"This thing has gone on and on in city, State, and nation, until to-day the paramount power in our land is not a Democracy, not a Republic, but an Autocracy of centralized, systemized, industrial and financial power. 'Government of the people, by the people, and for the people' has perished from the earth in the United States of America."
An editorial in McClure's Magazine (July, 1911) draws a similar picture and frankly applies the term, "State Socialism," to the great reforms that are pending:—
"Two great social organizations now confront each other in the United States—political democracy and the corporation. Both are yet new,—developments, in their present form, of the past two hundred years,—and the laws of neither are understood. The entire social and economic history of the world is now shaping itself around the struggle for dominance between them....
"The problem presented by this situation is the most difficult that any modern nation has faced; and the odds, up to the present time, have all been with the corporations. Property settles by economic law in strong hands; it has unlimited rewards for service, and the greatest power in the world—the power of food and drink, life and death—over mankind. Corporate property in the last twenty years has been welded into an instrument of almost infinite power, concentrated in the hands of a very few and very able men.
"Sooner or later the so far unchecked tendency toward monopoly in the United States must be met squarely by the American people....
"The problem of the relation of the State and the corporation is now the chief question of the world. In Europe the State is relatively much stronger; in America, the corporation. In Europe the movement towards Socialism—collective ownership and operation of the machinery of industry and transportation—is far on its way; in America we are moving to control the corporation by political instruments, such as State Boards and the Interstate Commerce Commission....
"And if corporate centralization of power continues unchecked, what is the next great popular agitation to be in this country? For State Socialism?"
When a treaty of peace is made between "Big Business" and the smaller capitalists under such leadership as La Follette's, we may be certain that it will not amount merely to a swallowing up of the small fish by the large. The struggle waged according to La Follette's principles is not a mere bid for political power and the spoils of office, but a real political warfare that can only end by recognition of the small capitalist's claims in business and politics—in so far as they relate, not to the restoration of competition, but to government ownership or control. As early as 1905, when governor of Wisconsin, La Follette said:—
"It must always be borne in mind that the contest between the State and the corporate powers is a lasting one.... It must always be remembered that their attitude throughout is one of hostility to this legislation, and that if their relation to the law after it is enacted is to be judged by the attitude towards the Interstate Commerce Law, it will be one of continued effort to destroy its efficiency and nullify its provision." Events have shown that he was right in his predictions, and his idea that the war against monopolies must last until they are deprived of their dominant position in politics is now widely accepted.
The leading demands of the small capitalists, in so far as they are independently organized in this new movement, are now for protection, as buyers, sellers, investors, borrowers, and taxpayers against the "trusts," railways, and banks. Formerly they invariably took up the cause of the capitalist competitors and would-be competitors of the "Interests"—and millionaires and corporations of the second magnitude were lined up politically with the small capitalists, as, for example, silver mine owners, manufacturers who wanted free raw material, cheaper food (with lower wages), and foreign markets at any price,—from pseudo-reciprocity to war,—importing merchants, competitors of the trusts, tobacco, beer, and liquor interests bent on decreasing their taxes, etc.
The great novelty of the "Insurgent" movement is that, in dissociating itself from Free Silver, Free Trade, and the proposal to destroy the "trusts," it has succeeded in getting rid of nearly all the "Interests" that have wrecked previous small capitalist movements. At the same time, it has all but abandoned the old demagogic talk about representing the citizen as consumer against the citizen as producer. It frankly avows its intention to protect the ultimate consumer, not against small capitalist producers (e.g. its opposition to Canadian reciprocity and cheaper food), but solely against the monopolies. Indeed, the protection of the ultimate consumer against monopolies is clearly made incidental to the protection of the small capitalist consumer-producer. The wage earner consumes few products of the Steel Trust, the farmer and small manufacturers, many. Nor does the new movement propose to destroy the "trusts" by free trade even in the articles they produce, but merely to control prices by lower tariffs. With the abandonment of the last of the "Interests" and at the same time of the "consumers" that they use as a cloak, the new movement promises for the first time a fairly independent and lasting political organization of the smaller capitalists.
While Senator La Follette is the leading general of the new movement, either Ex-President Roosevelt or Governor Woodrow Wilson seems destined to become its leading diplomatist. While Senator La Follette declares for a fight to the finish, and shows that he knows how to lead and organize such a fight, Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson are giving their attention largely to peace terms to be demanded of the enemy, and the diplomatic attitude to be assumed in the negotiations. Perhaps it is too early for such peaceful thoughts, and premature talk of this kind may eliminate these leaders as negotiators satisfactory to the small capitalists. Their interest for my present purpose is that they probably foreshadow the attitude that will finally be assumed when the large "Interests" see that they must make terms.
Mr. Wilson's language is at times so conciliatory as to create doubt whether or not he will stand with Senator La Follette and the Republican "Insurgents" for the whole of the small capitalist's program, but it leaves no doubt that, if he lives up to his declared principles, he must aim at the government regulation, not of "Big Business" merely, but of all business—as when he says that "business is no longer in any sense a private matter."