Yet they are constantly being oppressed by the capitalist class that does not represent the majority of the population but is in control of the typical mill town. Of these capitalists we find such names as Andrew Carnegie, owner of the Edgar Thomson steel works, and Henry Clay Frick, partner to Carnegie and the owner of coal mines in the Pittsburgh area. Men like these create monopolies within the steel towns and through these monopolies can control the political action of the citizens within the towns. These ideals portray two very different interpretations of democracy. These can be seen as positive ideals if we are looking only at the capitalist class.
Dignity is the simple ideal that the working class strives to achieve.
It is here that we see the first contradiction of democracy between the ideals of the two classes. This is not a system ruled by the majority but instead by the elite minority. There are three main ways that the power of the capitalist class contradicts the very definition of democracy. The first is the political clout that mill owners and superintendents have over the workers, next is the unequal treatment of laborers, and last is the difficulty that the workers had in forming unions. Bell uses elections to describe how little power the mill worker actually had.