I do not speak of these things in apprehension, because all is open and
above-board. This is not a day in which great forces rally in secret. The
whole stupendous program must be publicly planned and canvassed. Good temper,
the wisdom that comes of sober counsel, the energy of thoughtful and
unselfish men, the habit of co-operation and of compromise which has been
bred in us by long years of free government, in which reason rather than
passion has been made to prevail by the sheer virtue of candid and universal
debate, will enable us to win through to still another great age without
violence.

II

WHAT IS PROGRESS?

In that sage and veracious chronicle, "Alice Through the Looking-Glass," it
is recounted how, on a noteworthy occasion, the little heroine is seized by
the Red Chess Queen, who races her off at a terrific pace. They run until
both of them are out of breath; then they stop, and Alice looks around her
and says, "Why, we are just where we were when we started!" "Oh, yes," says
the Red Queen; "you have to run twice as fast as that to get anywhere else."

That is a parable of progress. The laws of this country have not kept up with
the change of economic circumstances in this country; they have not kept up
with the change of political circumstances; and therefore we are not even
where we were when we started. We shall have to run, not until we are out of
breath, but until we have caught up with our own conditions, before we shall
be where we were when we started; when we started this great experiment which
has been the hope and the beacon of the world. And we should have to run
twice as fast as any rational program I have seen in order to get anywhere
else.

I am, therefore, forced to be a progressive, if for no other reason, because
we have not kept up with our changes of conditions, either in the economic
field or in the political field. We have not kept up as well as other nations
have. We have not kept our practices adjusted to the facts of the case, and
until we do, and unless we do, the facts of the case will always have the
better of the argument; because if you do not adjust your laws to the facts,
so much the worse for the laws, not for the facts, because law trails along
after the facts. Only that law is unsafe which runs ahead of the facts and
beckons to it and makes it follow the will-o'-the-wisps of imaginative
projects.

Business is in a situation in America which it was never in before; it is in
a situation to which we have not adjusted our laws. Our laws are still meant
for business done by individuals; they have not been satisfactorily adjusted
to business done by great combinations, and we have got to adjust them. I do
not say we may or may not; I say we must; there is no choice. If your laws do
not fit your facts, the facts are not injured, the law is damaged; because
the law, unless I have studied it amiss, is the expression of the facts in
legal relationships. Laws have never altered the facts; laws have always
necessarily expressed the facts; adjusted interests as they have arisen and
have changed toward one another.