d William Henry
Harrison have been substituted such industrial leaders as James J. Hill,
John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie.

The question is imperative, then, What ideals persist from this
democratic experience of the West; and have they acquired sufficient
momentum to sustain themselves under conditions so radically unlike
those in the days of their origin? In other words, the question put at
the beginning of this discussion becomes pertinent. Under the forms of
the American democracy is there in reality evolving such a concentration
of economic and social power in the hands of a comparatively few men as
may make political democracy an appearance rather than a reality? The
free lands are gone. The material forces that gave vitality to Western
democracy are passing away. It is to the realm of the spirit, to the
domain of ideals and legislation, that we must look for Western
influence upon democracy in our own days.

Western democracy has been from the time of its birth idealistic. The
very fact of the wilderness appealed to men as a fair, blank page on
which to write a new chapter in the story of man's struggle for a higher
type of society. The Western wilds, from the Alleghanies to the Pacific,
constituted the richest free gift that was ever spread out before
civilized man. To the peasant and artisan of the Old World, bound by the
chains of social class, as old as custom and as inevitable as fate, the
West offered an exit into a free life and greater well-being among the
bounties of nature, into the midst of resources that demanded manly
exertion, and that gave in return the chance for indefinite ascent in
the scale of social advance. "To each she offered gifts after his will."
Never again can such an opportunity come to the sons of men. It was
unique, and the thing is so near us, so much a part of our lives, that
we do not even yet comprehend its full significance. The existence of
this land of opportunity has made America the goal of idealists from the
days of the Pilgrim Fathers. With all the materialism of the pioneer
movements, this idealistic conception of the vacant lands as an
opportunity for a new order of things is unmistakably present.
Kipling's "Song of the English" has given it expression:--

"We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;
We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.
Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need,