that the Democratic Party
neither understood nor was ready to assist the business of the country
in the great enterprises which it is its evident and inevitable destiny
to undertake and carry through. The breaking up of the lobby must
especially disconcert them: for it was through the lobby that they
sought and were sure they had found the heart of things. The game of
privilege can be played successfully by no other means.

This record must equally astonish those who feared that the Democratic
Party had not opened its heart to comprehend the demands of social
justice. We have in four years come very near to carrying out the
platform of the Progressive Party as well as our own; for we also are
progressives.

There is one circumstance connected with this program which ought to be
very plainly stated. It was resisted at every step by the interests
which the Republican Party had catered to and fostered at the expense of
the country, and these same interests are now earnestly praying for a
reaction which will save their privileges,--for the restoration of their
sworn friends to power before it is too late to recover what they have
lost. They fought with particular desperation and infinite
resourcefulness the reform of the banking and currency system, knowing
that to be the citadel of their control; and most anxiously are they
hoping and planning for the amendment of the Federal Reserve Act by the
concentration of control in a single bank which the old familiar group
of bankers can keep under their eye and direction. But while the "big
men" who used to write the tariffs and command the assistance of the
Treasury have been hostile,--all but a few with vision,--the average
business man knows that he has been delivered, and that the fear that
was once every day in his heart, that the men who controlled credit and
directed enterprise from the committee rooms of Congress would crush
him, is there no more, and will not return,--unless the party that
consulted only the "big men" should return to power,--the party of
masterly inactivity and cunning resourcefulness in standing pat to
resist change.

The Republican Party is just the party that _cannot_ meet the new
conditions of a new age. It does not know the way and it does not wish
new conditions. It tried to break away from the old leaders and could
not. They still select its candidates and dictate its policy, still
resist change, still hanker after the old conditions, still kno