ver results from our votes." The force that is behind
the new party that has recently been formed, the so-called "Progressive
Party," is a force of discontent with the old parties of the United
States. It is the feeling that men have gone into blind alleys often
enough, and that somehow there must be found an open road through which
men may pass to some purpose.

In the year 1910 there came a day when the people of New Jersey took heart
to believe that something could be accomplished. I had no merit as a
candidate for Governor, except that I said what I really thought, and the
compliment that the people paid me was in believing that I meant what I
said. Unless they had believed in the Governor whom they then elected,
unless they had trusted him deeply and altogether, he could have done
absolutely nothing. The force of the public men of a nation lies in the
faith and the backing of the people of the country, rather than in any
gifts of their own. In proportion as you trust them, in proportion as you
back them up, in proportion as you lend them your strength, are they
strong. The things that have happened in New Jersey since 1910 have
happened because the seed was planted in this fine fertile soil of
confidence, of trust, of renewed hope.

The moment the forces in New Jersey that had resisted reform realized that
the people were backing new men who meant what they had said, they
realized that they dare not resist them. It was not the personal force of
the new officials; it was the moral strength of their backing that
accomplished the extraordinary result.

And what was accomplished? Mere justice to classes that had not been
treated justly before.

Every schoolboy in the State of New Jersey, if he cared to look into the
matter, could comprehend the fact that the laws applying to laboring-men
with respect of compensation when they were hurt in their various
employments had originated at a time when society was organized very
differently from the way in which it is organized now, and that because
the law had not been changed, the courts were obliged to go blindly on
administering laws which were cruelly unsuitable to existing conditions,
so that it was practically impossible for the workingmen of New Jersey to
get justice from the courts; the legislature of the commonwealth had not
come to their assistance with the necessary legislation. Nobody seriously
debated the circumstances; everybody knew that the law was antiquate