160 PERILS. — SOCIALISM. 



early settlers of the East. They started pretty evenly 

 in the race, and it has taken several generations to de- 

 velop the wide extremes of modern society; but these 

 ditferences exist at the outset in the West. Eastern cap- 

 ital has emptied itself into Western mines and herds 

 and "bonanza" farms. The comparatively small popu- 

 lation of the West has to-day more millionaires and 

 more tramps than the whole country had a few years 

 since. Many cattle and railway "kings," many gold 

 and silver "kings," there rule theit subjects. And in 

 August, 1884, eighty tramps took possession of Castle- 

 ton, Dakota, drove many families from their homes and 

 committed numerous excesses. Western society is organ- 

 ized at the very beginning, on the class distinctions 

 which are so favorable to the growth of socialism. 



Modern civilization is called on to contend for its life 

 with forces which it has evolved. Said President 

 Seelye, a few years since, to the graduating class of Am- 

 herst College : ' ' There is one question of our time to- 

 ward which all other questions, whether of nature, of 

 man, or of God, steadily tend. ... No one will^ be 

 likely to dispute the affirmation that the social question 

 is, and is to be, the question of your time." That ques- 

 tion must be met in the United States. We need not 

 quiet misgiving with the thought that popular govern- 

 ment is our safety from revolution. It is because of our 

 free institutions that the great conflict of socialism with 

 society as now organized is likely to occur in the United 

 States. There is a strong disposition among men to 

 charge most of the ills of their lot to bad government, 

 and to seek a political remedy for those ills. They ex- 

 pect in the popularization of power to find relief. Con- 

 stitutional government^ a free press and free speech 

 would probably quiet popular agitation in Eussia for a 

 generation. If Germany should become a republic, we 

 should hear little of German socialism for a season. 

 But all our salve of this sort is spent ; there are no more 

 political rights to bestow; the people are in full pos- 

 session. Here then, where there is the fullest exercise of 



