to be derived from the political union of the whole people.  So a wholesome democracy should seek to guarantee to every male adult a certain minimum of economic power and responsibility.  No doubt it is much easier to confer the suffrage on the people than it is to make poverty a negligible social factor; but the difficulty of the task does not make it the less necessary.  It stands to reason that in the long run the people who possess the political power will want a substantial share of the economic fruits.  A prudent democracy should anticipate this demand.  Not only does any considerable amount of grinding poverty constitute a grave social danger in a democratic state, but so, in general, does a widespread condition of partial economic privation.  The individuals constituting a democracy lack the first essential of individual freedom when they cannot escape from a condition of economic dependence.

The American democracy has confidently believed in the fatal prosperity enjoyed by the people under the American system.  In the confidence of that belief it has promised to Americans a substantial satisfaction of their economic needs; and it has made that promise an essential part of the American national idea.  The promise has been measurably fulfilled hitherto, because the prodigious natural resources of a new continent were thrown open to anybody with the energy to appropriate them.  But those natural resources have now in large measure passed into the possession of individuals, and American statesmen can no longer count upon them to satisfy the popular hunger for economic independence.  An ever larger proportion of the total population of the country is taking to industrial occupations, and an industrial system brings with it much more definite social and economic classes, and a diminution of the earlier social homogeneity.  The contemporary wage-earner is no longer satisfied with the economic results of being merely an American citizen.  His union is usually of more obvious use to him than the state, and he is tending to make his allegiance to his union paramount to his allegiance to the state.  This is only one of many illustrations that the traditional American system has broken down.  The American state can regain the loyal adhesion of the economically less independent class only by positive service.  What the wage-earner needs, and what it is to the interest of a democratic state he should obtain, is a constantly higher standard of living.  The state can help him to conquer a higher standard of living without doing any necessary injury to his employers and with a positive benefit to general economic and social efficiency.  If it is to earn the loyalty of the wage-earners, it must recognize the legitimacy of his demand, and make the satisfaction of it an essential part of its public policy.