It is not in riot, revolution, anarchy, by frenzied declamations against those who are doing only what nine-tenths of the human kind would do for themselves, if opportunity were aflforded ; but by using the power which free government gives to the people, and correcting the evils by what Gladstone called " the resources of civilization." Out of the roar and brawl of the times will come a sharp examination into the system of laws which permit the accumulation of stupendous fortunes by the " cornering " of a commodity which human necessities re-

THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL. 1 49

quire ; by shrewd manipulations of tariff, patent, corporation and transportation laws, and by other anti-social agencies. The people, the consumers, create all the legislatures, appoint all the judges, execute all the laws. The fortunes of the rich exist because the people so alk)w. " A breath can make them, and a breath has made," All the creature-comforts, all culture-conquests have been evolved by the people. It is not by a reversion to Asiatic paternalism, or by the assumption of all industrial agenices by the State, which is the present aim of Socialism, or by a retreat into aboriginal lawlessness and intense selfishness -- which Anarchism would result in -- that social relief will come. The American people will work these problems out and will work them out right. " The glory of the sum of things " does not come with a flash. There are always remedial agencies actively at work. They have saved civilization again and again, when the economic order seemed about to break down, when eflFete governments have fallen in cataclysms which have almost wrecked the social fabric ; when mankind seemed to be wandering in a wilderness of ignorance, doubt and despair. Human nature is a tough, elastic, expansive article.