but it is not probable. That sporadic oligarchies may
flourish for definite periods of time is highly possible; that they may
continue to do so is as highly improbable. The procession of the ages
has marked not only the rise of man, but the rise of the common man.
From the chattel slave, or the serf chained to the soil, to the highest
seats in modern society, he has risen, rung by rung, amid the crumbling
of the divine right of kings and the crash of falling sceptres. That he
has done this, only in the end to pass into the perpetual slavery of the
industrial oligarch, is something at which his whole past cries in
protest. The common man is worthy of a better future, or else he is not
worthy of his past.

* * * * *

NOTE.--The above article was written as long ago as 1898. The only
alteration has been the bringing up to 1900 of a few of its statistics.
As a commercial venture of an author, it has an interesting history. It
was promptly accepted by one of the leading magazines and paid for. The
editor confessed that it was "one of those articles one could not
possibly let go of after it was once in his possession." Publication was
voluntarily promised to be immediate. Then the editor became afraid of
its too radical nature, forfeited the sum paid for it, and did not
publish it. Nor, offered far and wide, could any other editor of
bourgeois periodicals be found who was rash enough to publish it. Thus,
for the first time, after seven years, it appears in print.

A REVIEW

Two remarkable books are Ghent's "Our Benevolent Feudalism" {7} and
Brooks's "The Social Unrest." {8} In these two books the opposite sides
of the labor problem are expounded, each writer devoting himself with
apprehension to the side he fears and views with disfavor. It would
appear that they have set themselves the task of collating, as a warning,
the phenomena of two counter social forces. Mr. Ghent, who is
sympathetic with the socialist movement, follows with cynic fear every
aggressive act of the capitalist class. Mr. Brooks, who yearns for the
perpetuation of the capitalist system as long as possible, follows with
grave dismay each aggressive act of the labor and socialist
organizations. Mr. Ghent traces the emasculation of labor by capital,
and Mr. Brooks traces the emasculation of independent competing capital
by labor. In short, each marshals the facts of a side in the two sides
which go