reat majority of them are disinterested and
patriotic men, who will not allow in the long run either personal
ambition or political crotchets to prevent them from cooeperating for the
good of the cause.

Unfortunately, however, neither public spirit nor patriotism will be
sufficient to bring them effectively together--any more than genuine
excellence of intention and real public spirit enabled patriotic
Americans to cooeperate upon a remedial policy during the years
immediately preceding the Civil War. The plain fact is that the
traditional American political system, which so many good reformers wish
to restore by some sort of reforming revivalism, is just as much
responsible for the existing political and economic abuses as the
Constitution was responsible for the evil of slavery. As long,
consequently, as reform is considered to be a species of higher
conservatism, the existing abuses can no more be frankly faced and fully
understood than the Whig leaders were able to face and understand the
full meaning and consequences of any attempt on the part of a democracy
to keep house with slavery. The first condition of a better
understanding and a more efficient cooeperation among the reforming
leaders is a better understanding of the meaning of reform and the
function of reformers. They will never be united on the basis of
allegiance to the traditional American political creed, because that
creed itself is overflowing with inconsistencies and ambiguities, which
afford a footing for almost every extreme of radicalism and
conservatism; and in case they persist in the attempt to reform
political and economic abuses merely by a restoration of earlier
conditions and methods, they will be compromising much that is good in
the present economic and political organization without recovering that
which was good in the past.

II

THE LOGIC OF REFORM

The prevailing preconception of the reformers, that the existing evils
and abuses have been due chiefly to the energy and lack of scruple with
which business men and politicians have taken advantage of the good but
easy-going American, and that a general increase of moral energy,
assisted by some minor legal changes, will restore the balance,--such a
conception of the situation is less than half true. No doubt, the "plain
people" of the United States have been morally indifferent, and have
allowed unscrupulous special interests to usurp too much power; but that
is far from being t