do? Whither shall they turn? How shall they act? Who can be relied upon
in this uncertain hour?

The man on horseback rises in his stirrups--speaking in mighty accents
his message of hope and cheer, reassuring, promising, encouraging,
inspiring all who come within the sound of his voice. His is the one
assurance in a wilderness of uncertainty. What wonder that the people
follow where he leads and beckons!

The revolutionary changes in American economic life between the Civil
War and the War of 1914 gave the plutocrat his chance. He was the man on
horseback, quick, clever, shrewd, farseeing, persuasive, powerful.
Through the courses of these revolutionary changes, the Hills, Goulds,
Harrimans, Wideners, Weyerhausers, Guggenheims, Rockefellers,
Carnegies, and Morgans did to the American economic organization exactly
what Napoleon did to the French political organization--they took
possession of it.

3. _Making the Plutocracy Be Good_

The American people were still thinking the thoughts of a competitive
economic life when the cohorts of an organized plutocracy bore down upon
them. High prices, trusts, millionaires, huge profits, corruption,
betrayal of public office took the people by surprise, confused them,
baffled them, enraged them. Their first thought was of politics, and
during the years immediately preceding the war they were busy with the
problem of legislating goodness into the plutocracy.

The plutocrats were in public disfavor, and their control of natural
resources, banks, railroads, mines, factories, political parties, public
offices, governmental machinery, the school system, the press, the
pulpit, the movie business,--all of this power amounted to nothing
unless it was backed by public opinion.

How could the plutocracy--the discredited, vilified plutocracy--get
public opinion? How could the exploiters gain the confidence of the
American people? There was only one way--they must line up with some
cause that would command public attention and compel public support. The
cause that it chose was the "defense of the United States."

4. _"Preparedness"_

The plutocracy, with a united front, "went in" for the "defense of the
United States,"--attacking the people on the side of their greatest
weakness; playing upon their primitive emotions of fear and hate. The
campaign was intense and dramatic, featuring Japanese invasions, Mexican
inroads, and a world conquest by Germany.

The preparedness campai