n the outward
forms of democracy, and shout its shibboleths with patriotic fervor,
its essentials are lacking. The feeling spreads, even in the most
conservative circles, that we are developing, or have already developed,
a distinct ruling class. The anomaly of a ruling class without legal
sanction or titular prestige has seized upon the popular mind; titles
have been created for our great "untitled nobility"--mock titles which
have speedily assumed a serious import and meaning. Our financial
"Kings," industrial "Lords," "Barons," and so on, have received their
crowns and patents of nobility from the populace. President Roosevelt
gives expression to the serious thought of our most conservative
citizenry when he says: "In the past, the most direful among the
influences which have brought about the downfall of republics has ever
been the growth of the class spirit.... If such a spirit grows up in
this republic, it will ultimately prove fatal to us, as in the past it
has proven fatal to every community in which it has become
dominant."[126]

With the exception of the chattel slaves, we have had no hereditary
class in this country with a legally fixed status. But

"Man is more than constitutions,"

and there are other laws than those formulated in senates and recorded
in statute books. The vast concentration of industry and wealth,
resulting in immense fortunes on the one hand, and terrible poverty on
the other, has separated the two classes by a chasm as deep and wide as
ever yawned between czar and moujik, kaiser and vagrant, prince and
pauper, feudal baron and serf. The immensity of the power and wealth
thus concentrated into the hands of the few, to be inherited by their
sons and daughters, tends to establish this class division hereditarily.
Heretofore, passage from the lower class to the class above has been
comparatively easy, and it has blinded people to the existing class
antagonisms, though, as Mr. Ghent justly observes, it should no more be
taken to disprove the existence of classes than the fact that so many
thousands of Germans come to this country to settle is taken to disprove
the existence of the German Empire.[127] The stereotyping of classes is
undeniable. That a few men pass from one class to another is no disproof
of this. The classes exist and the tendency is for them to remain
permanently fixed, as a whole, in our social life.

But passage from the lower class to the upper tends to become,