its very elements; is questioning its oldest practices as freely as its
newest, scrutinizing every arrangement and motive of its life; and it
stands ready to attempt nothing less than a radical reconstruction, which
only frank and honest counsels and the forces of generous co-operation can
hold back from becoming a revolution. We are in a temper to reconstruct
economic society, as we were once in a temper to reconstruct political
society, and political society may itself undergo a radical modification
in the process. I doubt if any age was ever more conscious of its task or
more unanimously desirous of radical and extended changes in its economic
and political practice.

We stand in the presence of a revolution,--not a bloody revolution;
America is not given to the spilling of blood,--but a silent revolution,
whereby America will insist upon recovering in practice those ideals which
she has always professed, upon securing a government devoted to the
general interest and not to special interests.

We are upon the eve of a great reconstruction. It calls for creative
statesmanship as no age has done since that great age in which we set up
the government under which we live, that government which was the
admiration of the world until it suffered wrongs to grow up under it
which have made many of our own compatriots question the freedom of our
institutions and preach revolution against them. I do not fear revolution.
I have unshaken faith in the power of America to keep its self-possession.
Revolution will come in peaceful guise, as it came when we put aside the
crude government of the Confederation and created the great Federal Union
which governs individuals, not States, and which has been these hundred
and thirty years our vehicle of progress. Some radical changes we must
make in our law and practice. Some reconstructions we must push forward,
which a new age and new circumstances impose upon us. But we can do it all