Baptized Democracy [pp. 721-729]

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XLIII. SEPTEMBER, I886. NO. 258.
BAPTIZED DEMOCRACY.*
TWENTY secret societies could not do so much to overturn a
European monarchy as this one book. Its two red covers hold
more dynamite in smaller bulk and of deadlier force than any
bomb yet invented. The resources of civilization for blowing
up the remnants of feudalism are here brought to the highest
point of efficiency. Mr. Carnegie proves the case against monarchy and aristocracy by the success, the triumph of democracy.
His argument is that in America the poor man grows rich and the
rich man richer because all men are equal. The form of government and the traditions of freedom give every man a fair chance;
the result is such a prodigious development of nature's gifts as the
world never saw before, and such a fair distribution of them as
would seem utopian were it not simple fact. One chapter after
another on trading and educating, manufacturing and home-building, mining and voting, tilling the soil and recreating the mind, life
among the lumbermen and life among the journalists-all about
more than half a hundred million of people who live happily together, yoked only by their own laws; trade together unhindered by restrictions; fight together but once a century and are
at peace profound in half a decade afterwards; sovereign in one
indivisible nation, sovereign in nearly twoscore indestructible
States, sovereign in individual freedom-such (to catch the
glow of the author's own style) is America; such is democracy.
* Triumfhant Democracy; or, zftly Years' March of the Republic. By Andrew Carnegie. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright. REV. I. T. HECKER. I886.