Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/196

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160
ESSAYS OF WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER

which are in the mores or the laws and which have been produced by the need to solve the collisions of power and interest in peace. There is, therefore, always another resource for the party which has been defeated in the competition of life; they can appeal to rights and fight over again, on the political domain, what they hare lost on the economic domain. Inasmuch as the masses cannot win on the economic domain because their opponents, though few in number, have talent, knowledge, craft, and capital, and inasmuch as the masses have political power, this appeal from the field of economic effort to that of politics is characteristic of the age. It now gives form and color to both the economic and political effort, and it is dominating all the mores which have to do with either. The master of industry dare not neglect political power; the statesman cannot maintain an independent footing against capitalistic interest. Primarily, we see a war between plutocracy and democracy. Secondarily, we see a combination of the two loom up in the future — the apostles of socialism, state socialism, municipalization, etc., are all working for it. In the combination the strongest element will rule, and the strongest element is capital. The defeat and decline of the Democratic political party in the United States within forty years, its incompetence as an opposition party, its chase after any captivating issue, its evolution into populism, coupled with administrative folly, the fear and distrust which it has consequently inspired in all who have anything, so that they turn to the ruling party for security at the sacrifice of everything else, the more and more complete surrender, at the same time, of the Republican party to the character of a conspiracy to hold power and use it for plutocratic ends, are phenomena already observable of the coming consolidation of political and