tion
removed from the primitive conditions of the West. If, indeed, we
ourselves were not pioneers, our fathers were, and the inherited ways of
looking at things, the fundamental assumptions of the American people,
have all been shaped by this experience of democracy on its westward
march. This experience has been wrought into the very warp and woof of
American thought.

Even those masters of industry and capital who have risen to power by
the conquest of Western resources came from the midst of this society
and still profess its principles. John D. Rockefeller was born on a New
York farm, and began his career as a young business man in St. Louis.
Marcus Hanna was a Cleveland grocer's clerk at the age of twenty. Claus
Spreckles, the sugar king, came from Germany as a steerage passenger to
the United States in 1848. Marshall Field was a farmer boy in Conway,
Massachusetts, until he left to grow up with the young Chicago. Andrew
Carnegie came as a ten-year-old boy from Scotland to Pittsburgh, then a
distinctively Western town. He built up his fortunes through successive
grades until he became the dominating factor in the great iron
industries, and paved the way for that colossal achievement, the Steel
Trust. Whatever may be the tendencies of this corporation, there can be
little doubt of the democratic ideals of Mr. Carnegie himself. With
lavish hand he has strewn millions through the United States for the
promotion of libraries. The effect of this library movement in
perpetuating the democracy that comes from an intelligent and
self-respecting people can hardly be measured. In his "Triumphant
Democracy," published in 1886, Mr. Carnegie, the ironmaster, said, in
reference to the mineral wealth of the United States: "Thank God, these
treasures are in the hands of an intelligent people, the Democracy, to
be used for the general good of the masses, and not made the spoils of
monarchs, courts, and aristocracy, to be turned to the base and selfish
ends of a privileged hereditary class." It would be hard to find a more
rigorous assertion of democratic doctrine than the celebrated utterance,
attributed to the same man, that he should feel it a disgrace to die
rich.

In enumerating the services of American democracy, President Eliot
included the corporation as one of its achievements, declaring that
"freedom of incorporation, though no longer exclusively a democratic
agency, has given a strong support to democratic institutions