of New York and proceed to the
palaces of the Czar to show the hundred and twenty millions of
Russians what can be done--and, what is far more to the point, get a
hearing. Thus it becomes possible for the International Workers of the
World in Russia, France, England and America to get together in
conference in Switzerland or elsewhere and discuss how best to destroy
not only governments, but private property, law, order, the family and
all the beams of the great house at one time. Thus it becomes possible
for a host of less radical but none the less pernicious plans for the
good or evil of the world to fly about amongst unstable but
well-meaning minds.

Our country, so remote in miles from the scenes of these upheavals, is
by the development of {266} modern times so near that it is to a
certain extent affected by them.

In a population of one hundred millions in the United States there are
probably one hundred million different views entertained upon each of
the questions of this disturbed period. But a fair classification of
them could be safely made into radicals, moderates and
conservatives--Bolsheviki and theorists, slow-moving and hard-thinking
citizens and stiff-necked reactionaries--all honest and earnest in the
mean. If the Bolsheviki and theorists outnumber the others we shall
have a situation in the United States similar to that in Russia,
Austria and Germany. If the stiff-necked reactionaries outnumber the
others, we shall smother the flame for a time only to have it burst
forth shortly in an infinitely more terrible explosion. If the
slow-moving, hard-thinking citizens outnumber the others, we shall
maintain the main structure of our house so laboriously built
throughout the ages while we change to some extent the nature of the
wall paper and the plaster to adapt it to modern conditions.

Some of us want to achieve the first, some the {267} second and some
the third status; and it would be safe to say that up to the present
in this country the people of the great middle class--the not rich,
the not poor, the steady business man, the ordinary mother of a
family--are in the majority and are trying to adapt themselves to the
new conditions even if only in a slow and somewhat halting manner.

It will help them and therefore help the country to maintain
themselves and itself on an even keel until the storm subsides if they
can have some concrete standard to work by. And as standards in this
sense usually be