year 1909 they might behave differently. The sins of which Mr. Muirhead
accused Americans sixteen years ago are substantially the sins of which
to-day they are accusing themselves--or rather one another. A numerous
and powerful group of reformers has been collecting whose whole
political policy and action is based on the conviction that the "common
people" have not been getting the Square Deal to which they are entitled
under the American system; and these reformers are carrying with them a
constantly increasing body of public opinion. A considerable proportion
of the American people is beginning to exhibit economic and political,
as well as personal, discontent. A generation ago the implication was
that if a man remained poor and needy, his poverty was his own fault,
because the American system was giving all its citizens a fair chance.
Now, however, the discontented poor are beginning to charge their
poverty to an unjust political and economic organization, and reforming
agitators do not hesitate to support them in this contention. Manifestly
a threatened obstacle has been raised against the anticipated
realization of our national Promise. Unless the great majority of
Americans not only have, but believe they have, a fair chance, the
better American future will be dangerously compromised.

The conscious recognition of grave national abuses casts a deep shadow
across the traditional American patriotic vision. The sincere and candid
reformer can no longer consider the national Promise as destined to
automatic fulfillment. The reformers themselves are, no doubt, far from
believing that whatever peril there is cannot be successfully averted.
They make a point of being as patriotically prophetic as the most
"old-fashioned Democrat." They proclaim even more loudly their
conviction of an indubitable and a beneficent national future. But they
do not and cannot believe that this future will take care of itself. As
reformers they are bound to assert that the national body requires for