Whether by their own initiative, or by the interference of the
rulers, it would have to be done, and it would be done. In other

words, the oligarchy would mean the capitalization of labor and the
enslavement of the whole population. But it would be a fairer,

juster form of slavery than any the world has yet seen. The per
capita wage and consumption would be increased, and, with a

stringent control of the birth rate, there is no reason why such a
country should not be so ruled through many generations.

On the other hand, as the capitalistic exploitation of the planet
approaches its maximum, and countries are crowded out of the field

of foreign exchanges, there is a large likelihood that their change
in direction will be toward socialism. Were the theory of

collective ownership and operation then to arise for the first time,
such a movement would stand small chance of success. But such is

not the case. The doctrine of socialism has flourished and grown
throughout the nineteenth century; its tenets have been preached

wherever the interests of labor and capital have clashed; and it has
received exemplification time and again by the State's assumption of

functions which had always belonged solely to the individual.
When capitalistic production has attained its maximum development,

it must confront a dividing of the ways; and the strength of capital
on the one hand, and the education and wisdom of the workers on the

other, will determine which path society is to travel. It is
possible, considering the inertia of the masses, that the whole

world might in time come to be dominated by a group of industrial
oligarchies, or by one great oligarchy, but it is not probable.

That sporadic oligarchies may flourish for definite periods of time
is highly possible; that they may continue to do so is as highly

improbable. The procession of the ages has marked not only the rise
of man, but the rise of the common man. From the chattel slave, or

the serf chained to the soil, to the highest seats in modern
society, he has risen, rung by rung, amid the crumbling of the

divine right of kings and the crash of falling sceptres. That he
has done this, only in the end to pass into the perpetualslavery of

the industrial oligarch, is something at which his whole past cries
in protest. The common man is worthy of a better future, or else he

is not worthy of his past.
NOTE.--The above article was written as long ago as 1898. The only

alteration has been the bringing up to 1900 of a few of its
statistics. As a commercialventure of an author, it has an

interesting history. It was promptly accepted by one of the leading
magazines and paid for. The editor confessed that it was "one of

those articles one could not possibly let go of after it was once in
his possession." Publication was voluntarily promised to be

immediate. Then the editor became afraid of its too radical nature,
forfeited the sum paid for it, and did not publish it. Nor, offered

far and wide, could any other editor of bourgeois periodicals be
found who was rash enough to publish it. Thus, for the first time,

after seven years, it appears in print.
A REVIEW

Two remarkable books are Ghent's "Our Benevolent Feudalism" {7} and
Brooks's "The Social Unrest." {8} In these two books the opposite

sides of the labor problem are expounded, each writer devoting
himself with apprehension to the side he fears and views with

disfavor. It would appear that they have set themselves the task of
collating, as a warning, the phenomena of two counter social forces.

Mr. Ghent, who is sympathetic with the socialistmovement, follows
with cynic fear every aggressive act of the capitalist class. Mr.

Brooks, who yearns for the perpetuation of the capitalistsystem as
long as possible, follows with grave dismay each aggressive act of

the labor and socialist organizations. Mr. Ghent traces the
emasculation of labor by capital, and Mr. Brooks traces the

emasculation of independent competing capital by labor. In short,
each marshals the facts of a side in the two sides which go to make

a struggle so great that even the French Revolution is insignificant
beside it; for this later struggle, for the first time in the

history of struggles, is not confined to any particular portion of
the globe, but involves the whole of it.

Starting on the assumption that society is at present in a state of
flux, Mr. Ghent sees it rapidly crystallizing into a status which

can best be described as something in the nature of a benevolent
feudalism. He laughs to scorn any immediate realization of the

Marxian dream, while Tolstoyan utopias and Kropotkinian communistic
unions of shop and farm are too wild to merit consideration. The

coming status which Mr. Ghent depicts is a class domination by the
capitalists. Labor will take its definite place as a dependent

class, living in a condition of machine servitude fairly analogous
to the land servitude of the Middle Ages. That is to say, labor

will be bound to the machine, though less harshly, in fashion
somewhat similar to that in which the earlier serf was bound to the

soil. As he says, "Bondage to the land was the basis of villeinage
in the old regime; bondage to the job will be the basis of

villeinage in the new."
At the top of the new society will tower the magnate, the new feudal

baron; at the bottom will be found the wastrels and the
inefficients. The new society he grades as follows:

"I. The barons, graded on the basis of possessions.
"II. The court agents and retainers. (This class will include the

editors of 'respectable' and 'safe' newspapers, the pastors of
'conservative' and 'wealthy' churches, the professors and teachers

in endowed colleges and schools, lawyers generally, and most judges
and politicians).

"III. The workers in pure and applied science, artists, and
physicians.

"IV. The entrepreneurs, the managers of the great industries,
transformed into a salaried class.

"V. The foremen and superintendents. This class has heretofore
been recruited largely from the skilled workers, but with the growth

of technical education in schools and colleges, and the development
of fixed caste, it is likely to become entirely differentiated.

"VI. The villeins of the cities and towns, more or less regularly
employed, who do skilled work and are partially protected by

organization.
"VII. The villeins of the cities and towns who do unskilled work

and are unprotected by organization. They will comprise the
laborers, domestics, and clerks.

"VIII. The villeins of the manorial estates, of the great farms,
the mines, and the forests.

"IX. The small-unit farmers (land-owning), the petty tradesmen, and
manufacturers.

"X. The subtenants of the manorial estates and great farms
(corresponding to the class of 'free tenants' in the old Feudalism).

"XI. The cotters.
"XII. The tramps, the occasionally employed, the unemployed--the

wastrels of the city and country."
"The new Feudalism, like most autocracies, will foster not only the

arts, but also certain kinds of learning--particularly the kinds
which are unlikely to disturb the minds of the multitude. A future

Marsh, or Cope, or Le Comte will be liberally patronized and left
free to discover what he will; and so, too, an Edison or a Marconi.

Only they must not meddle with anything relating to social science."
It must be confessed that Mr. Ghent's arguments are cunningly

contrived and arrayed. They must be read to be appreciated. As an
example of his style, which at the same time generalizes a portion

of his argument, the following may well be given:
"The new Feudalism will be but an orderly outgrowth of present

tendencies and conditions. All societies evolve naturally out of
their predecessors. In sociology, as in biology, there is no cell

without a parent cell. The society of each generation develops a
multitude of spontaneous and acquired variations, and out of these,

by a blending process of natural and consciousselection, the
succeeding society is evolved. The new order will differ in no

important respects from the present, except in the completer
development of its more salient features. The visitor from another

planet who had known the old and should see the new would note but
few changes. Alter et Idem--another yet the same--he would say.

From magnate to baron, from workman to villein, from publicist to
court agent and retainer, will be changes of state and function so

slight as to elude all but the keenest eyes."
And in conclusion, to show how benevolent and beautiful this new

feudalism of ours will be, Mr. Ghent says: "Peace and stability it