Unfortunately or otherwise, people are prone to believe in the reality of the things they think ought to be so.This comes of the cheery optimism which is innate with life itself; and, while it may sometimes be deplored, it must never be censured, for, as a rule, it is productive of more good than harm, and of about all the achievement there is in the world.There are cases where this optimism has been disastrous, as with the people who lived in Pompeii during its last quivering days; or with the aristocrats of the time of Louis XVI, who confidently expected the Deluge to overwhelm their children, or their children's children, but never themselves.But there is small likelihood that the case of perverse optimism here to be considered will end in such disaster, while there is every reason to believe that the great change now manifesting itself in society will be as peaceful and orderly in its culmination as it is in its present development.
Out of their constitutional optimism, and because a class struggle is an abhorred and dangerous thing, the great American people are unanimous in asserting that there is no class struggle.And by "American people" is meant the recognized and authoritative mouth-pieces of the American people, which are the press, the pulpit, and the university.The journalists, the preachers, and the professors are practically of one voice in declaring that there is no such thing as a class struggle now going on, much less that a class struggle will ever go on, in the United States.And this declaration they continually make in the face of a multitude of facts which impeach, not so much their sincerity, as affirm, rather, their optimism.
There are two ways of approaching the subject of the class struggle.
The existence of this struggle can be shown theoretically, and it can be shown actually.For a class struggle to exist in society there must be, first, a class inequality, a superior class and an inferior class (as measured by power); and, second, the outlets must be closed whereby the strength and ferment of the inferior class have been permitted to escape.
That there are even classes in the United States is vigorously denied by many; but it is incontrovertible, when a group of individuals is formed, wherein the members are bound together by common interests which are peculiarly their interests and not the interests of individuals outside the group, that such a group is a class.The owners of capital, with their dependents, form a class of this nature in the United States; the working people form a similar class.The interest of the capitalist class, say, in the matter of income tax, is quite contrary to the interest of the laboring class; and, VICE VERSA, in the matter of poll-tax.
If between these two classes there be a clear and vital conflict of interest, all the factors are present which make a class struggle;but this struggle will lie dormant if the strong and capable members of the inferior class be permitted to leave that class and join the ranks of the superior class.The capitalist class and the working class have existed side by side and for a long time in the United States; but hitherto all the strong, energetic members of the working class have been able to rise out of their class and become owners of capital.They were enabled to do this because an undeveloped country with an expanding frontier gave equality of opportunity to all.In the almost lottery-like scramble for the ownership of vast unowned natural resources, and in the exploitation of which there was little or no competition of capital, (the capital itself rising out of the exploitation), the capable, intelligent member of the working class found a field in which to use his brains to his own advancement.Instead of being discontented in direct ratio with his intelligence and ambitions, and of radiating amongst his fellows a spirit of revolt as capable as he was capable, he left them to their fate and carved his own way to a place in the superior class.
But the day of an expanding frontier, of a lottery-like scramble for the ownership of natural resources, and of the upbuilding of new industries, is past.Farthest West has been reached, and an immense volume of surplus capital roams for investment and nips in the bud the patient efforts of the embryo capitalist to rise through slow increment from small beginnings.The gateway of opportunity after opportunity has been closed, and closed for all time.Rockefeller has shut the door on oil, the American Tobacco Company on tobacco, and Carnegie on steel.After Carnegie came Morgan, who triple-locked the door.These doors will not open again, and before them pause thousands of ambitious young men to read the placard: NOTHOROUGH-FARE.
And day by day more doors are shut, while the ambitious young men continue to be born.It is they, denied the opportunity to rise from the working class, who preach revolt to the working class.Had he been born fifty years later, Andrew Carnegie, the poor Scotch boy, might have risen to be president of his union, or of a federation of unions; but that he would never have become the builder of Homestead and the founder of multitudinous libraries, is as certain as it is certain that some other man would have developed the steel industry had Andrew Carnegie never been born.
Theoretically, then, there exist in the United States all the factors which go to make a class struggle.There are the capitalists and working classes, the interests of which conflict, while the working class is no longer being emasculated to the extent it was in the past by having drawn off from it its best blood and brains.Its more capable members are no longer able to rise out of it and leave the great mass leaderless and helpless.They remain to be its leaders.
