Therefore, I submit, that an hour may not be quite wasted which is
passed in considering some of the recent phenomena which have appeared
about us, in order to ascertain if they can be grouped together in any
comprehensible relation.
About a century ago, after, the American and French Revolutions and the
Napoleonic wars, the present industrial era opened, and brought with it
a new governing class, as every considerable change in human environment
must bring with it a governing class to give it expression. Perhaps, for
lack of a recognized name, I may describe this class as the industrial
capitalistic class, composed in the main of administrators and bankers.
As nothing in the universe is stationary, ruling classes have their
rise, culmination, and decline, and I conjecture that this class
attained to its acme of popularity and power, at least in America,
toward the close of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. I draw
this inference from the fact that in the next quarter resistance to
capitalistic methods began to take shape in such legislation as the
Interstate Commerce Law and the Sherman Act, and almost at the opening
of the present century a progressively rigorous opposition found for its
mouthpiece the President of the Union himself.
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