ideal of democratic individuality, that it was sufficiently realized in the average Western American of the Jacksonian epoch, that it would continue to be the type of admirable manhood, and that the good democrats embodying this type would continue to merit and to obtain substantial and approximately equal pecuniary rewards.  Moreover, for a long time the vision remained sufficiently true.  The typical American democrat described by De Tocqueville corresponded very well with the vision of the pioneer; and he did not disappear during the succeeding generation.  For many years millions of Americans of much the same pattern were rewarded for their democratic virtue in an approximately similar manner.  Of course some people were poor, and some people were rich; but there was no class of the very rich, and the poverty of the poor was generally their own fault.  Opportunity knocked at the door of every man, and the poor man of to-day was the prosperous householder of to-morrow.  For a long time American social and economic conditions were not merely fluid, but consistent and homogeneous, and the vision of the pioneer was fulfilled.  Nevertheless, this condition was essentially transient.  It contained within itself the seeds of its own dissolution and transformation; and this transformation made headway just as soon as, and just as far as, economic conditions began to prefer the man who was capable of specializing his work, and of organizing it with the work of his fellows.

The dominant note, consequently, of the pioneer period was an unformed national consistency, reached by means of a natural community of feeling and a general similarity of occupation and well-being.  On the other hand, the dominant note of the period from 1870 until the present day has been the gradual disintegration of this early national consistency, brought about by economic forces making for specialization and organization in all practical affairs, for social classification, and finally for greater individual distinction.  Moreover, the tendency towards specialization first began to undermine the very corner-stone of the pioneer’s democratic edifice.  If private interest and public weal were to be as harmonious as the pioneer assumed, every economic producer must be a practical politician, and there must be no deep-lying division between these primary activities.  But the very first result of the specializing tendency was to send the man of business, the politician, and the lawyer off on separate tacks.  Business interests became so absorbing that they demanded all of a man’s time and energy; and he was obliged to neglect politics except in so far as politics affected business.  In this same way, the successful lawyers after the War were less apt than formerly to become politicians and statesmen.  They left public affairs largely to the unsuccessful lawyers.  Politics itself became an occupation which made very exacting demands upon a man’s time and upon his conscience.  Public service