The institutions and laws of the United States, in their inception, represented the spirit of a people who were actuated by the highest concepts of human duty, and who sought to establish a political system which should realize the highest ideals. The possibilities of the system have been demonstrated by the experience of more than a hundred years. Functionally considered this experience has made painfully evident the failures which have attended the system in its operation. It is evident to every intelligent student of American history that these failures have been chiefly due to the fact that the spirit which gave life to the American Republic has too often and too far been supplanted in the control of its affairs by a spirit utterly hostile to that which it was intended to be, and which, if the partial or complete failure of the system is to be averted, must, everywhere and always, be dominant. It is undoubtedly true that citizens whose character and ability fit them for the service necessary for the proper control of political affairs, constitute a sufficient number in the voting population to assure the ascendency of right ideas if their efforts can be united for the purpose. The fact that intelligent and controlling convictions of duty are absent, and that they do not thus unite, however explained, clearly accounts for the subversion of the spirit which founded our institutions, and the ascendency of a spirit of chicanery, greed, and corruption. It is also evident that the political evils which challenge our attention are primarily due, not to faults in our institutions themselves, but to failures in the assertion of the spirit of true Americanism by which they are intended to be controlled. How to secure ascendency for this spirit and thus to restore, in every part of the republic, the sovereignty of highest manhood, is the most pressing problem which can engage the attention of patriotic and intelligent American citizens.