Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III POPULAR APATHY, AND DUTY OF THE PEOPLE HEREIN A PLEA FOR RADICAL ACTION "I have studied autocracy in Russia, and theocracy in Rome, and I must say that nowhere have I struck more abject submission to a more soulless despotism than that which prevails among the masses of so-called free American citizens when they are face to face with the omnipotent power of corporations."—William T. Stead. The immensity of the country and the great diversity of interests represented by its population, while an element of industrial and commercial strength, is a constantly growing influence of political disintegration. Concerted action among the people, with a common inspiration or motive, is simply an impossibility. The people of Kansas may, in circumstances of peculiar aggravation, resort to radical action against the Standard Oil monopoly, and if they persisted, and if the same conditions existed, and the effect of the exercise of monopoly power upon the interests and minds of other commonwealths were the same, the spirit of revolt might spread to at least a majority of the people. But even in the adjoining States, the oil-producing interests are small or non-existent, and the argument by the trust, and by its political and other agents, that oil is of better quality and cheaper than heretofore is sufficient to quell popular clamor, if not entirely satisfactory. Little attention is paid to the Kansas commotion in the great cities of New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and San Francisco, where oil retails at fifteen to twenty cents per gallon, except asa mere matter of news. Perhaps in some Southern States the pinch of the monopoly may be felt, but contemporary with the Kansas crusade an acute stage of the negro problem may be up for solution and the monopo...