The Coming Benevolent Feudalism
FORECASTING the social and political systems which are to be established in the United States as an outgrowth of present conditions, Mr. W. J. Ghent, who has acquired some reputation in connection with politics and movements for social reform, sees as “the next step” in the evolution of government in this country, the formation of “a benevolent feudalism.” He states his conclusions on the subject and his reasons therefor in an article contributed to the New York Independent of April 3. In the composition of this coming feudalism he enumerates twelve classes, comprising as many different grades of society, at the top of which are to be “the barons, graded on the basis of possessions,” the title being to be conferred by the mere possession of wealth. Next to these will come “the courtiers and court agents,” whose work will be to justify to the lower classes the ways and institutions of the nobility. Next will come “the workers in pure and applied science, artists and physicians;” after them “the managers of great industries;” then “the foremen and superintendents;” next the general mass of skilled workmen, and so on down to “the tramps, the occasionally employed, the unemployed—the wastrels of city and country.” “Bondage to the land was the basis of villeinage in the old régime,” Mr. Ghent remarks; and he foresees that the basis of villeinage (or vassalage) in the new régime will be “bondage to the job.” “The secured job will become the laborer’s fortress, which he will hardly dare to evacuate.” Any temptation on the laborer’s part to agitate and devise means for securing better terms of employment from the barons, will be effectively restrained by the “black list,” with which workingmen in this country are already familiar. “He will be a hardy and reckless industrial villein indeed,” observes this writer, “who will dare incur the enmity of the Duke of the Oil Trust when he knows that his actions will be promptly communicated to the banded autocracy of dukes, earls, and marquises of the steel, coal, iron, window-glass, lumber, and traffic industries.” With the establishment of this feudal government there will be developed, says this authority, a caste system under which “the sons of clerks and of mechanics and of day laborers will tend to accept their environment of birth and training and abide by it.” No more rail splitters or canal boys will become president—there will be no future Lincolns or Garfields rising from the obscurity of humble parentage. The important positions of public trust will be filled by the nobility or their lieutenants. The ambition to rise will dwindle down to correspond with the narrow possibility of bettering the heritage of one’s birth. There is doubtless much truth in this forecast of coming American government; should time continue a few generations longer, there would certainly be, according to all present indications, a government by feudalism, with its barons and serfs, in the place of this republic, albeit not so “benevolent” a feudalism, doubtless, as this writer portrays. But this only shows how ripe is the world to-day for the coming of that kingdom which is to supplant all earthly systems of government, and establish in their place the divine system of government by love, the true republic, where all things are done with the sincere approval of every individual over which that government is erected. And that kingdom is now to come, for the prophetic time of its setting up has been reached. Jesus Christ is about to come in the clouds of heaven, to put an end forever to all schemes of those who would constitute themselves “benevolent” rulers over others. That coming is the paramount hope of the world to-day.