At such a time amidst such stupendous changes it is natural that an infinite number of plans for reconstruction come forward. All the century-old panaceas crop up. All the moss-grown plans for a perfect world are thrust forward in a new {265} dress and naturally gain credence. And with the increased ease of intercommunication of individuals and ideas the opportunity not only for many more but for widely divergent theories to make themselves heard is immeasurably increased. Thus it becomes possible for a Lenine and a Trotzky to leave their tenement flats in the slums of New York and proceed to the palaces of the Czar to show the hundred and twenty millions of Russians what can be done--and, what is far more to the point, get a hearing. Thus it becomes possible for the International Workers of the World in Russia, France, England and America to get together in conference in Switzerland or elsewhere and discuss how best to destroy not only governments, but private property, law, order, the family and all the beams of the great house at one time. Thus it becomes possible for a host of less radical but none the less pernicious plans for the good or evil of the world to fly about amongst unstable but well-meaning minds. Our country, so remote in miles from the scenes of these upheavals, is by the development of {266} modern times so near that it is to a certain extent affected by them. In a population of one hundred millions in the United States there are probably one hundred million different views entertained upon each of the questions of this disturbed period. But a fair classification of them could be safely made into radicals, moderates and conservatives--Bolsheviki and theorists, slow-moving and hard-thinking citizens and stiff-necked reactionaries--all honest and earnest in the mean. If the Bolsheviki and theorists outnumber the others we shall have a situation in the United States similar to that in Russia, Austria and Germany. If the stiff-necked reactionaries outnumber the others, we shall smother the flame for a time only to have it burst forth shortly in an infinitely more terrible explosion. If the slow-moving, hard-thinking citizens outnumber the others, we shall maintain the main structure of our house so laboriously built throughout the ages while we change to some extent the nature of the wall paper and the plaster to adapt it to modern conditions. Some of us want to achieve the first, some the {267} second and some the third status; and it would be safe to say that up to the present in this country the people of the great middle class--the not rich, the not poor, the steady business man, the ordinary mother of a family--are in the majority and are trying to adapt themselves to the new conditions even if only in a slow and somewhat halting manner.