." In one
sense this is doubtless true, since the corporation has been one of the
means by which small properties can be aggregated into an effective
working body. Socialistic writers have long been fond of pointing out
also that these various concentrations pave the way for and make
possible social control. From this point of view it is possible that the
masters of industry may prove to be not so much an incipient aristocracy
as the pathfinders for democracy in reducing the industrial world to
systematic consolidation suited to democratic control. The great
geniuses that have built up the modern industrial concentration were
trained in the midst of democratic society. They were the product of
these democratic conditions. Freedom to rise was the very condition of
their existence. Whether they will be followed by successors who will
adopt the exploitation of the masses, and who will be capable of
retaining under efficient control these vast resources, is one of the
questions which we shall have to face.

This, at least, is clear: American democracy is fundamentally the
outcome of the experiences of the American people in dealing with the
West. Western democracy through the whole of its earlier period tended
to the production of a society of which the most distinctive fact was
the freedom of the individual to rise under conditions of social
mobility, and whose ambition was the liberty and well-being of the
masses. This conception has vitalized all American democracy, and has
brought it into sharp contrasts with the democracies of history, and
with those modern efforts of Europe to create an artificial democratic
order by legislation. The problem of the United States is not to create
democracy, but to conserve democratic institutions and ideals. In the
later period of its development, Western democracy has been gaining
experience in the problem of social control. It has steadily enlarged
the sphere of its action and the instruments for its perpetuation. By
its system of public schools, from the grades to the graduate work of
the great universities, the West has created a larger single body of
intelligent plain people than can be found elsewhere in the world. Its
political tendencies, whether we consider Democracy, Populism, or
Republicanism, are distinctly in the direction of greater social control
and the conservation of the old democratic ideals.

To these ideals the West adheres with even a passionate determination.
I