A striking example of the shift of the actual tenor of doctrines--that is, of their consequences in application--is presented in the history of the doctrine of Individualism, interpreted to signify a minimum of governmental “interference” with industry and trade. At the outset, it was held by “progressives,” by those who were protesting against the inherited régime of rules of law and administration. Vested interests, on the contrary, were mainly in favor of the old status. To-day the industrial-property régime being established, the doctrine is the intellectual bulwark of the standpatter and reactionary. He it is that now wants to be let alone, and who utters the war-cry of liberty for private industry, thrift, contract and their pecuniary fruit. In the United States the name “liberal,” as a party designation, is still employed to designate a progressive in political matters. In most other countries, the “liberal” party is that which represents established and vested commercial and financial interests in protest against governmental regulation. The irony of history is nowhere more evident than in the reversal of the practical meaning of the term “liberalism” in spite of a literal continuity of theory. Political apathy, which is a natural product of the discrepancies between actual practices and traditional machinery, ensues from inability to identify one’s self with definite issues. These are hard to find and locate in the vast complexities of current life. When traditional war-cries have lost their import in practical policies which are consonant with them, they are readily dismissed as bunk. Only habit and tradition, rather than reasoned conviction, together with a vague faith in doing one’s civic duty, send to the polls a considerable percentage of the fifty per cent. who still vote. And of them it is a common remark that a large number vote against something or somebody rather than for anything or anybody, except when powerful agencies create a scare. The old principles do not fit contemporary life as it is lived, however well they may have expressed the vital interests of the times in which they arose. Thousands feel their hollowness even if they cannot make their feeling articulate. The confusion which has resulted from the size and ramifications of social activities has rendered men skeptical of the efficiency of political action. Who is sufficient unto these things? Men feel that they are caught in the sweep of forces too vast to understand or master. Thought is brought to a standstill and action paralyzed. Even the specialist finds it difficult to trace the chain of “cause and effect”; and even he operates only after the event, looking backward, while meantime social activities have moved on to effect a new state of affairs.