The earlier German, English and Scandinavian incomers were drawn from a
somewhat higher social level, and were much more closely akin in habits
and faith to the earlier founders of the Republic.
Our inquiry is this: What social structure is this pool of mixed
humanity developing or likely to develop?
Sec. 2
If we compare any European nation with the American, we perceive at once
certain broad differences. The former, in comparison with the latter, is
evolved and organised; the latter, in comparison with the former, is
aggregated and chaotic. In nearly every European country there is a
social system often quite elaborately classed and defined; each class
with a sense of function, with an idea of what is due to it and what is
expected of it. Nearly everywhere you find a governing class,
aristocratic in spirit, sometimes no doubt highly modified by recent
economic and industrial changes, with more or less of the tradition of a
feudal nobility, then a definite great mercantile class, then a large
self-respecting middle class of professional men, minor merchants, and
so forth, then a new industrial class of employees in the manufacturing
and urban districts, and a peasant population rooted to the land. There
are, of course, many local modifications of this form: in France the
nobility is mostly expropriated; in England, since the days of John
Bull, the peasant has lost his common rights and his holding, and become
an "agricultural labourer" to a newer class of more extensive farmer.
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