The inability of the reformers to cooeperate in action or to agree as to the application of their principles is in part merely a natural result of their essential work.  Reformers are primarily protestants; and protestants are naturally insubordinate.  They have been protesting against the established order in American business and politics.  Their protest implies a certain degree of moral and intellectual independence, which makes them dislike to surrender or subordinate their own personal opinions and manner of action.  Such independence is a new and refreshing thing, which has suddenly made American politics much more interesting and significant than it has been at any time since the Civil War.  It has a high value wholly apart from its immediate political results.  It means that the American people are beginning a new phase of their political experience,—­a phase in which there will be room for a much freer play of individual ability and character.  Inevitably the sudden realization by certain exceptional politicians that they have a right to be individuals, and that they can take a strong line of their own in politics without being disqualified for practical political association with their fellow-countrymen—­such a new light could hardly break without tempting the performers to over-play the part.  The fact that they have over-played their parts, and have wasted time and energy over meaningless and unnecessary disagreements is not in itself a matter of much importance.  The great majority of them are disinterested and patriotic men, who will not allow in the long run either personal ambition or political crotchets to prevent them from cooeperating for the good of the cause.

Unfortunately, however, neither public spirit nor patriotism will be sufficient to bring them effectively together—­any more than genuine excellence of intention and real public spirit enabled patriotic Americans to cooeperate upon a remedial policy during the years immediately preceding the Civil War.  The plain fact is that the traditional American political system, which so many good reformers wish to restore by some sort of reforming revivalism, is just as much responsible for the existing political and economic abuses as the Constitution was responsible for the evil of slavery.  As long, consequently, as reform is considered to be a species of higher conservatism, the existing abuses can no more be frankly faced and fully understood than the Whig leaders were able to face and understand the full meaning and consequences of any attempt on the part of a democracy to keep house with slavery.  The first condition of a better understanding and a more efficient cooeperation among the reforming leaders is a better understanding of the meaning of reform and the function of reformers.  They will never be united on the basis of allegiance to the traditional American political creed, because that creed itself is overflowing with inconsistencies and ambiguities, which afford a footing for almost every extreme of radicalism and conservatism; and in case they persist in the attempt to reform political and economic abuses merely by a restoration of earlier conditions and methods, they will be compromising much that is good in the present economic and political organization without recovering that which was good in the past.