The analysis of the present political situation of the Insurgents is not
only collectivist, but, in a sense, revolutionary. After describing how
"Big Business," controls both industry and politics, La Follette says:--

"This thing has gone on and on in city, State, and nation, until
to-day the paramount power in our land is not a Democracy, not a
Republic, but an Autocracy of centralized, systemized, industrial
and financial power. 'Government of the people, by the people, and
for the people' _has_ perished from the earth in the United States
of America."

An editorial in _McClure's Magazine_ (July, 1911) draws a similar
picture and frankly applies the term, "State Socialism," to the great
reforms that are pending:--

"Two great social organizations now confront each other in the
United States--political democracy and the corporation. Both are
yet new,--developments, in their present form, of the past two
hundred years,--and the laws of neither are understood. The entire
social and economic history of the world is now shaping itself
around the struggle for dominance between them....

"The problem presented by this situation is the most difficult that
any modern nation has faced; and the odds, up to the present time,
have all been with the corporations. Property settles by economic
law in strong hands; it has unlimited rewards for service, and the
greatest power in the world--the power of food and drink, life and
death--over mankind. Corporate property in the last twenty years
has been welded into an instrument of almost infinite power,
concentrated in the hands of a very few and very able men.

"Sooner or later the so far unchecked tendency toward monopoly in
the United States must be met squarely by the American people....

"The problem of the relation of the State and the corporation is
now the chief question of the world. In Europe the State is
relatively much stronger; in America, the corporation. In Europe
the movement towards Socialism--collective ownership and operation
of the machinery of industry and transportation--is far on its way;
in America we are moving to control the corporation by political
instruments, such as State Boards and the Interstate Commerce
Commission....

"And if corporate centralization of power continues unchecked, what