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Meanwhile let us not forget:—

First—That while we ought to be, and are, concerned about the purity and efficiency of our public administrations, our vital interest is in the projects and acts of the industrial leaders who here ignore, there cajole or bully, the public administration, now use and now defy it.

Second—That the new form of public corruption is an incident—melancholy, deplorable, dreadful, but still only a necessary incident—in that swift yet permanent betterment of man’s condition which practically began in the childhood of men still young.

Third—That while purchasers of inequality and of privilege to extort may evade the laws of the statute books, they cannot evade that law of Democracy which compels them to assist in raising the consuming and producing capacities of the people, the standards of enlightenment, of comfort, of refinement, of civilized desire—of intelligence! The plutocrats themselves are, in the quaint irony of fate, by no means the least efficient of our manufacturers of democrats.