struction. The third influence was
the slavery question which, becoming acute, shaped the American ideals
and public discussion for nearly a generation. Viewed from one angle,
this struggle involved the great question of national unity. From
another it involved the question of the relations of labor and capital,
democracy and aristocracy. It was not without significance that Abraham
Lincoln became the very type of American pioneer democracy, the first
adequate and elemental demonstration to the world that that democracy
could produce a man who belonged to the ages.

After the war, new national energies were set loose, and new
construction and development engaged the attention of the Westerners as
they occupied prairies and Great Plains and mountains. Democracy and
capitalistic development did not seem antagonistic.

With the passing of the frontier, Western social and political ideals
took new form. Capital began to consolidate in even greater masses, and
increasingly attempted to reduce to system and control the processes of
industrial development. Labor with equal step organized its forces to
destroy the old competitive system. It is not strange that the Western
pioneers took alarm for their ideals of democracy as the outcome of the
free struggle for the national resources became apparent. They espoused
the cause of governmental activity.

It was a new gospel, for the Western radical became convinced that he
must sacrifice his ideal of individualism and free competition in order
to maintain his ideal of democracy. Under this conviction the Populist
revised the pioneer conception of government. He saw in government no
longer something outside of him, but the people themselves shaping their
own affairs. He demanded therefore an extension of the powers of
governments in the interest of his historic ideal of democratic society.
He demanded not only free silver, but the ownership of the agencies of
communication and transportation, the income tax, the postal savings
bank, the provision of means of credit for agriculture, the construction
of more effective devices to express the will of the people, primary
nominations, direct elections, initiative, referendum and recall. In a
word, capital, labor, and the Western pioneer, all deserted the ideal of
competitive individualism in order to organize their interests in more
effective combinations. The disappearance of the frontier, the closing
of the era which was marked by the