nator La Follette, "that because our form of government was
democratic, it was therefore automatically producing democratic results.
Now there is nothing mysteriously potent about the forms and names of
democratic institutions that should make them self-operative. Tyranny
and oppression are just as possible under democratic forms as under any
other. We are slowly realizing that democracy is a life, and involves
continual struggle."[207]

Senator La Follette fails only to note that this struggle to make
democracy a reality is not a struggle in the heart of the individual,
but between groups of individuals, that these groups are not formed by
differences of temperament or opinion, but by economic interests, and
that nearly every group falls into one of two great classes, those whose
interests are with and those whose interests are against the capitalists
and capitalist government.

Why is the sinister role of the upper classes not universally grasped?
Because the ideas and teachings of former generations still survive,
however much contradicted by present developments. At the time of the
American and French Revolutions and for nearly a century afterwards,
when political democracy was first securing a world-wide acceptance _as
an ideal_, it was looked upon as a creed which had only to be mentally
accepted in order to be forthwith applied to life. The only forces of
resistance were thought to be due to the ignorance or possibly to the
unregenerate moral character of the unconverted. The democratic faith
was accepted and propagated by the French and others almost exactly as
religion had been. As late as the middle of the last century this
conception of democracy, due to the wide diffusion of small and in many
localities approximately equal farms and small businesses, continued to
prevail.

About the middle of the nineteenth century the first advance was made.
It became recognized with the coming of railroads and steamships that
society could never become fixed as a Utopia or in any other form, but
must always be subject to change,--and the ideal of social evolution
gained a considerable acceptance even before the evolution theory had
been generally applied to biology. It was seen that if the ideal of
democracy was to become a reality, a certain degree of intellectual and
material development was required,--but it was thought that this
development was at hand. It was a period when wealth was rapidly
becoming more equally d