We are an ingenious people in the realm of invention and in the boldness of our business enterprise. We have the sturdy virtues of the pioneer. We are an honest people, keeping our contracts and giving fair measure. We are a tireless people in the patient attention to business and the laudable resolve to rise in the world. Many of our richest men began on the farm or as office boys. Success depends in our country almost exclusively on native capacity, which is rewarded here with a prompt and cheerful recognition which is rare in other lands. We are a progressive people, always ready for improvements, which indeed we take for granted, so regularly do they make their appearance. No alert American can visit any foreign country without noting innumerable examples of stupid adherence to outworn and cumbrous methods in industry, commerce, and transportation. Of course no one is so blind as not to see that here and there evils develop which should be remedied, either by legislation or by the gradual advance in enlightenment. Many of them will doubtless cure themselves. Our democracy is right at heart and you cannot fool all the people all the time. We have not escaped our fair quota of troubles. It would be too much to expect that we should. The difference of opinion between the Northern and Southern states actually led to civil war, but this only served to confirm the natural unity of the country and prepare the way for further advance. Protestants have sometimes dreaded a Catholic domination; the Mormons have been a source of anxiety to timid souls. Populists and advocates of free silver have seemed to threaten sound finance. On the other hand, Wall Street and the trusts have led some to think that corporate business enterprise may at times, if left unhampered, lead to over-powerful monopolies. But the evil workings of all these things had before the war been peaceful, if insidious. They might rouse apprehension in the minds of far-sighted and public-spirited observers, but there had been no general fear that any of them would overthrow the Republic and lead to a violent destruction of society as now constituted and mayhap to a reversion to barbarism.