AMERICAN SYNDICALISM
I
THE SOCIALIST INVASION
Until within some half dozen years, the sturdiest Americans were at most tepidly amused that any one should speak seriously of socialism. I have preserved an impatient letter from a very masterful financier, in which he asks a little querulously what good reason can be given for talking and writing "in this country" about a thing so unreal and freakish. He knew that some leading nations in Europe were at their wit's end to circumvent this propaganda. He thought the future very dark for some of those countries, especially for England. But what had all this to do with our own country? Did any one doubt the prosperity of the United States? Were not opportunities so ample that the whole world rushed in to seize them? He had examined the savings banks in New York City, "with their half million of depositors, mostly among poor people." Were there not four thousand millions in the Savings Banks of the Nation? He had at his finger tips the great army of stockholders in our railroads and leading corporations. Who could question that these beneficent agencies were distributing property to an ever widening proportion of our population? These were indeed "our democratic institutions." He believed that the coming census would
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