It is utterly useless to try to meet our needs by recreating the vanished conditions which rendered it possible for this vanished individualistic democracy to preach and practise what it did, and which preaching and practising of an extreme individualism, be it remembered, laid the corner of the very conditions against which we are in revolt to-day. The present-day need of our people is to achieve the purpose our predecessors in the democratic movement had at heart, even though it be necessary to abandon or reverse the methods by which they in their day sought to realize, and indeed often did realize, that purpose. The Progressive party is the only political instrumentality in existence to-day which recognizes the need of achieving this purpose by the new methods which under the changed industrial and social conditions are alone effective. COLLECTIVE ACTION AND THE INDIVIDUAL This means increased efficiency of governmental action. It does not mean in the slightest degree any impairment or weakening of individual character. The combination of efficient collective action and of individual ability and initiative is essential to the success of the modern state. It is in civil life as it is in military life. No amount of personal prowess will make soldiers collectively formidable unless they possess also the trained ability to act in common for a common end. On the other hand, no perfection of military organization will atone for the lack of the fighting edge in the man in the ranks. The same principle applies in civil life. We not merely recognize but insist upon the fact that in the life career of any man or any woman the prime factor as regards success or failure must be his or her possession of that bundle of qualities and attributes which in their aggregate we denominate as character; and yet that, in addition, there must be proper social conditions surrounding him or her. Recognition of and insistence upon either fact must never be permitted to mean failure to recognize the other and complementary fact. The character of the individual is vital, and yet, in order to give it fair expression, it must be supplemented by collective action through the agencies of government. Our critics speak as if we were striving to weaken the strength of individual initiative. Yet these critics, who for the most part are either men of wealth who do not think deeply on subjects unconnected with the acquisition of wealth, or else men of a cloistered intellectualism, are themselves in practice the very men who are most ready to demand the exercise of collective power in its broadest manifestation; that is, through the police force, when there is danger of disorder or violence. [Illustration: ROOSEVELT FROM A PHOTOGRAPH COPYRIGHT BY PACH BROS. COLOR-TONE ENGRAVED FOR THE CENTURY BY H. DAVIDSON]