When political parties come to be badly led, when their leaders lose touch with the people, when their object ceases to be everybody’s welfare and becomes somebody’s profit, it is time to change the leaders.  One of the most significant facts of the time is that the professional politicians appear to be wholly unaware of the great moral change which has come over political thinking in the last decade.  They fail to see that the political dogmas, the political slogans, and the political methods of the past generation have lost their power, and that our people have come at last to judge of politics by the eternal rules of right and wrong.

A new life is stirring among the dry bones of formal platforms and artificial issues.  Morality has broken into politics.  Political leaders, Trust-bred and Trust-fed, find it harder and harder to conceal their actual character.  The brass-bound collar of privilege has become plain upon their necks for all men to see.  They are known for what they are, and their time is short.  But when they come to be retired it will be of little use to replace an unfaithful public servant who wears the collar by another public servant with the same collar around his neck.  Above all, what we need in every office is free men representing a free people.

The motto in every primary—­in every election—­should be this:  No watch-dogs of the Interests need apply.

The old order, standing pat in dull failure to sense the great forward sweep of a nation determined on honesty and publicity in public affairs, is already wearing thin under the ceaseless hammering of the progressive onset.  The demand of the people for political progress will not be denied.  Does any man, not blinded by personal interest or by the dust of political dry rot, suppose that the bulk of our people are anything else but progressive?  If such there be, let him ask the young men, in whose minds the policies of to-morrow first see the light.

The people of the United States demand a new deal and a square deal.  They have grasped the fact that the special interests are now in control of public affairs.  They have decided once more to take control of their own business.  For the last ten years the determination to do so has been swelling like a river.  They insist that the special interests shall go out of politics or out of business—­one or the other.  And the choice will lie with the interests themselves.  If they resist, both the interests and the people will suffer.  If wisely they accept the inevitable, the adjustment will not be hard.  It will do their business no manner of harm to make it conform to the general welfare.  But one way or the other, conform it must.

The overshadowing question before the American people to-day is this:  Shall the Nation govern itself or shall the interests run this country?  The one great political demand, underlying all others, giving meaning to all others, is this:  The special interests must get out of politics.  The old-style leaders, seeking to switch public attention away from this one absorbing and overwhelming issue are pitifully ridiculous and out of date.  To try to divert the march of an aroused public conscience from this righteous inevitable conflict by means of obsolete political catchwords is like trying to dam the Mississippi with dead leaves.