The lightning march of the American people across the continent gave the plutocracy its grip on the natural resources. The revolutionary transformations in industry guaranteed its control of the productive machinery.
The wizards of industrial activity have changed the structure of business life even more rapidly than they have conquered the wilderness. True sons of their revolutionary ancestors, they have slashed and remodeled and built anew with little regard for the past.
Revolutions are the stalking grounds of predatory power. Napoleon built his empire on the French Revolution; Cromwell on the revolt against tyrannical royalty in England. Peaceful times give less opportunity to personal ambition. Institutions are well-rooted, customs and habits are firmly placed, life is regulated and held to earth by a fixed framework of habit and tradition.
Revolution comes—fiercely, impetuously—uprooting institutions, overthrowing traditions, tearing customs from their resting places. All is uncertainty—chaos, when, lo! a man on horseback gathers the loose strands together saying, "Good people, I know, follow me!"
He does know; but woe to the people who follow him! Yet, what shall they do? Whither shall they turn? How shall they act? Who can be relied upon in this uncertain hour?
The man on horseback rises in his stirrups—speaking in mighty accents his message of hope and cheer, reassuring, promising, encouraging, inspiring all who come within the sound of his voice. His is the one assurance in a wilderness of uncertainty. What wonder that the people follow where he leads and beckons!
The revolutionary changes in American economic life between the Civil War and the War of 1914 gave the plutocrat his chance. He was the man on horseback, quick, clever, shrewd, farseeing, persuasive, powerful. Through the courses of these revolutionary changes, the Hills, Goulds, Harrimans, Wideners, Weyerhausers, Guggenheims, Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Morgans did to the American economic organization exactly what Napoleon did to the French political organization—they took possession of it.
3. Making the Plutocracy Be Good
The American people were still thinking the thoughts of a competitive economic life when the cohorts of an organized plutocracy bore down upon them. High prices, trusts, millionaires, huge profits, corruption, betrayal of public office took the people by surprise, confused them, baffled them, enraged them. Their first thought was of politics, and during the years immediately preceding the war they were busy with the problem of legislating goodness into the plutocracy.
The plutocrats were in public disfavor, and their control of natural resources, banks, railroads, mines, factories, political parties, public offices, governmental machinery, the school system, the press, the pulpit, the movie business,—all of this power amounted to nothing unless it was backed by public opinion.