This is the defect of the Intellectuals, the “parlor” Bolsheviks.  (Better by far be an outdoor Bolshevik, a Red Guard, if you please, one who is in and of the fighting, who acts, who lives the theory!) They do not think in terms of human nature, of natural progress, of real facts.  They say, “all men are born free and equal,” and at once conclude that the stable boy can step from the stable door to the management of a factory or into the legislature.  Now experience teaches that this is a most dangerous experiment, both for stable boy and society.  The true philosophy of Democracy teaches that the stable boy shall have, through school and the step-ladder of free institutions, the chance to rise to the management of industry or the leadership of the Senate.  That is why the foundation of Democracy is political.  For out of political freedom will come social and economic freedom.  That is why I favor woman suffrage, it gives women a chance to grow, to think along new lines and grow into new capacities.

To feel acutely that things are badly ordered, and to feel that you know what opportunities men and women and boys and girls should have, is not a program of salvation, it is only the impulse toward finding one.  Why then, because we do feel so, should we harness ourselves to a word that implies methods that we would not countenance, and give character to a movement that is at absolute defiance with America’s spirit and purpose?  There is danger, grave danger, in doing this.  For we can upset our own apple-cart very easily these days.  I have no more of this world’s goods than the humblest workingman.  No man is poorer than I am, measured by bank account standards.  The education that I have, I fought for.  Therefore I do not speak for a class.  To defend the methods by which some men have made their money is not at all to my fancy.  I see as clearly, I think, as one can, the necessity for the strong arm of society asserting itself, thrusting itself in where it has not been supposed to have any business.  Yet I know that a Bolshevik movement, a capturing of what others have gained under the system which has obtained, and the brutal satisfaction of “getting even with the wage-masters” and making them feel to the depths of their souls and in the pain of their flesh every humiliation and torture, will permanently set nothing right.  America is fair play.  Is it a failure?  Have you tried it long enough to know that it will not serve the world, as you think the world should be served?  Is there any experiment that we cannot make?  Are our hands tied?  True, our feet may lag, our eyes may not see far ahead, but who should say that for this reason man should throw aside all the firmness and strength and solidity of order, forget all that he has passed through, and start afresh from the bottom rung of the ladder—­from the muck of the primitive brute?

There are things that we would not hold, that we think unworthy of our philosophy, that must be changed or else our sympathies and abiding hopes will be forever offended.  And this would be to live right on under the pointing finger of shame.  So we know it cannot last, this thing that offends, the badness and brutality of injustice, of unfairness to the weak, their inability to get a squarer chance.