d on the central
authority, and with its assumption of a substantial identity between the
individual and the public interest--under such a system unusually
energetic and unscrupulous men were bound to seize a kind and an amount
of political and economic power which was not entirely wholesome. They
had a license to do so; and if they had failed to take advantage
thereof, their failure would have been an indication, not of
disinterestedness or moral impeccability, but of sheer weakness and
inefficiency.

How utterly confusing it is, consequently, to consider reform as
equivalent merely to the restoration of the American democracy to a
former condition of purity and excellence! Our earlier political and
economic condition was not at its best a fit subject for any great
amount of complacency. It cannot be restored, even if we would; and the
public interest has nothing to gain by its restoration. The usurpation
of power by "trusts" and "Bosses" is more than anything else an
expression of a desirable individual initiative and organizing
ability--which have been allowed to become dangerous and partly corrupt,
because of the incoherence and the lack of purpose and responsibility in
the traditional American political and economic system. A "purification"
might well destroy the good with the evil; and even if it were
successful in eradicating certain abuses, would only prepare the way for
the outbreak in another form of the tendency towards individual
aggrandizement and social classification. No amount of moral energy,
directed merely towards the enforcement of the laws, can possibly avail
to accomplish any genuine or lasting reform. It is the laws themselves
which are partly at fault, and still more at fault is the group of ideas
and traditional practices behind the laws.

Reformers have failed for the most part to reach a correct diagnosis of
existing political and economic abuses, because they are almost as much
the victim of perverted, confused, and routine habits of political
thought as is the ordinary politician. They have eschewed the tradition
of partisan conformity in reference to controverted political questions,
but they have not eschewed a still more insidious tradition of
conformity--the tradition that a patriotic American citizen must not in
his political thinking go beyond the formulas consecrated in the sacred
American writings. They adhere to the stupefying rule that the good
Fathers of the Republic relieved th