Page:Earth-Hunger and Other Essays.djvu/355

Rh of the democratic republic. The harm is not all, therefore, on the side of the economic interests. I see no force in modern society which can cope with the power of capital handled by talent, and I cannot doubt that the greatest force will control the other forces. Our political institutions are based on the assumed power of numbers; the popular orators are all the time telling us what the "people" can do, when they arise in their might. The people have made for us what we now have, and in that we can easily see that great masses of men have no power until they are organized and led. They take notions into their heads which may be good or bad, but for the regulation of industry we want good notions only, and good notions do not come haphazard to great crowds of men. They come only to men of talent as a result of study. However, as things go now, the men on the side of numbers (democracy) affect to dislike talent and to ostracize it from political influence, while those on the side of capital (plutocracy) seek out talent and enlist its services at high wages. I cannot doubt what the effect of this selection on democratic political institutions will be. We may already see the corruption coming. We are, in fact, already governed by individuals and oligarchies; in every state in the Union the half-dozen men can be named who decide what may be done and what may not be done. The same is true in Washington. In other words, the numbers have given away their power or have allowed it to be taken from them. That is just what they have always done before in every case of democracy under the republican form. We have no democracy now; all the institutions are broken down; they are turned into oligarchies. The captains of industry and other great leaders in industrial enterprise do not mind this, for it gives them something