To stand for a programme of reform has become one of the
recognized roads to popularity. The political leaders with the largest
personal followings are some kind of reformers. They sit in presidential
chairs; they occupy executive mansions; they extort legislation from
unwilling politicians; they regulate and abuse the erring corporations;
they are coming to control the press; and they are the most aggressive
force in American public opinion. The supporters and beneficiaries of
existing abuses still control much of the official and practically all
the unofficial political and business machinery; but they are less
domineering and self-confident than they were. The reformers have both
scared and bewildered them. They begin to realize that reform has come
to stay, and perhaps even to conquer, while reform itself is beginning
to pay the penalty of success by being threatened with deterioration. It
has had not only its hero in Theodore Roosevelt, but its specter in
William R. Hearst.
In studying the course of the reforming movement during the last
twenty-five years, it appears that, while reform has had a history, this
history is only beginning.
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