The time has come when a remedy for this state of things can no longer be safely postponed; the situation is serious; the democratic system is being attacked, and will continue to be attacked here and elsewhere by great numbers of the very class who have heretofore been supposed to constitute its defenders and champions. Be they Bolsheviki, Anarchists, Socialists or what you will, these assailants of our institutions are nearly all of the common people, of the very working class whom it has been and ought to be the pride and mission of America to shelter and satisfy. Many of them were brought to this attitude of revolt by evil conditions in Europe and are continuing here their hostile attitude to organized society and spreading the spirit of mischief among us because they are justly disappointed by our political conditions; finding here in a country supposed to be democratic, the rule of a corrupt oligarchy of politicians thoroughly established and apparently acquiesced in by the people at large. The seeds of discontent which they are assiduously sowing are likely to take root in the breasts of our own people, disgruntled as they are with the past and present corruption of our politics and the inefficiency of our government. This corruption, this inefficiency, long a scandal among us, is the real cause of that popular “unrest,” that dissatisfaction the subject of so much comment, which for more than a generation just prior to the German war had been steadily increasing in this country. It was started by the degradation of politics which ensued immediately upon the establishment of manhood suffrage and the inauguration of Jackson and the Spoils Policy in 1829. It was already well under way in 1840; but was subsequently held in check by the Anti-Slavery agitation, by the Civil War and the Southern Reconstruction troubles, which ended in 1876 with the inauguration of Hayes. From that time this popular protest against our political unrighteousness has been steadily on the increase, gaining in power and bitterness with the added instances of official unfitness and maladministration of public affairs. With the disappearance of the older generations reared in a religious belief in our republican institutions and filled with memories of the honest days before Jackson, appeared the spirit of contemptuous disbelief in official capacity and honesty which has taken possession of their descendants. The vision of a government administered by statesmen and patriots of the type of Washington and the Adamses has given place in the mind of America to a picture of a sordid gang of corrupt and incapable politicians in power, and it is therefore to the credit of our people that there has been protest, dissatisfaction and “unrest.” The popular demand that this state of things be remedied is at the bottom of the so-called “unrest,” and it is not an unreasonable demand. Never in the world’s history was there a people so religious, so patriotic, so disinterested, so