ndition, guaranteed by democratic political
institutions, and resulting in moral and social amelioration. These
manifold benefits were to be obtained merely by liberating the
enlightened self-interest of the American people. The beneficent result
followed inevitably from the action of wholly selfish motives--provided,
of course, the democratic political system of equal rights was
maintained in its integrity. The fulfillment of the American Promise was
considered inevitable because it was based upon a combination of
self-interest and the natural goodness of human nature. On the other
hand, if the fulfillment of our national Promise can no longer be
considered inevitable, if it must be considered as equivalent to a
conscious national purpose instead of an inexorable national destiny,
the implication necessarily is that the trust reposed in individual
self-interest has been in some measure betrayed. No preestablished
harmony can then exist between the free and abundant satisfaction of
private needs and the accomplishment of a morally and socially desirable
result. The Promise of American life is to be fulfilled--not merely by a
maximum amount of economic freedom, but by a certain measure of
discipline; not merely by the abundant satisfaction of individual
desires, but by a large measure of individual subordination and
self-denial. And this necessity of subordinating the satisfaction of
individual desires to the fulfillment of a national purpose is attached
particularly to the absorbing occupation of the American people,--the
occupation, viz.: of accumulating wealth. The automatic fulfillment of
the American national Promise is to be abandoned, if at all, precisely
because the traditional American confidence in individual freedom has
resulted in a morally and socially undesirable distribution of wealth.

In making the concluding statement of the last paragraph I am venturing,
of course, upon very debatable ground. Neither can I attempt in this
immediate connection to offer any justification for the statement which
might or should be sufficient to satisfy a stubborn skeptic. I must be
content for the present with the bare assertion that the prevailing
abuses and sins, which have made reform necessary, are all of them
associated with the prodigious concentration of wealth, and of the power
exercised by wealth, in the hands of a few men. I am far from believing
that this concentration of economic power is wholly an undesirable