prove that economic opportunity never was so great for the common man. It was upon observations like these that he based his protest. It was to him a criminal folly to keep these disturbing speculations alive.
I do not here put in question his views about the spread of property, but the main thought in this strong man's mind was that our American conditions so differed from those in Europe, that we were snug and secure from collectivist taints, if only this irresponsible prattle about socialism could be hushed up.
For quite thirty years, I have heard this view uttered with every variation of emphasis. Blind as it is, it had one excuse. From 1848, German socialists came here in such numbers as to give color to the statement that the mischief was merely an affair of disgruntled and whimpering foreigners. It pleased us to think of these unhappy strangers, fleeing from sombre tyrannies to a land so dazzling with freedom that the very excess of light caused them to blink and stumble. With good-natured tolerance, we humored and despised them. For some forty years they were the active center of such socialism as we knew.
All this has changed. No one can now examine with any care the socialist leadership as it appears in political and other activities, without seeing that we have to do with a movement that is in no proper sense "foreign." One of our most commanding figures in the railroad world says that the only practical issue now is to "stave socialism off as long as possible." He is convinced that the first chill of the shadow has fallen upon us. There is much reason to believe that
