ABSTRACT
From the beginning of their history as an independent nation, the people of the United States have held up equality as an ideal. Jefferson and Jackson aimed at a great continent of small freeholders, where those who would naturally become plutocrats—that is the bankers—should be kept down by periodical repudiation. It proved, however, impossible to carry out this ideal: manufactures, urban land, railways, mines, and oil made some men enormously rich, and gave them an influence in the affairs of the country about equal to that of all the poorer citizens put together. At present a new effort is in progress, in line with those of democrats in earlier times, but more scientific, better equipped with economic knowledge, and therefore not so certain of defeat by the forces that stand for inequality.
