There is but one thing that can save us, namely, proving to one another and to our public men, that we are good, that we are going to be good and that we know how.  We face the issue to-day.  Two definite programs are before the country.

Those who have put their faith in being afraid of one another as a national policy have devised several By-laws for an Expurgated America.

They say, eliminate the right of a man to do wrong.  Deny him the right of moral experiment because some of his experiments do not work.  We say let him try.  We can look out for ourselves or we will have bigger men than he is, to look out for us.

They say, eliminate the right of a man to be an owner, because nobody has the courage to believe that a man can express his best self in property.  We say that property may express a man’s religion, and that the way a man has of being rich or of being poor may be an art-form.

Most men can express themselves better in property than in anything else.

They say, eliminate all monopoly indiscriminately and the occasional logical efficiency of monopoly because it has not worked well for the people the first few times and because we have not learned how to handle it.  We say learn how to handle it.

They say eliminate the middleman.  They say that the one strategic man in every industry who can represent everybody if he wants to, who can be a great man and who can make a great industry serve everybody, must be eliminated because nobody believes America can produce a middleman.  We say instead of weakly and helplessly giving up a great spiritual and morally-engineering institution like the middleman because the average middleman does not know his job, we say:  Exalt the middleman raise him to the n-th power, make him—­well—­do you remember, Gentle Reader, the walking beams on the old sidewheel steamers?  We say do not eliminate him—­lift him up—­make him what he naturally is and is in position to be—­the walking beam of Business!

If the average middleman does not know how to be a real middleman we will make one who does.

And all the other eliminations that we have watched people being scared into, one by one, we will turn into exaltations—­each in its own kind and place.  There is not one of our fears that is not the suggestion, the mighty outline, the inspiration for the world’s next new size and new kind of American man.  We say place the position before the man—­with its fears, with its songs, with its challenge.  We say, tell him what we expect of him and demand of him.  Put him in a high place on a platform before the world!  There with the truth about him written on his forehead in the sight of all the people, call him by name, glorify him or behead him!  We are men and we are Americans.  We will stand up to each of our dangers one by one.  Each and every danger of them is a romance, a sublime adventure, a nation-maker.  Our threats, our very by-words and despairs, we will take up, and, in the sight of the world, forge them into shrewd faiths and into mighty men!