American people--that extraordinary checks should be put upon the
possibility of the abuse of wealth in the United States, such as do not
exist or are not needed (or at least we have heard no energetic demand
for them) in England. As a political fact there is need of especial
vigilance in the United States lest corporate power be abused. As a
commercial fact it is merely preposterous to rail at the modern tendency
to consolidation and amalgamation as specifically "American."

It is probably safe to say that if the United States had such a social
counterweight as is furnished in England by the throne and the
recognised aristocracy, the growth of what is called "trust-power" would
be viewed to-day with comparative unconcern. At all events England is
able to view with something like unconcern the conditions, as they exist
in England, worse than, as has been said, the trust power is humanly
capable of imposing on the American people in another half-century of
unhindered growth. Which, American readers will please understand, is
not a suggestion that the United States would be benefited, even
commercially, by the institution of a monarchy.

Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Englishmen long ago acquired the
idea that American business methods in what may be called large affairs
were too often unscrupulous; and of such methods, there were certainly
examples. I have explained why the temptations to, and the opportunities
for, dishonesty were very great in the earlier days and it would be
impossible to find language too severe to characterise many of the
things which were done--not once, but again and again--in the
manipulation of railways, the stealing of public lands, and the
plundering of the public treasury. The dog deserved as bad a name as he
received. But that dog died. The Americans themselves stoned him to
death--with precisely the same ferocity as they have recently exhibited
when they discovered, as they feared, some of his litter in the Chicago
packing houses--or a year before in the offices of certain insurance
companies. The present generation of Americans may not be any better men
than their fathers (let us hope that they are, if only for the
reputation of the vast immigration of Englishmen and Scotchmen which has
poured into the country) but at least they are much less tempted. They
live under a new social code. They have nothing like the same
opportunity for successful dishonesty and immeasurably greater chanc