it must be regulation which will strike, not at the symptoms of the evil, but at its roots.  The existing concentration of wealth and financial power in the hands of a few irresponsible men is the inevitable outcome of the chaotic individualism of our political and economic organization, while at the same time it is inimical to democracy, because it tends to erect political abuses and social inequalities into a system.  The inference which follows may be disagreeable, but it is not to be escaped.  In becoming responsible for the subordination of the individual to the demand of a dominant and constructive national purpose, the American state will in effect be making itself responsible for a morally and socially desirable distribution of wealth.

The consequences, then, of converting our American national destiny into a national purpose are beginning to be revolutionary.  When the Promise of American life is conceived as a national ideal, whose fulfillment is a matter of artful and laborious work, the effect thereof is substantially to identify the national purpose with the social problem.  What the American people of the present and the future have really been promised by our patriotic prophecies is an attempt to solve that problem.  They have been promised on American soil comfort, prosperity, and the opportunity for self-improvement; and the lesson of the existing crisis is that such a Promise can never be redeemed by an indiscriminate individual scramble for wealth.  The individual competition, even when it starts under fair conditions and rules, results, not only, as it should, in the triumph of the strongest, but in the attempt to perpetuate the victory; and it is this attempt which must be recognized and forestalled in the interest of the American national purpose.  The way to realize a purpose is, not to leave it to chance, but to keep it loyally in mind, and adopt means proper to the importance and the difficulty of the task.  No voluntary association of individuals, resourceful and disinterested though they be, is competent to assume the responsibility.  The problem belongs to the American national democracy, and its solution must be attempted chiefly by means of official national action.

Neither can its attempted solution be escaped.  When they are confronted by the individual sacrifices which the fulfillment of their national Promise demands, American political leaders will find many excuses for ignoring the responsibility thereby implied; but the difficulty of such an attempted evasion will consist in the reenforcement of the historical tradition by a logical and a practical necessity.  The American problem is the social problem partly because the social problem is the democratic problem.  American political and social leaders will find that in a democracy the problem cannot be evaded.  The American people have no irremediable political grievances.  No good American denies the desirability of popular sovereignty and of a government which should somehow represent