The Basis of the Struggle.

If we of America seem plunged into a period of unrest and battle and strife, when we should all so much rather be at peace, enjoying fellowship with the many finely attuned natures now arrayed in some opposing camp, we may comfort ourselves with the thought that ours is the common lot. Never until the evils growing out of social maladjustments are cured can the nation be quiet and content.

Here is the basis of the struggle in America: There are those, high in power and strong in intellect, many of them, who do not believe that the evils we suffer come from social maladjustments. They think the poor man, or the criminal, or the ignorant, or the weak, the architect of his own fortune. They can thread the slum or inspect the tenement with a sincere belief that these people are so situated by reason of inevitable evils, or of their own fault or failure, and not because of misdirected social forces which are capable of correction by an aroused democracy. They regard the industrial situation in America as, on the whole, about what it should be.

Such men and such statesmen do not...