Now the smoky torch of reform has passed from hand to hand, and is beginning to burn brighter. How could the original darkness give forth more than a gleam? All progress is experimental. The architects discovered by practice that the arch would support itself. Their earlier efforts were tentative. You can see what notion they had in mind, as they very gradually learned how to subserve the laws of gravity and tension. Each improvement is qualified by its author’s limitations, but shows a gain as toward the immediate past. You are following the steps of the groping and fumbling mind of man, fettered at every point by his own conceptions, moving each time towards a bolder generalization, each stride forward exactly proportionate to the breadth of thought on which it is calculated. What other method is there? The men who fought the Tweed Ring did what passed for “politics” in their day. “Votes must be paid for, of course; but let the people vote right.” The philosophy of the Strong movement in 1894 showed an advance. “The plunder must be divided, of course; but let _us_ have it because we are virtuous.” The Low movement in 1897 appealed to voters on the ground of self-interest. Labor had to be conciliated, local politicians of the worst sort subsidized; $150,000 was spent, four-fifths of it in ways that did more harm than good. But the methods were delicate. The battle of the standards goes forward ceaselessly; but all standards are going up. What the half-way reformer calls “politics,” the idealist calls chicanery; what the idealist calls politics, the half-way reformer calls Utopia. But in 1871 they are discussing whether or not the reformers shall falsify the returns; in 1894 they are discussing whether or not they shall expose fraud in their own camp.