is the next great popular agitation to be in this country? For
State Socialism?"

When a treaty of peace is made between "Big Business" and the smaller
capitalists under such leadership as La Follette's, we may be certain
that it will not amount merely to a swallowing up of the small fish by
the large. The struggle waged according to La Follette's principles is
not a mere bid for political power and the spoils of office, but a real
political warfare that can only end by recognition of the small
capitalist's claims in business and politics--in so far as they relate,
not to the restoration of competition, but to government ownership or
control. As early as 1905, when governor of Wisconsin, La Follette
said:--

"It must always be borne in mind that the contest between the State and
the corporate powers is a lasting one.... It must always be remembered
that their attitude throughout is one of hostility to this legislation,
and that if their relation to the law after it is enacted is to be
judged by the attitude towards the Interstate Commerce Law, it will be
one of continued effort to destroy its efficiency and nullify its
provision." Events have shown that he was right in his predictions, and
his idea that the war against monopolies must last until they are
deprived of their dominant position in politics is now widely accepted.

The leading demands of the small capitalists, in so far as they are
independently organized in this new movement, are now for protection, as
buyers, sellers, investors, borrowers, and taxpayers against the
"trusts," railways, and banks. Formerly they invariably took up the
cause of the capitalist competitors and would-be competitors of the
"Interests"--and millionaires and corporations of the second magnitude
were lined up politically with the small capitalists, as, for example,
silver mine owners, manufacturers who wanted free raw material, cheaper
food (with lower wages), and foreign markets at any price,--from
pseudo-reciprocity to war,--importing merchants, competitors of the
trusts, tobacco, beer, and liquor interests bent on decreasing their
taxes, etc.

The great novelty of the "Insurgent" movement is that, in dissociating
itself from Free Silver, Free Trade, and the proposal to _destroy_ the
"trusts," it has succeeded in getting rid of nearly all the "Interests"
that have wrecked previous small capitalist movements. At the same time,
it has all but abandoned the old demagogic