ng classes
in mediaeval society were warriors and ecclesiastics, and they used all
their power to aggrandize themselves at the expense of other classes.
Modern society is ruled by the middle class. In honor of the bourgeoisie
it must be said that they have invented institutions of civil liberty
which secure to all safety of person and property. They have not,
therefore, made a state for themselves alone or chiefly, and their state
is the only one in which no class has had to fear oppressive use of
political power. The history of the nineteenth century, however, plainly
showed the power of capital in the modern state. Special legislation,
charters, and franchises proved to be easy legislative means of using
the powers of the state for the pecuniary benefit of the few. In the
first half of the century, in the United States, banks of issue were
used to an extravagant pitch for private interest. The history is
disgraceful, and it is a permanent degradation of popular government
that power could not be found, or did not exist, in the system to
subjugate this abuse and repress this corruption of state power. The
protective-tariff system is simply an elaborate system by which certain
interests inside of a country get control of legislation in order to tax
their fellow-citizens for their own benefit. Some of the victims claim
to be taken "into the steal," and if they can make enough trouble for
the clique in power, they can force their own admission. That only
teaches all that the great way to succeed in the pursuit of wealth is to
organize a steal of some kind and get inside of it. The pension system
in the United States is an abuse which has escaped from control. There
is no longer any attempt to cope with it. It is the share of the "common
man" in the great system of public plunder. "Graft" is only a proof of
the wide extent to which this lesson to get into the steal is learned.
It only shows that the corrupt use of legislation and political power
has affected the mores. Every one must have his little sphere of plunder
and especial advantage. This conviction and taste becomes so current
that it affects all new legislation. The legislators do not doubt that
it is reasonable and right to enact laws which provide favor for special
interests, or to practice legislative strikes on insurance companies,
railroads, telephone companies, etc. They laugh at remonstrance as out
of date and "unpractical." The administrators of life-insuran