Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/201

 banker or business man, whatever his demerits otherwise, is at least more competent professionally than the average American statesman, musician, painter, author, labour leader, scholar, theologian or politician. Think of the best American poet of our time, or the best soldier, or the best violoncellist, and then ask yourself if his rank among his fellows in the world is seriously to be compared with that of the late J. Pierpont Morgan among financial manipulators, or that of John D. Rockefeller among traders. The capitalists, in fact, run the country, as they run all democracies: they emerged in Germany, after the republic arose from the ruins of the late war, like Anadyomeme from the sea. They organize and control the minorities that struggle eternally for power, and so get a gradually firmer grip upon the government. One by one they dispose of such demagogues as Bryan and Roosevelt, and put the helm of state into the hands of trusted and reliable men—MecKinley, Harding, Coolidge. In England, Germany and France they patronize, in a somewhat wistful way, what remains of the old aristocracies. In the United States, through such agents as the late Gompers, they keep Demos penned