from time to time, with men who, through their ability or through the public confidence reposed in then, exercise great political authority. In that way, more than by any other, the plutocracy of America has maintained the status quo; but every citizen of the United States who in his own mind is persuaded that this is true of any one man who can be named in the political world despises that man, contemns his authority, and sets him down in the list of a nation’s traitors.
It is a losing fight, this struggle of a plutocracy against a people. Against organized political opposition in a free country, where citizens have a right to vote, it must crumble into dust when once the people seriously begin the organization of political opposition. For how different is the position of the people from the position of a plutocracy in the matter of individual leadership! Never in the history of the world, in any but a nation of slaves, have the people lacked a leader. Marius in Rome, Danton and Robespierre in Paris, Cromwell in England, you may multiply the list a hundred fold if you care to study the pages of history. In all ages, leaders like this, when once they are fired with enthusiasm for a cause, have been able, when they cared to do so, to strike out policies direct and strong, and to lead the minds of the people as they willed. Such lines of political cleavage as these do not transpire easily. In almost every case in history there has been transition only through war, riot, and revolution. We need a leader. He will surely come.
In this country, already, opposition exists. Labour union parties, reform parties, Socialistic parties, have come into being, faded away, and died. To-day, the only independent party working in the political world of the United States is so inextricably bound up with and wedded to a host of economic fallacies that the sober common sense of the American people as a whole, feeling as they do that the great political parties of the country are hopelessly inefficient and corrupt, will not endorse it.
We have not yet in this country marked out clearly the line of political cleavage along which the mighty rift must be made. Perhaps one may find the first faint tracings of it in the rise of the insurgents in the last session of congress. From what I have learned of the sentiment in the powerful Middle West, which more than any other part of the Union represents an average of the people of the United States, I am more than half convinced that this is true. If it be so, many things may happen within the next few years, and there may be very good reason indeed for the wide spread of uneasiness in the plutocracy.
I am not a politician. I look at this matter of political power much as any other sober American business man looks at it. Among my own people I seldom hear purely political discussions. When we are discussing pro and con the relative merits of candidates or the relative importance of political policies, the discussion almost invariably comes down to a question of business efficiency. We care absolutely nothing about statehood bills, pension agitation, waterway appropriations, “pork barrels,” state rights, or any other political question, save inasmuch as it threatens or fortifies existing business conditions. Touch the question of the tariff, touch the issue of the income tax, touch the problem of railroad regulation, or touch that most vital of all business matters, the question of general federal regulation of industrial corporations, and the people amongst whom I live my life become immediately rabid partisans.
It matters not one iota what political party is in power, or what President holds the reins of office. We are not politicians, or public thinkers; we are the rich; we own America; we got it, God knows how; but we intend to keep it if we can by throwing all the tremendous weight of our support, our influence, our money, our political connection, our purchased senators, our hungry congressmen, and our public-speaking demagogues into the scale against any legislation, any political platform, any Presidential campaign, that threatens the integrity of our estate.
I have said that the class I represent cares nothing for politics. In a single season a plutocratic leader hurled his influence and his money into the scale to elect a Republican governor on the Pacific coast, and a Democratic governor on the Atlantic. The same moneyed interest that he represented has held undisputed sway through many administrations, Republican and Democratic, in a state in which it had large railroad interests. Judge Lindsey, in his latest book, “The Beast,” has shown in indisputable detail how the corporation interests of Denver played with both great political parties. Truly can I say that wealth has no politics save its own interests.