but who made men liberal and broad by teaching them to think for themselves. Every college and every library built by a millionaire is a menace to the power of his class, every stone in every structure is a vantage-ground from which the proletariat can with greater intelligence and more skillful weapons carry on the attack against plutocracy, but wealth furnishes the weapons, which are not to lead to its undoing, but to bring about a closer correspondence between classes. The man who has made his money has usually gratified his ambition and finds a satisfaction in generous giving, but in politics no attraction. The conclusion of our essayist will be that between Rome and America there is no analogy; the American need have no fear that the fate of Rome awaits him, or that the power of wealth which corrupted Rome will destroy him.

One other point of contrast must not be omitted. America is the one country that has never had a great standing army, the one country whose ruler has never owed his power to the army, or who has been held in place by the army, or where the army has exercised political influence. The history of Greece and Rome, of Europe in the Middle Ages, of England even long after Puritanism had planted America, is the history of legions and armies who gave vitality to politics and on whom their chief relied when the people rose in protest. No American President has seized the Presidency or surrounded himself with bayonets; no candi

date has attempted to tamper with the loyalty of

the army.

Nor can I leave the subject for it is intimately associated with it and is still further corroboration that there is no parallel between conditions existing in Rome and those in America at the present time

without calling attention to the very striking fact that to-day in the public life of America there is not a single man who bears the name of any man who played a part in the Revolution, or whose name was appended to the Declaration of Independence, or who sat in the convention that framed the Constitution. When I say there is not "a single man,” I believe I am speaking with literal exactness and not using a generality. In every other country of which we have any record, a ruling class establishes itself by the perpetuation of historical family names, in which the tradition of the family is maintained, and one or more of its members accept public service either as an obligation due to the state or still further to increase the importance of the family or to add to its dignity and position. In America, for some inexplicable reason, historic families do not perpetuate themselves. There are in public life a few, a very few, men who can trace their descent collaterally to colonial times, but the possessors of historic names have gone. Neither in statecraft nor diplomacy are there any Washingtons or Adamses or Jeffersons or Madisons or Monroes or Jacksons; no Franklins or Otises or Hamiltons or Shermans;

no Marions or Greenes or Putnams or Lees. The men whose genius welded the scattered colonies into an empire and set the infant nation on its way to greatness either died childless or - which is another extraordinary thing - left small families, and that in itself is noteworthy in a day when the average family was large and there were usually sons enough to keep the family name alive.

It is not less remarkable that the same phenomenon in statesmanship has its counterpart in finance and commerce. There were men in the early days who were the pioneers in banking and manufacturing and who laid the foundation for family wealth and name. These men, who were always more or less associated with politics and government in the colonial era, who were resourceful and bold, whose ships carried their ventures on every sea, who made America a great commercial nation long before her political power or her physical strength were recognized, who showed their genius in trade as their contemporaries proved it in statesmanship, left their fortunes to sons whose names disappeared after a few generations. In commerce as in public service the men who to-day dominate are not the men who bear historic names, not the men who can trace their descent back in an unbroken line to the first bankers or the first ironmasters or weavers, but men who have no kinship with these founders of an industry; "new" men in every sense of the word.1

1

1 "Run over the list of the inheritors of financial purple, and you en

I have no explanation to offer for a very extraordinary state of affairs, but the facts are surprising enough to warrant some thought. One would naturally imagine they would have received the attention of American writers; but American investigators, so far as my reading is a guide, have not given the subject any consideration.

What bearing has this glimpse at Rome on the development of the American people? In so far as Rome influenced or affected American character, none at all, but in the strength of contrast is shown that American political institutions and the texture of the American mind are native to the soil and have developed as the result of new conditions confronting the children of an older stock. They borrowed from all the world, but out of the material that long had been used they fashioned something new.

counter some interesting surprises. You will find among them no Vanderbilt worthily equipped to renew the prestige of his house; no Astor to take a leader's place as the wielder of our greatest hereditary fortune; no Gould to sit with authority on the money throne. Instead, newer names - the names of self-made men dominate the roster of the Wall Street rulers of tomorrow.” — Munsey's Magazine, May, 1911, p. 152.

CHAPTER V

A COUNTRY WITHOUT A CAPITAL

FROM the beginning American political and social institutions were distinguished from those of any other country or people by three causes that vitally affected national character. These are first, that in essence America has always been a democracy, although it was less democratic before the Revolution than it has since become; second, that in its wars mercenaries were never enlisted. That at times the Indians were found fighting with the colonists did not make of them a hired soldiery ready to sell their swords to the highest bidder, as for nearly two thousand years had become part of the political system of the Old World; and again, the Americans never entered into an alliance— the assistance rendered them by France in the Revolution was not an alliance in the political sense. A moment's reflection will convince that these things tended to produce that intense spirit of self-reliance and independence, that almost religious belief in their own strength and endeavor, that faith in victory and the ability to surmount obstacles and overcome all dangers and adversities, which are such marked characteristics of the American people.

The third cause is perhaps of all the most curious,