Few members of the capitalist class see the revolution.  Most of them are too ignorant, and many are too afraid to see it.  It is the same old story of every perishing ruling class in the world’s history.  Fat with power and possession, drunken with success, and made soft by surfeit and by cessation of struggle, they are like the drones clustered about the honey vats when the worker-bees spring upon them to end their rotund existence.

President Roosevelt vaguely sees the revolution, is frightened by it, and recoils from seeing it.  As he says:  “Above all, we need to remember that any kind of class animosity in the political world is, if possible, even more wicked, even more destructive to national welfare, than sectional, race, or religious animosity.”

Class animosity in the political world, President Roosevelt maintains, is wicked.  But class animosity in the political world is the preachment of the revolutionists.  “Let the class wars in the industrial world continue,” they say, “but extend the class war to the political world.”  As their leader, Eugene V. Debs says:  “So far as this struggle is concerned, there is no good capitalist and no bad working-man.  Every capitalist is your enemy and every working-man is your friend.”

Here is class animosity in the political world with a vengeance.  And here is revolution.  In 1888 there were only 2,000 revolutionists of this type in the United States; in 1900 there were 127,000 revolutionists; in 1904, 435,000 revolutionists.  Wickedness of the President Roosevelt definition evidently flourishes and increases in the United States.  Quite so, for it is the revolution that flourishes and increases.

Here and there a member of the capitalist class catches a clear glimpse of the revolution, and raises a warning cry.  But his class does not heed.  President Eliot of Harvard raised such a cry: 

“I am forced to believe there is a present danger of socialism never before so imminent in America in so dangerous a form, because never before imminent in so well organized a form.  The danger lies in the obtaining control of the trades-unions by the socialists.”  And the capitalist employers, instead of giving heed to the warnings, are perfecting their strike-breaking organization and combining more strongly than ever for a general assault upon that dearest of all things to the trades-unions—­the closed shop.  In so far as this assault succeeds, by just that much will the capitalist class shorten its lease of life.  It is the old, old story, over again and over again.  The drunken drones still cluster greedily about the honey vats.