s of pain?

There are no grown-ups in this new world of democracy. We are trying an
experiment such as the world has never seen. Here we are, so many million
people at work making a living as best we can; 90,000,000 people covering
half a continent--rich, respected, feared. Is that all we are? Is that why
we are? To be rich, respected, feared? Or have we some part to play in
working out the problems of this world? Why should one man have so much and
many so little? How may the many secure a larger share in the wealth which
they create without destroying individual initiative or blasting individual
capacity and imagination? It was inevitable that these questions should be
asked when this republic was established. Man has been struggling to have
the right to ask these questions for 4,000 years; and now that he has the
right to ask _any_ questions surely we may not with reason expect him to be
silent. It is no answer to make that men were not asking these questions a
hundred years ago. So great has been our physical endowment that until the
most recent years we have been indifferent as to the share which each
received of the wealth produced. We could then accept cheerfully the
coldest and most logical of economic theories. But now men are wondering as
to the future. There may be much of envy and more of malice in current
thought; but underneath it all there is the feeling that if a nation is to
have a full life it must devise methods by which its citizens shall be
insured against monopoly of opportunity. This is the meaning of many
policies the full philosophy of which is not generally grasped--the
regulation of railroads and other public service corporations, the
conservation of natural resources, the leasing of public lands and
waterpowers, the control of great combinations of wealth. How these
movements will eventually express themselves none can foretell, but in the
process there will be some who will dogmatically contend that "Whatever is,
is right," and others who will march under the red flag of revenge and
exspoliation. And in that day we must look for men to meet the false cry of
both sides--"gentlemen unafraid" who will neither be the money-hired
butlers of the rich nor power-loving panderers to the poor.

Assume the right of self-government and society becomes the scene of an
heroic struggle for the realization of justice. Take from the one strong
man the right to rule and make others serve, the right to take all