What
the American people can or cannot do is a matter of opinion, but that
social changes are imminent appears to be almost certain. Though these
changes cannot be prevented, possibly they may, to a degree, be guided,
as Washington guided the changes of 1789. To resist them perversely, as
they were resisted at the Chicago Convention of 1912, can only make the
catastrophe, when it comes, as overwhelming as was the consequent defeat
of the Republican party.
Approached thus, that Convention of 1912 has more than a passing
importance, since it would seem to indicate the ordinary phenomenon,
that a declining favored class is incapable of appreciating an
approaching change of environment which must alter its social status. I
began with the proposition that, in any society which we now understand,
civilization is equivalent to order, and the evidence of the truth of
the proposition is, that amidst disorder, capital and credit, which
constitute the pith of our civilization, perish first. For more than a
century past, capital and credit have been absolute, or nearly so;
accordingly it has not been the martial type which has enjoyed
sovereignty, but the capitalistic.
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