ant for the use of practical men; not a
thesis for philosophers, but a whip for tyrants; not a theory of
government, but a program of action. Unless we can translate it into the
questions of our own day, we are not worthy of it, we are not the sons of
the sires who acted in response to its challenge.

What form does the contest between tyranny and freedom take to-day? What
is the special form of tyranny we now fight? How does it endanger the
rights of the people, and what do we mean to do in order to make our
contest against it effectual? What are to be the items of our new
declaration of independence?

By tyranny, as we now fight it, we mean control of the law, of legislation
and adjudication, by organizations which do not represent the people, by
means which are private and selfish. We mean, specifically, the conduct of
our affairs and the shaping of our legislation in the interest of special
bodies of capital and those who organize their use. We mean the alliance,
for this purpose, of political machines with selfish business. We mean the
exploitation of the people by legal and political means. We have seen many
of our governments under these influences cease to be representative
governments, cease to be governments representative of the people, and
become governments representative of special interests, controlled by
machines, which in their turn are not controlled by the people.

Sometimes, when I think of the growth of our economic system, it seems to
me as if, leaving our law just about where it was before any of the modern
inventions or developments took place, we had simply at haphazard extended
the family residence, added an office here and a workroom there, and a new
set of sleeping rooms there, built up higher on our foundations, and put
out little lean-tos on the side, until we have a structure that has no
character whatever. Now, the problem is to continue to live in the house
and yet change it.

Well, we are architects in our time, and our architects are also
engineers. We don't have to stop using a railroad terminal because a new
station is being built. We don't have to stop any of the processes of our
lives because we are rearranging the structures in which we conduct those
processes. What we have to undertake is to systematize the foundations of
the house, then to thread all the old parts of the structure with the
steel which will be laced together in modern fashion, accommodated to all
the modern kn