5. Howard Crosby, “The Dangerous Classes,” North American Review (April 1883): 345-52.


Essay arguing that the real threat to national peace and prosperity does not originate among the poor but comes from the abuses of power by the wealthy. “The greater danger—the danger compared with which all this local disorder is as nothing, the danger which threatens the uprooting of society, the demolition of civil intuitions, the destruction of liberty and the desolation of all—is that which comes from the rich and powerful classes in the community. What we have to fear is the encroachment of these influential elements upon the rights of the people, until, under a sense of oppression, the people, who are naturally timid and slow to act in organization, are forced into united resistance, which necessarily (from the constitution of the masses) becomes destructive to civilization and social well-being.”