beyond legal jurisdiction. If it be objected that the American people
are incapable of an effort so prodigious, I readily admit that this may
be true, but I also contend that the objection is beside the issue. What
the American people can or cannot do is a matter of opinion, but that
social changes are imminent appears to be almost certain. Though these
changes cannot be prevented, possibly they may, to a degree, be guided,
as Washington guided the changes of 1789. To resist them perversely, as
they were resisted at the Chicago Convention of 1912, can only make the
catastrophe, when it comes, as overwhelming as was the consequent defeat
of the Republican party.

Approached thus, that Convention of 1912 has more than a passing
importance, since it would seem to indicate the ordinary phenomenon,
that a declining favored class is incapable of appreciating an
approaching change of environment which must alter its social status. I
began with the proposition that, in any society which we now understand,
civilization is equivalent to order, and the evidence of the truth of
the proposition is, that amidst disorder, capital and credit, which
constitute the pith of our civilization, perish first. For more than a
century past, capital and credit have been absolute, or nearly so;
accordingly it has not been the martial type which has enjoyed
sovereignty, but the capitalistic. The warrior has been the capitalists'
servant. But now, if it be true that money, in certain crucial
directions, is losing its purchasing power, it is evident that
capitalists must accept a position of equality before the law under the
domination of a type of man who can enforce obedience; their own
obedience, as well as the obedience of others. Indeed, it might occur,
even to some optimists, that capitalists would be fortunate if they
could certainly obtain protection for another fifty years on terms as
favorable as these. But at Chicago, capitalists declined even to