ey were conducted
on lines of Sunday-school morality; the people worked themselves up into
a sort of revivalist frenzy, an emotional state which, if the truth were
told, was thoroughly immoral, unreasonable and hypocritical: like all
frenzies, as a matter of course it died down after the campaign was
over. Moreover, the American people had shown that they were unwilling
to make any sacrifices for the permanent betterment of conditions, and
as soon as their incomes began to fall off they turned again to the
bosses and capitalists like an abject flock of sheep.

He went on to explain that he wasn't referring now to that part of the
electorate known as the labour element, the men who worked with
their hands in mills, factories, etc. They had their faults, yet they
possessed at least the virtue of solidarity, a willingness to undergo
sacrifices in order to advance the standard of conditions; they too
had a tenacity of purpose and a plan, such as it was, which the small
business men, the clerks lacked....

We must wake up to the fact that we shouldn't get Utopia by turning out
Mr. Jason and the highly efficient gentlemen who hired and financed him.
It wasn't so simple as that. Utopia was not an achievement after
all, but an undertaking, a state of mind, the continued overcoming of
resistance by a progressive education and effort. And all this talk of
political and financial "wickedness" was rubbish; the wickedness they
complained of did not reside merely in individuals it was a social
disorder, or rather an order that no longer suited social conditions.
If the so-called good citizens would take the trouble to educate
themselves, to think instead of allowing their thinking to be done for
them they would see that the "evils" which had been published broadcast
were merely the symptoms of that disease which had come upon the social
body through their collective neglect and indifference. They held
up their hands in horror at the spectacle of a commercial, licensed
prostitution, they shunned the prostitute and the criminal; but there
was none of us, if honest, who would not exclaim when he saw them,
"there, but for the Grace of God, go I!" What we still called "sin" was
largely the result of lack of opportunity, and the active principle
of society as at present organized tended more and more to restrict
opportunity. Lack of opportunity, lack of proper nutrition,--these made
sinners by the wholesale; made, too, nine-tenths of the