Politics in America is in a case which sadly requires attention. The
system set up by our law and our usage doesn't work,--or at least it can't
be depended on; it is made to work only by a most unreasonable expenditure
of labor and pains. The government, which was designed for the people, has
got into the hands of bosses and their employers, the special interests.
An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.

There are serious things to do. Does any man doubt the great discontent
in this country? Does any man doubt that there are grounds and
justifications for discontent? Do we dare stand still? Within the past few
months we have witnessed (along with other strange political phenomena,
eloquently significant of popular uneasiness) on one side a doubling of
the Socialist vote and on the other the posting on dead walls and
hoardings all over the country of certain very attractive and diverting
bills warning citizens that it was "better to be safe than sorry" and
advising them to "let well enough alone." Apparently a good many citizens
doubted whether the situation they were advised to let alone was really
well enough, and concluded that they would take a chance of being sorry.
To me, these counsels of do-nothingism, these counsels of sitting still
for fear something would happen, these counsels addressed to the hopeful,
energetic people of the United States, telling them that they are not wise
enough to touch their own affairs without marring them, constitute the
most extraordinary argument of fatuous ignorance I ever heard. Americans
are not yet cowards. True, their self-reliance has been sapped by years of
submission to the doctrine that prosperity is something that benevolent
magnates provide for them with the aid of the government; their
self-reliance has been weakened, but not so utterly destroyed that you can
twit them about it. The American people are not naturally stand-patters.
Progress is the word that charms their ears and stirs their hearts.