V
A great many people, while admitting the important rôle class struggles have played in the history of the race, strenuously deny the existence of classes in the United States. They freely admit the class divisions and struggles of the Old World, but deny that a similar class antagonism exists in this country; they fondly believe the United States to be a glorious exception to the rule, and regard the claim that classes exist here as falsehood and treason. The Socialists are forever being accused of seeking to apply to American life judgments based upon European facts and conditions. It is easy to visualize the class divisions of monarchical countries, where there are hereditary ruling classes—even though these are only nominally the ruling classes in most cases—fixed by law. But it is not so easy to recognize the fact that, even in these countries, the power is held by the financial and industrial lords, and not by the kings and their titular nobility. The absence of a hereditary, titular ruling class serves to hide from many people the real class divisions existing in this country.
Nevertheless, there is a perceptible growth of uneasiness and unrest; a widening and deepening conviction that while we may retain the outward forms of democracy, and shout its shibboleths with patriotic fervor, its essentials are lacking. The feeling spreads, even in the most conservative circles, that we are developing, or have already developed, a distinct ruling class. The anomaly of a ruling class without legal sanction or titular prestige has seized upon the popular mind; titles have been created for our great "untitled nobility"—mock titles which have speedily assumed a serious import and meaning. Our financial "Kings," industrial "Lords," "Barons," and so on, have received their crowns and patents of nobility from the populace. President Roosevelt gives expression to the serious thought of our most conservative citizenry when he says: "In the past, the most direful among the influences which have brought about the downfall of republics has ever been the growth of the class spirit.... If such a spirit grows up in this republic, it will ultimately prove fatal to us, as in the past it has proven fatal to every community in which it has become dominant."[126]
With the exception of the chattel slaves, we have had no hereditary class in this country with a legally fixed status. But
"Man is more than constitutions,"
and there are other laws than those formulated in senates and recorded in statute books. The vast concentration of industry and wealth, resulting in immense fortunes on the one hand, and terrible poverty on the other, has separated the two classes by a chasm as deep and wide as ever yawned between czar and moujik, kaiser and vagrant, prince and pauper, feudal baron and serf. The immensity of the power and wealth thus concentrated into the hands of the few, to be inherited by their sons and daughters, tends to establish this class division hereditarily. Heretofore, passage from the lower class to the class above has been comparatively easy, and it has blinded people to the existing class antagonisms, though, as Mr. Ghent justly observes, it should no more be taken to disprove the existence of classes than the fact that so many thousands of Germans come to this country to settle is taken to disprove the existence of the German Empire.[127] The stereotyping of classes is undeniable. That a few men pass from one class to another is no disproof of this. The classes exist and the tendency is for them to remain permanently fixed, as a whole, in our social life.
But passage from the lower class to the upper tends to become, if not absolutely impossible and unthinkable, at least practically impossible, and as difficult and rare as the transition from pauperism to princedom in the Old World is. A romantic European princess may marry a penurious coachman, and so provide the world with a nine days' sensation, but such cases are no rarer in the royal courts of Europe than in our own plutoaristocratic court circles. Has there ever been a king in modern times with anything like the power of Mr. Rockefeller? Is any feature of royal recognition withheld from Mr. Morgan when he goes abroad in state, an uncrowned king, fraternizing with crowned but envious fellow-kings? The existence of classes in America to-day is as evident as the existence of America itself.
VI
Antagonisms of class interests have existed from the very beginning of civilization, though not always recognized. It is only the consciousness of their existence, and the struggle which results from that consciousness, that are new. As we suddenly become aware of the pain and ravages of disease, when we have not felt or heeded its premonitory symptoms, so, having neglected the fundamental class division of society, the bitterness of the strife resulting therefrom shocks and alarms us. So long as it is possible for the stronger and more ambitious members of an inferior class to rise out of that class and join the ranks of a superior class, so long will the struggle which ensues as the natural outgrowth of opposing interests be postponed.