Most of these people go to church, and, indeed, some of them are ostensibly regardful of church functions and ceremonies, and, as they do not openly violate any laws so as to subject themselves to terms of imprisonment, the patriotic American citizen finds himself able merely to frown by way of showing his dissatisfaction at this form of high treason against the morals and aims of democracy. To frown and to be grateful that one is not like certain pleasure-seeking millionaires is not much of a comfort, especially when it is obvious that the ignorant and semi-ignorant mass is fascinated by the extravagances and worldly manifestations of the individuals in question, and has made them its heroes on account of their unadulterated millions. Indeed, the self-respecting, patriotic American citizen finds himself to-day veritably between Scylla and Charybdis in the matter of the conduct of life. We are no longer the almost homogeneous nation we were fifty years ago. There are far greater extremes of wealth and poverty. Our economic conditions, or at least the conditions which exist in our principal cities, are closely approximating those which exist in the cities of the Old World. Outside of our cities the people for the most part live in respectable comfort by the practice of what passes in America for economy, which may be defined as a high but ignorant moral purpose negatived by waste and domestic incompetence. It has always been true of our beloved country that, though the ship of state has seemed on the point of floundering from time to time, disaster has invariably been averted at critical junctures by the saving grace of the common-sense and right-mindedness of the American people. This is not so complimentary as it sounds. It really means that the average sense and intelligence of the public is apt to be in the wrong at the outset, and to be converted to the right only after many days and much tribulation. In other words, our safety and our progress have been the result of a slow and often reluctant yielding of opinion by the mass to the superior judgment of a minority. This is merely another way of stating that, where every one has a right to individual opinion, and there are no arbitrary standards of conduct or of anything else outside the statute law, the mean is likely to fall far short of what is best. Our salvation in every instance of national perplexity has been the effectual working on the public conscience of the leaven of the best Americanism. A comparatively small proportion of the population have been the pioneers in thought and suggestion of subsequent ardent espousals by the entire public. This leaven, in the days when we were more homogeneous, was made up from all the elements of society; or, in other words, the best Americanism drew its representatives from every condition of life; the farmer of the Western prairie was just as likely to tower above his fellows and become a torch-bearer as the merchant or mechanic of the city.