37 Civilization and Decay 



or Europe; while Russia owes her immunity from 

 a few of the evils that affect the rest of us, to 

 causes unconnected with her backwardness in civili- 

 zation, and moreover has worse evils of her own to 

 contend with. The English-speaking man has so 

 far out-built, out-fought, and out-administered the 

 Russian; and he is as far as the poles away from 

 the Roman of the later Empire. 



Moreover, instead of the mercenary or paid police 

 growing in relative strength, as Mr. Adams says, 

 it has everywhere shrunk during the last fifty years, 

 when compared with the mass of armed farmers and 

 wage-earners who make up a modern army. The 

 capitalist can no longer, as in ages past, count upon 

 the soldiers as being of his party ; he can only count 

 upon them when they are convinced that in fighting 

 his battle they are fighting their own; although 

 under modern industrial conditions this is generally 

 the case. Again, Mr. Adams is in error in his facts, 

 when he thinks that producers have prospered in 

 the silver-using, as compared with the gold-using, 

 countries. The wage-earner and small farmer of the 

 United States, or even of Europe, stand waist high 

 above their brothers in Mexico and the other com- 

 munities that use only silver. The prosperity of the 

 wage-earning class is more important to the State 

 than the prosperity of any other class in the com- 

 munity, for it numbers within its ranks two-thirds 

 of the people of the community. The fact that mod- 

 ern society rests upon the wage-earner, whereas an- 

 cient society rested upon the slave, is of such tran- 



