It did absolutely change, a lot, it was one of the main themes of the 20th century: revolution. In the old sense of the word, turning the social order upside down.

It took many forms: capitalist social democracy, communism, fascism, feminism... Left or right, without making a value judgement, they were all revolutions seeking to empower the working masses.

Of course, when you get rid of kings, it's really really hard to make sure the vacuum is not filled by something even worse. Credit where credit's due, as a European, I do believe that the US is one of the few cases that was somewhat successful in not completely bungling this opportunity (although there's the detail of slave labour, and the conquest of natives...).

And after many-many horribly failed attempts, much of the world did end up in a relatively healthy state around the second half of the 20th century. Fukuyama's end of history and all.

Now we seem to be regressing again. Perhaps it's part of the eternal cycle and it was always coming. Perhaps it's not actually regressing all that much, and it just looks like it to our coddled selves, or we have become more ambitious on what we think is right. Perhaps people have found new loopholes (tech) on how to get ahead and dominate the rest of us, and we just need to catch up and get it under control again.

Perhaps that quote from 1903 is relevant now, but it doesn't mean that it was relevant the whole time since. Perhaps it was, I wasn't there.