The history of socialism has been a history of false prophecies. Socialism started with a sure conviction that under the conditions of modern industry the working class must be driven into worse and worse misery. In reality the development has gone the opposite way. There are endlessly more workingmen with a comfortable income than ever before. The prophets also knew surely that the wealth from manufacturing enterprises would be concentrated with fewer and fewer men, while history has taken the opposite turn and has distributed the shares of the industrial companies into hundreds of thousands of hands. Other prophecies foretold the end of the small farmer, still others the uprooting of the middle class, others gave the date for the great crash; and everything would have come out exactly as the prophets foresaw it, if they had not forgotten to consider many other factors in the social situation which gave to the events a very different turn. But it may be acknowledged that the wrong prophesying was done not only by the socialists, but no less by the spectators. I myself have to confess my guilt. Many years ago when I wrote my German book on “The Americans,” I declared with the ringing voice of the prophet that socialism would never take hold of America. It was so easy to show that its chief principles and fundamental doctrines were directly opposed to the deepest creeds of Americanism and that the whole temper of the population was necessarily averse to the anticapitalistic fancies. The individualistic striving, the faith in rivalry, the fear of centralization, the political liberty, the lack of class barriers which makes it possible for any one to reach the highest economic power, all work against socialism, and all are essential for American democracy. Above all, the whole American life was controlled by the feeling that individual wealth is the measurement of individual success, and even puritanism had an internal affinity to capitalism. Hence socialism could not mean anything but an imported frill which could not be taken seriously by the commonwealth. In later editions of the book I modified my predictions slightly, and to-day I feel almost inclined to withdraw my prophecy entirely.